The BBC has confirmed the start date for the second series of The Night Manager, as a new trailer has been released for the upcoming series.
After nearly ten years of anticipation, BBC viewers were delighted to discover that a fresh instalment of The Night Manager was being developed.
In 2016, the gripping thriller proved hugely successful as it chronicled former soldier Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) working as a hotel night manager who becomes enlisted by British intelligence operative Angela Burr (Olivia Coleman).
The eagerly-awaited second instalment will resume years following the dramatic conclusion, with audiences witnessing Jonathan as a junior MI6 operative managing a discreet surveillance team in London dubbed ‘The Night Owls’.
This week, the BBC unveiled a thrilling trailer for the upcoming series, confirming it will broadcast on January 1.
The preview reveals Jonathan in his fresh position, whilst a narrator directs him to ‘watch, listen and report’. Yet the voice then sternly warns: “You do not hunt down.”
Cutting to Colombia, the MI6 operative must investigate Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), suspected of trafficking weapons into the nation with British Intelligence assistance, reports the Express.
Adopting a fresh identity, Jonathan becomes deeply entangled in a deadly conspiracy. Betrayal appears imminent as he challenges Agent Burr, declaring she ‘lied’ to him, prompting her reply: “I had no choice!”
A montage of rapid-fire sequences follows, featuring heart-stopping pursuit scenes and Jonathan fleeing through a structure as explosions erupt around him.
In a chilling moment, Jonathan is seen being restrained by Teddy as he questions, ‘Who are you, Matthew?Why are you really here?” While a woman’s voice accuses him of ‘playing her’.
The trailer, shared on social media, sparked an immediate reaction from fans, with many expressing their excitement for the show’s return. One fan exclaimed: “Wow wow wow wow.” Another chimed in: “FINALLY!!!!”
Speaking about the series, Tom Hiddleston told the BBC: “The first series of The Night Manager was one of the most creatively fulfilling projects I have ever worked on. “”The depth, range and complexity of Jonathan Pine was, and remains, a thrilling prospect.
I’m so looking forward to reuniting with Simon and Stephen Cornwell, David Farr and Stephen Garrett, and to working with Georgi Banks-Davies to tell the next chapter of our story. I can’t wait.”
The BBC has also confirmed that The Night Manager will be returning for another series following this upcoming one.
Tune into the new series of The Night Manager from 1 January on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and from 11 January on Prime Video where available.
Coronation Street fans are desperate for Carl Webster to face his downfall for his recent villainous ways, including a sickening twist with his sister Debbie Webster
Coronation Street fans are desperate for Carl Webster to face his downfall for his recent villainous ways(Image: ITV)
Fans of Coronation Street think a downfall is set for villain Carl Webster, as he sunk to new lows this week.
The brother of Kevin and Debbie Webster has been up to all sorts, from dodgy car stealing schemes and fake MOTs, as well as his affair with sister-in-law Abi Franklin. With Carl also having a secret romance with James Bailey behind Abi’s back, and him also being behind the hit-and-run that injured Tyrone Dobbs, fans are eager to see him punished.
But his latest dark behaviour could be his cruelest decision yet, and it’s left sickened fans wanting him gone. Carl has been getting closer to his sister Debbie, and clearly wants access to her business accounts at the hotel.
Amid Debbie’s dementia diagnosis and her becoming forgetful, vile scenes have shown Carl tricking her and trying to get her out of the way. Wanting access to the accounts no doubt for the money, fans fear he will end up fleecing his own sister.
This and the fact he’s cruelly using her diagnosis against her at a time where she’s vulnerable, has left fans horrified. Many have called it the final straw and are hoping he gets found out soon.
The ongoing storyline has sparked speculation that it will lead to a big comeuppance for Carl, perhaps at Christmas or beyond. Fans are now trying to figure out who will expose Carl and who will bring him down.
As Kevin and Abi were named as potential suspects behind his downfall, other fans wondered if Debbie or her partner Ronnie Bailey, or even fling James, will stop him for once and for all. Taking to social media, one fan said: “Cant stand him. Someone has to catch him.”
Another viewer said: “Is he going to get caught out for EVERYTHING at Christmas? Tyrone, Debbie, Abi, James, they’ll all want a piece of him!”
A third fan wrote: “Debbie must have accountants checking the hotel books. Surely there will be investigations if things don’t add up. What about the other hotel staff too? They would notice dodgy goings on.”
