Well attempted. And with a hammer:
The Broward County Republicans are in turmoil today after revelations that a freshly elected member of their executive board is a man who once was charged with attempted murder in the savage claw-hammer beating of a then-classmate at a Los Angeles prep school for multi-millionaires’ children.
Four months after 28-year-old Rupert Tarsey was elected secretary, party officials have found out the young philanthropist and supporter of President Donald Trump is really Rupert Ditsworth.
And a decade ago, the then-Beverly Hills teenager was charged with attempted murder in Los Angeles after hitting Harvard-Westlake School classmate Elizabeth Barcay over the head at least 40 times, splitting her skull open.
I audibly snorted and woke the pets when I got to this part of the story:
For years, he quietly volunteered on Republican campaigns, including Trump’s. Then in May, Tarsey presented himself at the election for the party’s executive board. He won a three-candidate race for secretary with 75 votes.
Tarsey’s real identity was discovered by a member who alerted local GOP Chairman Bob Sutton over the Labor Day weekend.
“We were blindsided,” said Sutton, a schoolteacher. “He’s a member of the Knights of Columbus, for Christ’s sake…
I’m laughing again.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Make American Psycho Again
Frankensteinbeck
That attempted murder story is horrific. And you, of all people, Cole, know why shit like this is baked into Republicanism. When you build your philosophy on being mean and hateful and hypocritically self-righteous, this is exactly the kind of person who rises to power.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so he was born in a Wodehouse novel and changed his name to Game of Thrones?
bemused senior
I tweeted that to you, probably not the only one, knowing you would appreciate it.
? Martin
I don’t understand why they’re upset about this. After all, they elected an admitted sexual assaulter to the White House. Seems like the shame over prior misdeeds boat sailed quite a while ago.
sukabi
So are they disappointed that he’s only an attempted murderer?
chopper
somehow this story is not at all shocking to me.
SiubhanDuinne
John, you left out the most telling paragraph from that story:
They can’t just kick him out? A fucking attempted murderer?
M. Bouffant
The Knights of Columbus: Objectively fascist. Probably pretty patriarchal too.
SiubhanDuinne
Also, “young philanthropist”?
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: Who also (based on the excerpts here) (apparently) tried to hide his identity under an assumed name?
:-/
This is another example that “80% of life is showing up”. There are lessons for our team, also too. If good people don’t show up, bad people win…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike J
I remember few years ago on this very blog we had a discussion on claw v ball peen hammers for problem solving.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin: …and the pedophile that was Speaker of the House.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: I am team claw.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Did I miss something? Did this loser get convicted, do time? Did his victim recover from 40 claw hammer blows to the head? Has he been on the lam this whole time? Have they started procedures to remove him from his position?
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Don’t worry, the bros will be by right on schedule to tell us that DWS is worse now that her curséd name has come up.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Okay, read the link I somehow missed. I am astounded by the human capacity for vile behavior, especially by wealthy Republicans.
GregP
Remember. A roofing hammer has straighter claws so that they will, when swung vigorously, dig into plywood to prevent a fall.
Team roofing claw.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Affluenza at work:
TS
These are the people who voted for Donald trump – not at all surprising.
? Martin
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Look, he’s a privileged white dude. It was just a misunderstanding. Besides, did you see that hat she was wearing? She was totally asking for it.
rikyrah
Pitiful.
But, this is who they are
?BillinGlendaleCA
@West of the Rockies (been a while): On the last part, they seem to be waiting on him to resign. Anyways, seems he was just An Excitable Boy.
LeonS
Wasn’t Ted Bundy an up and comer in the Republican party?
Lounger
@Frankensteinbeck: I have not seen a better summary of the modern GOP.
? Martin
Tsunami warning issued for southern mexico/central america
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Of course, she headed the “corrupt DNC” that cleared the way for “The Worst Candidate in the History of Mandkind”(aka, crowning the Queen).
Wapiti
@West of the Rockies (been a while): My guess: he was rich and white, so no time, and juvenile records sealed.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
Well, c’mon, she should have had a better story than, I don’t remember what happened because I suffered a massive traumatic brain injury. How is a judge and jury supposed to figure out what happened when it’s he said/she said like that?
SiubhanDuinne
@? Martin:
YIKES!
Mnemosyne
@Wapiti:
I’m also guessing there was a quiet civil settlement between the parents to pay for her medical bills, past and future. That would tend to estrange a son from his parents.
But now I’m worried about the guy’s pregnant wife. I’m assuming he either didn’t tell her about this or told her a very sanitized, self-serving version.
LurkerNoLonger
Holy shit! The future of the Republican Party. Tarsey/Ditsworth 2024. He can be his own running mate.
