Another “Real Housewives of Potomac” star is facing legal trouble: Wendy Osefo and her husband, Eddie Osefo, have been arrested for allegedly fraudulently reporting a burglary and theft last year.
A grand jury in Carroll County, Md., indicted the spouses Thursday on “multiple counts related to fraud,” the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office announced Friday in a statement. The reality TV stars, both 41, were booked at Carroll County Central Booking. They were released Friday after posting bond, the statement said.
A representative for the Osefos said Friday that they are “back home safely with their family and in good spirits.”
“They are grateful for the outpouring of concern and support from friends, fans, and colleagues,” the representative continued. “The Osefos, alongside their legal team, look forward to their day in court. At this time, they respectfully ask for privacy as they focus on their family and the legal process ahead.”
Wendy Osefos faces 16 charges, including seven felony charges for alleged false/misleading information fraud involving more than $300, eight misdemeanor conspiracy counts and a misdemeanor for an alleged false statement to an officer. Her husband faces the same charges and is also on the hook for two additional felony counts. They are due back in court in November.
The fraud charges stem from an April 2024 burglary reported at the Osefos’ home in Finksburg, Md., more than 27 miles northwest of Baltimore. The Sheriff’s Office said law enforcement responded to a report of burglary and theft and met with the spouses, who claimed their home “had been entered and numerous items had been stolen” while they were on vacation, the statement said.
“They reported approximately 80 items of jewelry, luxury goods, clothing, and shoes were stolen,” the statement said, “worth a total of more than $200,000.”
Police said Friday that detectives investigating the burglary found that the Osefos had returned more than $20,000 of the “stolen” items to their points of purchase. Detectives also saw images of Wendy Osefo taken after the alleged burglary wearing a ring she said was among items that were stolen.
Court documents show that the Osesfos filed a claim with an insurance company alleging a loss of $450,000 worth of personal property, according to TMZ.
“It became clear that the Osefos had fabricated the burglary and filed a false report [in an] attempt to fraud their insurance company,” Carroll County Sheriff James T. DeWees said during a press briefing Friday.
Wendy Osefo joined “Real Housewives of Potomac” for its fifth season in late 2020 and has been part of the cast since. She is a political commentator, author and lifestyle brand entrepreneur. Eddie Osefo is an attorney and self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur” whose businesses include a business agency and a cannabis edibles line.
The couple was arrested a year and a half after another “RHOP” personality publicly faced legal woes. Karen Huger, known among fans as the “grand dame,” was arrested in March 2024 for driving under the influence after she crossed a median and hit street signs, crashing her Maserati. She was convicted in December of driving under the influence and negligent driving, among other charges.
She was released from prison in September after serving six months of a yearlong prison sentence.
“Maigret,” premiering Sunday on PBS, is the fourth British series (plus one failed pilot) to be titled “Maigret,” after its main character, Georges Simenon’s Paris-based police detective. As I’ve written here before, he’s my favorite fictional detective, both because the stories serve my Francophilia — they provide a virtual map of the city and beyond — and for his ordinariness as a middle-aged, middle-class, happily married man, who is thoughtful, kind, uncomfortable around the rich and sympathetic to the poor, including many who might be counted among the criminal class. You wouldn’t call him melancholy, exactly, but he feels the weight of the job, of his difficult superiors, of the wicked world. He’s an honest policeman who describes himself as a “functionnaire,” a civil servant, and whose belief in justice might sometimes lead him to letting a malefactor escape. And he likes his food, and he likes his drink.
That the new series, starring Benjamin Wainwright (“Belgravia: The Next Chapter”), is set in the present day is not unusual. With 75 novels and 28 stories published between 1931 and 1972, it’s impossible to locate the character in any specific time anyway; most adaptions are set in the time in which they’re filmed, but even the period adaptations don’t necessarily reflect the year of publication.
Nor does the fact that “Maigret” 2025 swerves from the original texts distinguish it from films and series that have preceded it — most of them, obviously, made in France, where Maigret has many times appeared on the big screen, notably portrayed by French film icon Jean Gabin and recently by Gérard Depardieu in a well-regarded 2022 film, also called “Maigret,” as well as two long-running television series. The latter, another “Maigret,” which ran from 1991 to 2005, starred Bruno Cremer, widely regarded as the best — or among the best, to not start any arguments — of the screen Maigrets. Maigret series have also appeared in Russia, Italy and Japan; America, to the extent we’ve been interested, has imported English-language adaptations from the U.K., which is once again the case.
What’s different this time is that Maigret himself has been given a makeover, made younger, buffer, sexier, slightly more of an action hero, with the beard often assigned to the modern police detective. If you come to the series with a love for Simenon’s character — envisioned by the author as “a large powerfully built gentleman [with] a pipe, a bowler hat, a thick overcoat” and more or less faithfully represented in previous films and series — you’ll have to overlook this transformation, or else look away. The question of whether Wainwright’s Maigret is, you know, really Maigret, is one surely to be debated among the fans.