Another fan said: “I think Debbie has her suspicions about him wanting access to the hotel’s finances. She should give him limited access and give the same access to Ronnie so he can keep an eye out for anything dodgy. Then when she confronts Carl, with Ronnie backing her, he can’t claim she’s confused because of her dementia.”
Emmerdale actress Katie Hill, who plays Sarah Sugden on the ITV soap, has hinted her character may not forgive her grandmother Charity Dingle’s betrayal amid a baby twist
19:30, 24 Sep 2025Updated 19:34, 24 Sep 2025
One Emmerdale star has teased a family could face heartache(Image: ITV)
One Emmerdale star has teased a family could face heartache if a sad betrayal is to come to light.
Katie Hill, who plays Sarah Sugden on the ITV soap, hinted that regardless of the outcome of her character’s surrogacy storyline, a family could be torn apart. Viewers know that Sarah learned the distressing news earlier this year that she could not carry a child.
After treatment following a cancer diagnosis, a complication meant that Sarah could not have a successful pregnancy. Her grandmother Charity Dingle then offered to be a surrogate for Sarah and her partner Jacob Gallagher, offering to carry their child.
Charity underwent an embryo transfer, but after suffering from bleeding she was left fearing it had been unsuccessful and she ended up drowning her sorrows. This led to her cheating on her husband Mack Boyd with her ex flame Ross Barton.
When Charity found out she was pregnant, she had no idea if she was carrying Sarah’s baby or her own with Ross. Ross has demanded a DNA test, while Charity has not told Sarah that the child may not be her own.
Speaking exclusively to The Mirror, actress Katie confessed she is unsure how Sarah would react if the truth ever came out. With it yet to be confirmed if the baby is Sarah’s or not, either way it will leave Sarah feeling betrayed due to the lies amid what is such a “massive” thing for her.
Katie hinted Sarah might not be able to forgive Charity after everything that she has been through. Asked if she could move past it, she told us: “I don’t know, it is a massive thing. She is so set on having her own baby, it’s all she has gone on about.
“I think it could be a big moment for Charity and Sarah if she ever found out. We’ll have to wait and see cos I don’t know how she would react. I can’t say anything, but it is big stuff and fans should keep watching.”
Spoilers have revealed that Charity struggles to keep her secret in upcoming scenes, especially as Ross keeps pushing her about whether he is the father or not. Charity sparks suspicion with her husband Mack who notices she seems uneasy.
As Charity continues to hide the truth from her loved ones, how long will it be before someone finds out? At some point she will find out whether the baby is her child or Sarah’s, but whether she tells anyone remains to be seen.
Behind the facade of order and cunning that the terror group Boko Haram, and its splinter group ISWAP, flaunt to the outside world, lies a dysfunctional core corroded by greed, paranoia, extortion, tribalism, fear, and treachery.
In their enclaves, in North East Nigeria and in the wider Lake Chad region, women often bear the heaviest scars, being subjected to systemic rape and violence, which leaders dismiss as spoils of war.
Commanders fall not only in clashes with soldiers or vigilantes but also under the bullets of comrades, who once swore to fight the same cause.
Feuds over leadership and resources, suspicion of working as spies, or simple ambition have sparked deadly purges that have claimed more fighters than external battles with their enemies have done. In the end, the insurgents are caught in a paradox of their own making – they wage war against the state but are slowly devouring themselves from within.
Mamman Nur
At the height of his influence, Mamman Nur was revered as one of the most learned clerics in the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). He was a charismatic leader whose voice once carried weight in the ideological debates that shaped the insurgency across the Lake Chad basin. But by the time of his death, Nur was not remembered for theology, nor for his role as a strategist. He was remembered for his bodily infirmity — broken, bleeding, and betrayed.
Nur suffered from severe haemorrhoids. The condition left him in constant agony, blood dripping from his anus. In the unforgiving world of insurgent camps, where strength and divine aura were as important as loyalty, Nur’s ailment became both a weakness and a curse.
Fighters whispered that he had grown frail. Leaders suspected that his mind, like his body, was giving way. His decision to secretly accept ₦2 million from a negotiating team in the hope of finding treatment sealed his fate.
Nur’s health troubles coincided with shifting politics within ISWAP. The late Abu Musab al-Barnawi – favoured not for superior scholarship but for lineage as the son of slain Boko Haram founder Muhammad Yusuf – emerged as the face of the group. He was the conduit to the Islamic State core in Syria and Iraq. More importantly, he was also a Kanuri; Nur was not.