John Revolta
Damn. If I was the lawyer, I’d argue that somebody who hit someone in the head 40 times with a claw hammer and didn’t kill them must really not have been attempting to murder them at all. Maybe even TRYING NOT to.
Ruckus
Now that’s a privileged fucking asshole.
He’s 6ft fucking 2 and he beat her in the head with a hammer 40 times and got off with a fucking misdemeanor?
That’s some privilege, that rich white fucking privilege.
I mean I know it existed, sure. Of course I know it’s wrong. But it’s this wrong?
I know he’s a republican and of course a drumpf supporter, that’s a given, but I’m flabbergasted that he only got a misdemeanor. They let him fucking walk and she’s in a wheel chair. And that’s in blue CA. Would he have gotten a ticker tape parade in say Alabama?
Mnemosyne
@John Revolta:
Apparently he claimed it was self-defense.
No, I’m not kidding. It’s in the link.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
And they had a serial pedophile as Speaker of the House. They just can’t help themselves when it comes to choosing criminals as leaders. Seriously, fuck these guys.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
I lived on the Westside for 15 years. The fact that someone who got away with attempted murder went to Harvard-Westlake is … not a surprise.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Well, to their credit, they didn’t know that the serial pedophile was such when they elected him. Trump, on the other hand, admitted to it on tape, and they still elected him.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Harvard-Westlake, when Beverly Hills High School is just not good enough.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
So far as we know. I’m not giving them an ounce of credit.
NotMax
OT: Home again, home again, jiggedy freaking jig. 16 hours from walking in the doors at JFK to waling in the door of the abode.
lgerard
You don’t often see people quoted saying that in a newspaper, it made me laugh….even though this is serious
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not all that surprised that he did it, but that he got away with it so fucking easily. His life doesn’t seem to have been altered at all. Her life?
I don’t disgust easily. I’m not surprised all that easily, even, or especially, about evil people.
I am however disgusted with the courts and prosecutors. And fucking republicans.
danielx
From what I’ve read and heard of Florida politics, I can’t see why an attempted murder charge a decade ago would necessarily disqualify one for elected office in Broward County.* Stranger things have happened down there.
However…
Rupert Fucking Ditsworth?
If there was ever a name that positively dripped with money and entitlement, that’s it. It lacks only a III or IV at the end to be perfect. As witnessed by the fact that he was “….rushed into psychiatric treatment by his parents.” Where he was safe from all that legal unpleasantness and indeed convicted of no more than a misdemeanor to which he plead no contest. Clearly favored of the gods and with access to high quality legal talent as well, with excellent connections. Grandfather owned the Dunes? Most excellent damn connections.
It appears Rupert agrees this is no big thing, as he sits in his two million dollar beachfront condo.
Ruckus
How did the guy that alerted the guy know who this asshole was?
Another Scott
Magnitude 8 earthquake of Mexico’s coast – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41197831
Sheesh.
Maybe the Cubs winning really did signal the start of the Apocalypse?
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
The prosecutors were so worried about not ruining his life with a felony conviction that they ignored what he had done to her life. It’s a paradigm case of privilege.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@danielx:
Vegas, possibly Organized Crime connections.
GregB
@Another Scott:
I think the election of the Anti-Christ in November was the true harbinger
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: Everybody knows Bowie was the one holding reality together.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: I was the lone voice in the wilderness that kept warning y’all about this, but you didn’t listen to ol’ Bill.
seaboogie
@Roger Moore: So basically Betsy DeVos rescinding Title IX so those dear, dear boys don’t have their futures ruined based on their “youthful indescretions”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Saturday will the 34th anniversary of me seeing him at The Big A.
ETA: Madness and The Go-Go’s opened for him.
ETA2: Disneyland in the morning/early afternoon and Bowie in the evening.
Roger Moore
@seaboogie:
Exactly.
lgerard
@danielx:
It’s Rupert Tumin Ditsworth
even better
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@NotMax: Welcome home!
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Sure is.
So if you are white and rather wealthy you can quite possibly get away with attempted murder. Good to know if I ever get rich and have an occasion to attempt to beat a girl to death with a hammer. That I was carrying in my back pack for no apparent reason. Now I own a fair number of hammers from decades of working with metal and wood but if I’d have known that I could attempt murder with no significant penalty whatsofuckingever, I’d have worked much harder to be rich so i wouldn’t have missed the opportunity if it ever became necessary. Of course I would also have had to have been a major fucking asshole, a republican, a drumpf supporter, and really just an all around major jack off.
But I repeat myself.