Meanwhile, there are other Maigrets waiting for you by way of comparison, officially or unofficially streaming. What follows is a short guide (mostly) to the English-language “Maigrets”; each has it charms and most are recommended.
A new “Maigret” has arrived on PBS, starring Andrea Lucas (Kerrie Hayes), from left, Karim Lapointe (Reda Elazouar), Jules Maigret (Benjamin Wainwright), Joseph Torrence (Blake Harrison) and Berthe Janvier (Shaniqua Okwok).
The first screen Maigret, included here for historical interest and because a subtitled version is available on YouTube. Directed by Jean Renoir the year after the novel was published — Simenon, fast out of the gate, published 10 Maigret novels that year — and starring his brother Pierre as Maigret, the film is moody, foggy, dark and slow and has the advantage of actually representing its period. Pierre Renoir’s Maigret is stoical and efficient, and will not be vamped by Winna Winifried’s peculiar femme fatale, as hard as she tries.
Charles Laughton, ‘The Man on the Eiffel Tower’ (1950)
From the novel “La Tête d’un homme (A Man’s Head),” also from 1931, the first English-language adaptation lists “the city of Paris,” on whose streets it was filmed, among the cast in the opening credits. (It’s a trip in time and space.) Laughton plays Maigret with dry humor, though he’s capable of being roused when exasperated or angry, as he often will be here. Co-producer and co-star Franchot Tone chews the beautiful scenery (in color) in a battle of wits Maigret and you both know he’s bound to lose. Directed by Burgess Meredith, who also plays a murder suspect, it adds a thrilling chase up the actual Eiffel Tower, no special effects required. (Laughton isn’t doing the chasing.) Dark film noir compositions alternate with bright sunny street scenes. Stream on Tubi.
Rupert Davies, ‘Maigret’ (1960)
Fifty-two episodes across four seasons were made of this BBC series, shot on video, as many British series were then, and so acted largely on soundstages, which suits a character whose job consists largely of asking questions and listening to other people talk; long interrogations, often lasting overnight, with beer and sandwiches brought up from a neighboring restaurant, are a specialty of the house. (What location filming there is, is actually Paris, in the heart of the nouvelle vague era.) Davies’ Maigret is active and energetic without breaking a sweat, very much a man who makes things happen. Davies also played the detective in a 1965 theatrical production, “Maigret and the Lady,” by Philip Mackie. Stream on Prime Video and Apple TV+.
Richard Harris, ‘Maigret’ (1988)
This version is a curiosity, which gives us Maigret without the Simenon. Harris is a rangy, bespectacled, Irish-y Maigret in this oddity, feature-length failed pilot, with an original story by Arthur Weingarten, whose other credits include “The Mod Squad,” “Ironside” and “T.J. Hooker,” much of which is set on a cruise ship. (Real Paris locations are also featured.) Located firmly in its era, with a synthesized score, it features a Maigret in need of a haircut, wearing his sweater misbuttoned as he explains the case to the gathered suspects — some sort of acting choice, I guess — but also in a tuxedo drinking a cocktail with an umbrella stuck in. (Not very much in character in either case.) The signature pipe is very much a smoking presence, making Harris, on record as a huge fan of the books, look a little like Popeye. Stream on YouTube.
Michael Gambon, ‘Maigret’ (1992)
A period piece set in post-World War II Paris, this series logged two seasons of six episodes each. This is where I discovered the character, when it aired on PBS, before I moved over to the books, and it remains my favorite interpretation. Gambon, who in an odd coincidence followed Harris in the role of Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” films is (not unlike Dumbledore, after all) soft-spoken but stern when necessary. With his thinning hair and a mustache you can forget is there, he melts into his surroundings — this is the first of these series to substitute Budapest for Paris — becoming one sympathetically with his city and its citizens. A scrappy Geoffrey Hutchings shines as Sgt. Inspector Lucas, Maigret’s right hand. Stream on BritBox.
Rowan Atkinson, ‘Maigret’ (2016)
The man who was — is? — Mr. Bean plays it absolutely straight in the role — indeed, he is the most serious, saddest and possibly gentlest Maigret to date; it’s as if he feels all that prevents the world from breaking to pieces. Set in the mid-1950s, slightly after the Gambon “Maigret,” it comprises four feature-length episodes, in the current manner of British mystery adaptations, including a “Night at the Crossroads” that differs greatly from the book and previous film. An often compelling production, this series, too, was shot, handsomely … in Budapest. Stream on BritBox.