Nur, once seen as indispensable, was now considered expendable. Worse still, he was branded a tattler and a man too open to the prospect of peace. For many insurgents, this is a sign of weakness, not strength.
Prison of iron and cement
HumAngle gathered that ISWAP runs two categories of prisons in its Lake Chad strongholds, with the most notorious controlled by the group’s feared security arm, the Rijjalul Amni. Reserved for those convicted of major crimes—such as unauthorised possession or trading of firearms, contact with government institutions, adultery, or mutiny—the prison is a fortress of steel pillars and barbed wire, much of it stripped from telecom masts. The prison, open-roofed and welded into sections, is where ISWAP’s intelligence chiefs carry out torture, punishments, and executions. Lesser offences like marital disputes, loan default, or pornography cases are handled by the Maktabal Kazawul Mazalib, a community-level court, and do not lead to confinement.
Conditions inside the Rijjalul Amni prison are brutal, likened by one former member to a Hitler-era concentration camp. Prisoners are tortured, underfed, and often left with food that causes deadly illness. Lice infestations are routine, and survival rates are grim—about 70 per cent never make it out alive or healthy. The prison is designed not just to punish but to instil fear, ensuring strict obedience within ISWAP ranks and the communities under its control.
When Nur was accused of betrayal, he was locked inside one of those brutal prisons. His cell had no tarpaulin to shield him against the choking heat or torrential rains. The prisons serve not as holding spaces but as purgatories intended to dehumanise inmates.
One night, in 2018, Nur attempted to flee. Fighters had anticipated the move and ensured that all boats were removed from the shores before dawn. Desperate, he waded into the shallow waters of Lake Chad. By the time guards discovered his absence during morning prayers, he had barely made it 200 metres from the camp.
A fighter later recalled spotting him, neck-deep in water, his head bobbing as he begged for rescue. He was dragged back, and his punishment was obvious.
In the law of the insurgency, attempting escape is treason. And Mamman Nur was executed some days after.
The same type of iron-barred cells held two former fighters who defected from the group and are now living in Maiduguri. They described the conditions as dehumanising. Swarms of mosquitoes and other dangerous creatures from the Lake Chad creeks made the nights unbearable, and once, a snake slithered into the enclosure and bit an inmate to death.
“When it rains, you’ll have to stand with your feet under muddy water,” said a former ISWAP prisoner. water,” the prisons remain flooded for weeks, leaving inmates inside.
“I witnessed a cellmate die from his injury,” one said. “We were then ordered to bury him without proper Islamic rites, simply because he was suspected of spying.”
A state built on fear
Photo of the desk of the head of ISWAP’s media unit, Baban Hassan, in 2017. He was later killed in a military airstrike/HumAngle.
His fate was not unique. Since Nur’s death, thousands have attempted escape, and hundreds have been captured and executed. Punishments within the so-called caliphate rarely followed the dictates of Shariah law. They followed paranoia, envy, and impulse.
Unauthorised possession of a mobile phone or listening to a transistor radio could result in the death penalty. Fighters accused of theft were mutilated.
HumAngle reviewed dozens of videos showing men’s hands chopped off. A man was executed for raping a woman who had travelled from Lagos to live and marry within the daulah(the territory controlled by Boko Haram/ISWAP in Lake Chad). Others were executed on allegations of homosexuality or even bestiality.
But executions were not always about morality. They were also tools of control.
A fighter told HumAngle how his shop was raided on orders of the leadership. Over ₦40 million in cash, earned from years of selling stolen and smuggled petrol in territories under insurgents’ control, was discovered. Half was seized instantly. He was accused of theft for possessing so much. Repeatedly extorted, he eventually fled and now lives in a Nigerian city, far from both insurgents and the government’s deradicalisation programme.
A group of six fishermen loyal to Bakura, who led a Boko Haram sub-faction, lost over ₦10 million after venturing into a remote part of Lake Chad, where they caught a large haul of fish.
They successfully transported the fish through Cameroon to Jimeta, Adamawa State. However, when the proceeds were delivered to them through a trusted courier, some fighters stormed their tent in the dead of night and seized both the money and their boat. They were accused of unauthorised fishing. Angered by the betrayal, the fishermen decided to defect.