Amir Khalid
I don’t get why the party is just crossing its fingers and hoping he resigns. Have they no procedure in place for removing him? Can’t the party chair have a quiet word in his ear about the good of the local party? Does the membership not want him to go?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: He’s a member of the Knights of Columbus, so he’s good.
gammyjill
Dear god, he even looks like a dick. What a punchable face…
danielx
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That was my thought…attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, lord knows what all else, and he pleads to a misdemeanor? Somebody had some serious juice.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: damn
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
He’s a wealthy white boy, with an attempted murder in his past. He’s their kind of guy. They don’t want to can him, that would be uncouth. If he resigns, there is no real controversy and everybody just gets on with the whatever it is that republican politicians do. Besides they don’t want to ruin his life, it must be worth it, the courts didn’t do anything. Oh and I forgot, for christ’s sake he’s in the knights of columbus! ETA They must be so fucking proud!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@danielx:
or and offer the judge or prosecutor couldn’t refuse. May the head of a horse?
lgerard
@danielx:
This sounds very dubious to me. Is there any evidence to support his story as to what the outcome was?
danielx
Goddammit.
Now I’m going have Maxwell’s Silver Hammer as an earworm while I’m trying to go to sleep.
Amir Khalid
By the way, who or what are the Knights of Columbus?
Mary G
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I saw Bowie at the Santa Monica Civic really early in the 70s, before my date had ever heard of him. It was a New Year’s Eve show and I had to refuse to leave because he freaked out in the parking lot about what the other concertgoers were wearing. He ended up loving the music, though.
danielx
@lgerard:
About ten different articles, but his exact quote in the Miami Herald was:
“In the end, I pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor,” Tarsey said. “It’s not the charges that matter, it’s what happens in court.”
Self entitled little monster, isn’t he? From another source:
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/jose-lambiet/article171549182.html#storylink=cpy
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
If what Rupert Ditsworth did was so embarrassing to his family that they made him change his name, I don’t imagine he gets much moral support from them now, or any benefit from their influence.
danielx
@Amir Khalid:
The Catholic Rotary Club, which covers a multitude of sins.
Mary G
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Only a Republican with serious affluenza and sociopathy could still be refusing to quit a party position and not even apologize for hitting a woman in the head 40 times with a hammer with a claim of self-defense. I smell a YOOGE civil settlement for a lot more than just medical bills to get the victim to go along.
@Amir Khalid: Catholic adult fraternity, most really rich guys. Alleged to be for charitable purposes, but mostly drinking. telling racist/sexist jokes in comfort (overheard that, no personal knowledge) and networking AKA bragging about how much money they have. Lots of bishops and cardinals.
ETA: Wiki via Google
frosty
@Amir Khalid:
He probably owns another hammer, hmmm?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Amir Khalid:
http://www.kofc.org/un/en/todays-knights/what-we-do.html
M. Bouffant
@Amir Khalid: Friends of the Fasces.
Villago Delenda Est
@sukabi:
— Sideshow Bob
lgerard
@danielx:
This is all based on his statements, not on court records.
I suspect he spent a considerable time, like 3 years in the mental hospital after he was charged
He then plead guilty to a felony afterwards, but only received an extended period of probation due to the time he spent locked up in the hospital
The period of probation expired recently, and that is why he has come out of the shadows
He hopefully committed voter fraud, and will give Kris Kobach someone to investigate
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: they sound nice
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: Yes, but I got to go to Disneyland before the show.
lgerard
@Amir Khalid:
Evidently his mother divorced Ditsworth and he took his mother’s maiden name when she reverted to it
He is a mamma’s boy
scav
Born to be a Trump supporter, over and above mere team R. It’s not just pusies one can grab but heads one can hammer if one is a rich and white male (someone whose future is important enough to matter and not be imperiled). Why should shooting somebody in the street or beating them there matter at all to their right-minded supporters? Even to bring such incidents up is mere politics and a distraction from more important matters. Clearly the Broward County GOP has picked up a bad case of political correctness if not outright socialism and needs to be drained.
Mary G
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: “Ultrasound Initiative” jumped out at me from your post, and it’s as disgusting as I thought:
Nothing says cheapskate rich Republicans like “we’ll pay half, if you pay half.” That’s a commitment to life, all right.
While I was looking at their website, the biggest controversy was the change in the 4th degree uniform, which was controversial. Evidently the younger members refuse to wear it. I couldn’t find a picture, but I’m imagining something out of Gilbert & Sullivan. The new one is basically a dark suit that regularly costs $510, but is on sale for $382.50. You must be measured by a professional tailor before ordering, and you may still wear an ornamental sword with it if you wear gloves. Good grief.
seaboogie
Your modern (and probably always) GOP:
Munny.