Another defector currently living in Maiduguri said he left after ISWAP fighters confiscated his livestock. “I had cows and sheep, which I reared for over two years and was even willing to pay taxes on, but some fighters came and took everything from me,” he said.
Inequality behind the black flag
The insurgency drew young men from across Nigeria and the Sahel, lured by promises of equality under God and the dream of a just Islamic State. Instead, they encountered a microcosm of Nigeria’s worst ills – ethnic jingoism, class disparity, and systemic corruption.
Leadership remained tightly in the hands of the Kanuri elite. Non-Kanuri fighters – Buduma, Hausa, Margi, Babur, and Fulani – were relegated to cannon fodder.
Buduma members, renowned for their expertise in Lake Chad waterways, expressed dissatisfaction over their exploitation and lack of leadership positions. Hausa and Margi fighters were routinely sent on suicide missions. Fulani recruits often defected, unable to endure the cultural and political hierarchies.
Even among the Kanuri, deep fractures existed. A caste-like system tied to dialect and ancestry meant that some Kanuris could not marry others, lead prayers, or rise in command. Fighters soon realised the hypocrisy – they had abandoned their homes, families, and futures for a caliphate that replicated the same inequalities they thought they had escaped.
Raising issues of Sharia application
In Maiduguri’s Shehu South Ward, Mustapha Abubakar, a man in his mid-fifties, reflected on how far the insurgents had strayed from the true path of Sharia.
“Their interpretation of jihaad and the application of Sharia is quite contrary to those of general Islamic scholars,” he explained. “Islam requires three conditions before jihad can be carried out: a sovereign state, a unanimously accepted Imam, and an official flag. Boko Haram and ISWAP have none of these.”
Abubakar stressed that criminal justice in Sharia is the preserve of constituted authorities – leaders such as a Khalifa, a Qadi, or an Alkali – not freelance militants.
He cited the Prophet’s saying: “Whoever sees a bad thing, let him change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot, then let him hate it in his heart – and that is the weakest of faith.” To him, the saying makes it clear that only legitimate authorities may “change things with their hands,” not insurgent commanders.
He outlined the distinctions between civil (mu‘aamalaat) and criminal (hadd and tahziir) justice and the narrow grounds for capital punishment in Islam – deliberate murder, adultery by a married person, and voluntary renunciation of faith.
Listening to the radio or making a phone call, he said, could never warrant death, but at most, a judge might order light tahziir punishments, such as caning if the content was indecent. Likewise, Sharia prescribes lashes for alcohol and drug consumption and severe penalties for trafficking in substances that spread crime and “mischief in the land.”
Even running away from a state that claims Sharia, Abubakar clarified, depended on legitimacy.
“If it is an insurgent-controlled territory where Sharia is misinterpreted, fleeing is no crime. But in a true Islamic State, refusal to pay zakat or denial of its legitimacy, for instance, can be treated as disbelief and punished with confiscation of wealth, or worse,” Abubakar said.
He said the gulf between Sharia as understood by scholars and communities and its distortion under Boko Haram and ISWAP is stark.
Where insurgents mete out execution for radios, phones, or suspected defections, Islamic jurisprudence stresses due process, legitimate authority, and a tightly limited scope of capital punishment, Abubakar stressed.
The splintering and the question of survival
The Kanuri-first culture has fueled defections and splinters within the insurgency. Some non-Kanuri fighters have formed factions like Bughata. Others have drifted westward to terrorist bands in Nigeria’s North West, where profit, not ethnicity, dictates loyalty.
Defections are not just driven by hunger or military pressure. Former fighters confess that more than half who abandoned the insurgency did so because of betrayal, discrimination, or extortion within the group. Hunger ranks second, and military pressure is third.
Mamman Nur’s story is less about illness or treason and more about the fragility of the insurgency itself, which became an enterprise sustained by fear, suspicion, and a culture of unrelenting violence. His fate mirrors that of other former terror merchants, whose trust in one another has been severed.
Emmerdale’s Robert Sugden featured in a huge twist with new villain Ray on the ITV soap on Tuesday night, and it won’t end well for Mackenzie Boyd or Ross Barton
20:00, 01 Jul 2025Updated 20:08, 01 Jul 2025
Emmerdale’s new villain Ray made his debut leading to a twist(Image: ITV)
There was a dangerous new alliance on Emmerdale on Tuesday night, as new villain Ray made his debut – and it’s bad luck for Ross Barton.
As the character arrived claiming to be an acquaintance of Mackenzie Boyd, he suggested he was selling farm machinery and wanted to see if he was interested. But soon his real agenda became clear when he was shown the weed crops that were stashed in the barn.
Ross, his brother Lewis Barton, who owns the cannabis and has been harvesting it for a while, and Mack were secretly hiding the crops there with a plan to sell it for money. With Moira Dingle’s farm facing closure and the family in crisis, Mack blamed himself for his sister’s situation and wanted to raise the funds.
But he left Ross and Lewis furious when he secretly told Ray about the crops and took him to see them. Lewis refused to sell to him, with it soon clear Ray was a dealer.
As the end of the episode approached though, the crops vanished and one person was thought to be to blame. Ross accused Mack, believing he’d stolen them and sold them onto Ray like he’d initially suggested.
There was a dangerous new alliance on Emmerdale on Tuesday night(Image: ITV)
But Mack protested his innocence and insisted he had nothing to do with it. Ross didn’t believe him, with Mack saying he planned to take it but had cold feet.
He told Ross to call Ray from his phone knowing he’d prove he was innocent, before he then showed him messages that showed he was not in contact with the dealer all day. They both then feared Lewis had actually fled to Leeds with the crops to sell them on.
But when Lewis returned home Ross asked him about it, and he had no idea what he was talking about. Ross then had to explain the weed was gone, leaving his sibling horrified.
As Lewis questioned whether Mack was to blame wanting answers, Ross shared his determination to track down the real culprit. But soon enough the camera panned to Ray who was asking someone about selling drugs, and soon we saw the stolen crops in the back of a van.
Emmerdale’s Robert Sugden featured in a huge twist with new villain Ray(Image: ITV)
It was none other than Robert Sugden who then stepped forward and was confirmed to be the person who stole the drugs and then sold them for a huge amount to Ray without telling Lewis, Mack or Ross. He’d come across the weed while working on the farm, before selling them on for the cash.
He told Ray there would be no other dealings, most likely because Lewis now had nothing left. Then he made it clear he planned to “cause mayhem” wanting to use the money to do so, so what does he have up his sleeve?
Either way, it’s bad news for Ross as his relationship with Lewis is now at risk because of the whole drama, and him getting Mack involved – leading to Ray and Robert being able to steal everything. Ross is also set to face drama when he confronts Robert about the theft, with Robert threatening to ditch his deal with Moira as a result – so will Ross bring more trouble to Moira’s door?
The railroad tunnel in which John Doe #135 was found had spooky graffiti and a dark mystique, the kind of place kids dared each other to walk through at night. People called it the Manson Tunnel — the cult leader and his disciples had lived nearby at the Spahn Movie Ranch — and someone had spray-painted HOLY TERROR over the entrance.
By June 1990, occult-inspired mayhem had become a common theme in the Los Angeles mediasphere. The serial killer known as the Night Stalker, a professed Satanist, had been sentenced to death a year before, and the McMartin Preschool molestation case, with its wild claims of ritual abuse of children, was still slogging through the courts.
So when venturesome local teenagers discovered a young man’s body in the pitch-black tunnel above Chatsworth Park, the LAPD considered the possibility of occult motives. The victim was soon identified as Ronald Baker, a 21-year-old UCLA student majoring in astrophysics. He had been killed on June 21, a day considered holy by occultists, at a site where they were known to congregate.
Ronald Baker in an undated photo.
(Courtesy of Patty Elliott)
Baker was skinny and physically unimposing, with a mop of curly blond hair. He had been to the tunnel before, and was known to meditate in the area. He had 18 stab wounds, and his throat had been slashed. On his necklace: a pentagram pendant. In the bedroom of his Van Nuys apartment: witchcraft books, a pentagram-decorated candle and a flier for Mystic’s Circle, a group devoted to “shamanism” and “magick.”
Headline writers leaned into the angle. “Student killed on solstice may have been sacrificed,” read the Daily News. “Slain man frequently visited site of occultists,” declared The Times.
Baker, detectives learned, had been a sweet-tempered practitioner of Wicca, a form of nature worship that shunned violence. He was shy, introverted and “adamantly against Satanism,” a friend said. But as one detective speculated to reporters, “We don’t know if at some point he graduated from the light to the dark side of that.”
Investigators examine the scene where Ronald Baker’s body was found.