Assload of munny.
Egregious act that would shock anyone, and a possible innocent ruined for life
Welp – this happens, sometimes – we shouldn’t ruin his future.
He should probably run for office – from the sanitorium – it’s like crafts, for the wealthy.
Yeah – he’s more whack than we thought.
Hope he quits – fingers crossed – what else can we do?
seaboogie
Your modern (and probably always) GOP:
Munny.
Assload of munny.
Egregious act that would shock anyone, and a possible innocent ruined for life
Welp – this happens, sometimes – we shouldn’t ruin his future.
He should probably run for office – from the sanitorium – it’s like crafts, for the wealthy.
Yeah – he’s more whack than we thought.
Hope he quits – fingers crossed – what else can we do?
Thank GOD we don’t have a black president anymore!
Mary G
@Mary G:
Heh.
? Martin
@Mary G: And people act as though cosplay is a modern notion.
mai naem mobile
Rupert’s wife’s name is Beata. Spelled like that Beata. You couldn’t make this shit up.
Jay S
Here is a contemporaneous report of the charges .
Jay S
@seaboogie: “At least we don’t have Hillary” /sarcasm
Sab
My late father in law considered joining the Knights of Columbus after converting to Catholicism to marry his wife. Part of the initiation/hazing process was staging a fake murder that everyone was sworn to secrecy to cover up. He was a tough guy but this shocked him enough that he didn’t join. A religious allegedly philanthropic organization with a fake murder cover up as part of its initiation rites. Weird. And Alito went along with that and is now on the Supreme Court.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Sab: That’s messed up. The only way I could see that being anyway OK is if you refused that messed up idea, you passed the rite.
bjacques
Sometime in the 1980s, the Harris County Democratic Party elected as chairman one Claude Jones, whose name was, er, easier on the ear that that of his rival. Jones turned out to be an avid Lyndon LaRouche supporter, but they couldn’t get rid of him. Instead they reorganized the executive structure to effectively strip him of his power.
I’m guessing the Catholic Church realized they couldn’t ignore that secular fraternal organizations were the bread and butter of American working class and petit-bourgeois men’s life, all the way back to the Loyal Order Of Water Buffaloes in prehistoric times, so decided to go with the flow. It’s unfair to call them fascist for using the fasces that was a common symbol in the US, until 1945 anyway, but damn, that kind of hazing would really do a number on anyone who had been in a war zone.
Anyway, they’re stuck with Patrick Bateman for awhile.
Sab
@bjacques: Actually, he had been in a war zone. South Pacific in WWII.
And although he didn’t become a Knight of Columbus, he did remain a devout Catholic for the rest of his life.
Sab
@Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]: I agree with you but that’s not how it worked.
Ksmiami
@? Martin: All I can say is FFS 2017- Worst year ever
Just One More Canuck
@Mary G: you mean this:
https://www.kofcsupplies.com/index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodshow&ref=1492&sid=2792h2w76102hv5qa0p0wx3k8b2d6y2f
bemused
@Sab:
That’s incredibly bizarre and creepy.
NorthLeft12
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: In my former days as a Roman Catholic I was invited to join the Knights. Their stance [the same as the Church] on SSM and abortion made my decision relatively easy. It was tougher to quit the church all together….because…….history.
J.
Bang bang Rupert’s claw hammer came down upon her head,
Bang bang Rupert’s claw hammer made sure she was almost dead.
Citizen_X
@bjacques:
Heh.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rupert Ditsworth would make a great name for a Roderick Spode/Lord Sidcup acolyte.
opiejeanne
@bjacques: My understanding is that the K of C was formed because of the oath that the Masons use that declares no man between us and God, i.e., no priests above us. The Catholics found that disturbing so they formed their own club. I have heard of Masons who are Catholics but they are rare.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Probably already answered, the KoC is a fraternal order for Catholic men, probably mostly Italian to begin with (Columbus, right>? haha) but now less exclusive perhaps. Like the Ancient and Free Masons, which Catholics are forbidden to join as the Masons worship science and knowledge, or did once. Much folderol going on at both groups. Masons are split into many substrands. KoC are still intact, raise lots of money for their church.
J R in WV
@bjacques:
And what exactly do you have against the Water Buffaloes? They work hard, they donate that work to the community, they almost never cause any trouble, and they don’t have any sketchey belief systems about other buffaloes OR human beings.
workworkwork
My dad was a member of the KoC. In his defense, we lived in a small town and he was one of the few folks who didn’t work for Huge Chemical Co. I think he did it for the networking.
As far as I know, he wasn’t a member when I was a kid. But I found the sword and he explained it was a KoC thing but he didn’t say much more about it.