(Los Angeles Police Department )
People said he had no enemies. He loved “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” singalongs, and worked a candle-making booth at Renaissance faires. He had written his sister a birthday card in Elizabethan English.
Had he gone into the hills to meditate and stumbled across practitioners of more malignant magic? He was known as a light drinker, but toxicology results showed he was heavily drunk when he died.
In this series, Christopher Goffard revisits old crimes in Los Angeles and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the memories of those who were there.
Had someone he trusted lured him to the tunnel? How was his death connected to the raspy-voiced man who placed calls to Baker’s father around that time, demanding a $100,000 ransom in exchange for his son’s life?
U.S. Army photo of Nathan Blalock.
(U.S. Army)
Baker’s housemates, Duncan Martinez and Nathan Blalock, both military veterans in their early 20s, had been the last known people to see him alive, and served as each other’s alibis. They said they had dropped him off at a Van Nuys bus stop, and that he had planned to join his Mystic’s Circle friends for the solstice.
There had been no sign of animosity between the roommates, and Baker considered Martinez, an ex-Marine, one of his best friends. They had met working at Sears, years earlier.
Martinez helped to carry Baker’s casket and spoke movingly at his memorial service at Woodland Hills United Methodist Church. His friend was “never real physically strong, like a lot of the guys I know,” Martinez said, but was the “friendliest, sweetest guy.”
His voice filled with emotion. “He would talk to anybody and be there for anybody at the drop of a dime,” Martinez continued. “And I just hope that it’s something I can get over, because I love him. It’s just hard to think of a time without Ron.”
But something about the roommates’ story strained logic. When Baker’s father had alerted them to the ransom calls, the roommates said they had looked for him at Chatsworth Park, knowing it was one of Baker’s favorite haunts. Why would they assume a kidnapper had taken him there?
Duncan Martinez in an LAPD interview room.
(Los Angeles Police Department)
There was another troubling detail: Martinez had cashed a $109 check he said Baker had given him, but a handwriting expert determined that Baker’s signature was forged.
Martinez agreed to a polygraph test, described his friend’s murder as “a pretty unsensible crime” and insisted he had nothing to do with it. “I’ve never known anybody to carry a grudge or even dislike Ron for more than a minute, you know,” Martinez said.
The test showed deception, and he fled the state. He was gone for nearly 18 months.
He turned up in Utah, where he was arrested on a warrant for lying on a passport application. He had been hoping to reinvent himself as “Jonathan Wayne Miller,” an identity he had stolen from a toddler who died after accidentally drinking Drano in 1974, said LAPD Det. Rick Jackson, now retired. Jackson said Martinez sliced the child’s death certificate out of a Massachusetts state archive, hoping to disguise his fraud.
In February 1992, after being assured his statement could not be used against him, Martinez finally talked. He said it had been Blalock’s idea. They had been watching an old episode of “Dragnet” about a botched kidnapping. Martinez was an ex-Marine, and Blalock was ex-Army. With their military know-how, they believed they could do a better job.
They lured Baker to the park with a case of beer and the promise of meeting girls, and Blalock stabbed him with a Marine Corps Ka-Bar knife Martinez had lent him. Baker begged Martinez for help, and Martinez responded by telling his knife-wielding friend to finish the job.
“I told him to make sure that it was over, because I didn’t want Ron to suffer,” Martinez said. “I believe Nathan slit his throat a couple of times.” He admitted to disguising his voice while making ransom calls to Baker’s father.
But he never provided a location to deliver the ransom money. The scheme seemed as harebrained as it was cruel, and Martinez offered little to lend clarity. He sounded as clueless as anyone else, or pretended to be. “You know, it doesn’t completely click with me either,” he said.
“They ruined their lives, and all of the families’ lives, with the stupidest crime,” Patty Baker Elliott, the victim’s elder sister, told The Times in a recent interview.
Ronald and Patty Baker at her college graduation in the 1980s.
(Courtesy of Baker family)
In the end, the occult trappings were a red herring, apparently intended to throw police off the scent of the real culprits and the real motive.
The killers “set this thing up for the summer solstice, because they knew he wanted to be out, hopefully celebrating the solstice,” Jackson said in a recent interview. “What are the chances, of all the days, this is the one they choose to do it on?”
Jackson, one of the two chief detectives on the case, recounts the investigation in his book “Black Tunnel White Magic: A Murder, a Detective’s Obsession, and ‘90s Los Angeles at the Brink,” which he wrote with author and journalist Matthew McGough.
Blalock was charged with murder. To the frustration of detectives, who believed him equally guilty, Martinez remained free. His statements, given under a grant of immunity, could not be used against him.
Det. Rick Jackson in the LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division squad room.
(Los Angeles Police Department )
“I almost blame Duncan more, because he was in the position, as Ron’s best friend, to stop this whole thing and say, ‘Wait a minute, Nathan, what the hell are we talking about here?’” Jackson said. “He didn’t, and he let it go through, and what happened, happened.”
Martinez might have escaped justice, but he blundered. Arrested for burglarizing a Utah sporting goods store, he claimed a man had coerced him into stealing a mountain bike by threatening to expose his role in the California murder.
As a Salt Lake City detective recorded him, Martinez put himself at the scene of his roommate’s death while downplaying his guilt — an admission made with no promise of immunity, and therefore enough to charge him.
“That’s the first time we could legally put him in the tunnel,” Jackson said.
Jurors found both men guilty of first-degree murder, and they were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
In June 2020, Baker’s sister was startled to come across a news site reporting that Gov. Gavin Newsom had intervened to commute Martinez’s sentence, making him eligible for parole. No one had told her. The governor’s office said at the time that Martinez had “committed himself to self-improvement” during his quarter-century in prison.
The news was no less a shock to Jackson, who thought the language of the commutation minimized Martinez’s role in concocting the kidnapping plan that led to the murder. He said he regarded Martinez as a “pathological liar,” and one of the most manipulative people he’d met in his long career.
Martinez had not only failed to help Baker, but had urged Blalock to “finish him off” and then posed as a consoling friend to the grieving family. The victim’s sister remembers how skillfully Martinez counterfeited compassion.
“He hugged everybody and talked to everybody at the service,” she said. “He cried. He got choked up and cried during his eulogy.”
A prosecutor intended to argue against Martinez’s release at the parole hearing, but then-newly elected L.A. Dist. Atty. George Gascon instituted a policy forbidding his office from sending advocates. The victim’s sister spoke of her loss. Jackson spoke of Martinez’s gift for deception.
“It was like spitting into the wind,” Jackson said.
The parole board sided with Martinez, and he left prison in April 2021. Blalock remains behind bars.
Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough, authors of “Black Tunnel White Magic.”
(JJ Geiger)
For 35 years now, the retired detective has been reflecting on the case, and the senselessness at its core. Jackson came to think of it as a “folie à deux” murder, a term that means “madness of two” and refers to criminal duos whose members probably would not have done it solo. He regarded it as “my blue-collar Leopold and Loeb case,” comparing it to the wealthy Chicago teenagers who murdered a boy in 1924 with the motive of committing the perfect crime.
An old cop show about a kidnapping had provoked the two young vets to start bouncing ideas off each other, until a plan took shape to try it themselves. They weighed possible targets. The student they shared an apartment with, the Wiccan pacifist without enemies, somehow seemed a convenient one.
“You have to understand their personalities, especially together,” Jackson said. “It’s kind of like, ‘I’m gonna one-up you, and make it even better.’ One of them would say, ‘Yeah, we could do this instead.’ And, ‘Yeah, that sounds cool, but I think we should do this, too.’”
London, United Kingdom — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has proudly described a new deal with the European Union spanning defence, security, and trade as a “win-win” pact that puts the nation “back on the world stage”.
But nine years after Britain narrowly voted in favour of leaving the EU, the deal announced on May 19 has prompted a sigh of relief for some and stinging criticism from others, underscoring just how divisive the legacy of Brexit remains in the country.
While many sections of British society have welcomed the agreement, Richard Tice, an MP for the anti-immigration party Reform UK, responded to the deal with a single-word post on social media: “Betrayal.”
The deal offers concessions on European visas for British citizens, shorter queues at European airports, and possibly cheaper food in the UK. But on the flip side, the UK has agreed to allow European fishing fleets access to British waters for an extra 12 years.
Shoppers buy food in a supermarket in London on August 17, 2022. PM Starmer has said he expects food prices to come down as a result of the deal with the EU [File: Frank Augstein/AP Photo]
‘Best news in nine years’
Phil Rusted, who runs a firm called Practical Plants in Suffolk that imports plants from Europe, is among those who are delighted.
“My instinct is it is the best news we have got in nine years,” he said. “It almost gets us back to where were before Brexit. It helps me to take on more staff, to develop my business. The last few years have been very unpredictable; I will be more assured about what my costs are going to be.”
The business sector, more broadly, has also largely responded positively to the agreement.
“In a world where higher US tariffs are threatening to throw globalisation into reverse, trade deals, even if relatively minor, are generally good news,” said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec Bank. “The obvious gainer is the food sector, which will benefit from a reduction in checks at the EU border, which could make a material difference to exporters’ and importers’ costs.”
The Federation of Small Businesses, a group that represents small- and medium-sized firms in the UK, described the EU deal as “genuine progress”, crediting it for “untangling the rules for small exporters of plant and animal products”.
“For too long, small businesses have shouldered the burden of unpredictable customs rules and red tape that sap confidence and ambition,” it said.
And popular opinion in the UK appears to be behind the agreement. Polling by YouGov shows that 66 percent want to have a closer relationship with the EU, compared with just 14 percent who do not.
To be sure, experts say the UK has to compromise too. “The devil in a trade deal is of course always in the detail,” said Paul Dales, chief economist at Capital Economics. In addition to accepting EU access to British waters for fishing, the UK has also agreed to pay an unspecified “appropriate financial contribution” to join the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, Dales pointed out.
The new deal between the UK and the EU extends the access European fishing fleets enjoy to British waters by 12 years [File: Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP Photo]
‘Nothing of value in return’
But the deal has also faced strong pushback.
The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, in a statement on May 19, said the agreement “surrenders the best prospect that the fishing industry and coastal communities had for growth over the coming decade”.
Three days later, it issued a more biting statement, saying the deal “drags UK fishing back into a past we thought had been left behind”.
Shaw conceded that if the food industry had benefitted from the deal, the fishing sector stood “at the other end of the scale”.
And it is not just fishers. The deal has also revived a broader debate over whether the UK, in seeking to realign itself with elements of the EU’s rules and regulations, is violating the mandate of Brexit.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, under whom Britain formally withdrew from the EU in 2020, described the deal as an “appalling sell out” in a post on X.
Tony Gabana, a web developer from London who was too young to vote in 2016, holds that view.
“Whether it’s a good deal or not, it does seem an attempt to reverse what a lot of people voted for,” Gabana said. “It doesn’t sit right with me. It feels like a step to further concessions, which, again, no one voted for.
SIR Keir Starmer is preparing to wave the white flag to Brussels in a fresh Brexit betrayal, Kemi Badenoch has warned.
The Tory chief accused the PM of lining up a string of concessions to the EU just to say he’s “reset” Brexit relations.
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Starmer is preparing to wave white flag to Brussels in fresh Brexit betrayal, Kemi Badenoch warnsCredit: Reuters
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The Tory leader accused Labour of preparing to make Britain ‘a rule-taker from Brussels once again’Credit: PA
It comes as the PM is heading to Albania today for last-minute talks with EU leaders ahead of a major London summit, where he’s expected to sign a new defence and trade pact.
It is understood that in return, Sir Keir has put fishing rights, immigration rules and legal powers all on the line.
“The Brexit vote was not a polite suggestion, it was a clear instruction: to put Britain first.” She warned British waters could be handed back to French trawlers “for no good reason”, calling it “a fundamental betrayal of Britain’s fishing community”.
And she raised alarm over Labour’s support for an EU Youth Mobility Scheme, saying it “would see us accepting seemingly unlimited numbers of unemployed 20-somethings from Romania and Bulgaria… all coming over here to take UK jobs.”
The Tory leader accused Labour of preparing to make Britain “a rule-taker from Brussels once again” by aligning food laws, restricting farmers from using modern crops.
And she warned the plan to join the EU’s carbon trading scheme will leave Sun readers “saddled with even more expensive bills, just so Keir Starmer can say he ‘got closer’ to Europe.”
Vowing to reverse any Brexit row backs, Ms Badenoch said: “A future Conservative Government will take them back. I will always put Britain first. And when the time comes – I will make it right.”
Ms Badenoch will head to Brussels herself today to speak at the IDU Forum – a global gathering of centre-right parties.
She will argue Britain’s relationship with EU countries can be improved without “being supplicant”.
Squirming Keir Starmer confronted over Brexit betrayal but vows ‘I’ll strike deal with Trump’