Benjamin Wainwright, ‘Maigret’ (2025)
And so, back once again in Hungary, we come to this year’s model. Police headquarters have moved from the dusty old warrens at the Quai des Orfèvres, as in the real world, a hop and a skip from Notre-Dame, to a gleaming new digs with plenty of light and all modern conveniences out in Clichy. There are changes that make good sense for a series set in 2025, including some gender and ethnic diversity injected into the “Faithful Four,” Maigret’s team of close collaborators, and among the characters they encounter. Madame Maigret (Stefanie Martini), always an intelligent and helpful partner, gets a job as a medical professional; Maigret, whom in olden days was brought coffee and served dinner, brings home takeout, cooks a little, helps with the dishes. And they’re trying for a baby.
The action is naturally adjusted for modern technology — of course, one of the attractions of the earlier and period series is that there is none. Wainwright’s Maigret doesn’t smoke a pipe, but he carries one, inherited from his late father, who managed the estate where Maigret grew up, which is knitted into the series as a long arc (three two-part episodes, incorporating multiple cases). Wainwright, appropriately low-key, is fine — the least interesting of these actors to my mind — but if you’re looking for a new detective series set in Budapest-as-Paris, this is nicely made and sufficiently involving, with an excellent supporting cast. I would like to think that a weather report on the radio is a nod to Simenon’s habit of opening a story with a description of the season and the climate, but perhaps that is overthought. Watch on PBS and stream on PBS.org, the PBS app and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video channel.
Midsomer Murders star Daniel Casey has opened up about his decision to leave the ITV series after seven years on the show alongside John Nettles
Midsomer Murders favourite Daniel Casey has lifted the lid on his choice to depart the ITV drama.
Daniel and John Nettles starred together on the programme from its launch in 1996 until Daniel’s exit in 2003.
In a fresh chat on BBC Breakfast, Daniel reflected on his departure, confessing it wasn’t a tough choice.
Presenter Sarah Campbell grilled Daniel about leaving Midsomer Murders and whether it proved a “difficult decision”.
“It was fairly easy, actually,” the actor revealed before continuing, “I started when I was 24, and left when I was 30. Funnily enough, I was thinking about it, and I was watching a rugby match, and there was commentary,” reports the Express.
Daniel Casey on BBC Breakfast(Image: BBC)
“It was last-minute, and it was South Africa versus New Zealand, and New Zealand were three points behind, and they had a penalty, and I said, ‘Oh, you should have kicked the goal’. They said, ‘No, they kicked to the corner’.”
He went on, “And I said, ‘Well, that’s a risk’. And the commentator said, ‘Oh, the only risk in life is never to take a risk’.
“It felt like he was talking to me, and I thought I didn’t come into this job to do the same thing year on year on year. So I thought, it’s a nice time to just step off the cliff and see what else is out there.”
The performer, who initially portrayed DS Gavin Troy opposite John Nettles’ Detective Tom Barnaby in the beloved ITV series, is preparing to take on DCI Tom Barnaby in a fresh theatrical adaptation of the programme.
John Nettles with Daniel Casey in Midsomer Murders(Image: ITV)
When discussing his comeback, Daniel grinned: “It’s really exciting, really exciting. It’s lovely to come back. I never thought that I would revisit this amazing, weird, wonderful, strange, old world again, but, but yeah, it’s lovely to be embarking on a tour and bringing it to the stage.
“It’s the original episode, The Killings of Badgers Drift. It’s very faithful to that original, and that kind of the actuality that you have in the television series. It lends itself beautifully to the stage.”
BBC host Jon Kay then quizzed the actor about his “big promotion” and taking on the role previously occupied by John Nettles.
“John is such a lovely man, and it was such an important part of my early career, and he said it himself. He said, ‘I learned at the feet of the master,’ and actually, I did.
“He was incredible, and I stood beside him for what, seven years, so a lot of that has influenced me, I hope.”
By Walter Mosley Mulholland: 336 pages, $29 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
Walter Mosley has penned more than 60 novels in the course of about four decades, but the Easy Rawlins mysteries are arguably his most readily recognized body of work. After writing about Easy, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander and other memorable characters in the series since their 1990 debut in “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the Los Angeles native is certainly entitled to sit back and enjoy the significant milestone in Easy’s history. But neither the success, the accolades nor the 35-year anniversary matter to Mosley as much as the work itself.
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“It’s funny,” he muses over Zoom from his sun-drenched apartment in Santa Monica where he’s working one August afternoon. “Everyone has a career. Bricklayer, politician, artist, whatever. But what you think of as a career, for me it’s … I just love writing.”
It’s a good thing that he does. In the 17 mysteries in the series, Easy has given readers a front-row seat to Mosley’s vision of L.A.’s evolution from a post-World War II boom town proscribed by race and class to the tumultuous ’70s, with seismic social shifts for Black Americans, women and the nuclear family. These are the long-term changes that Easy must navigate in “Gray Dawn,” out Sept. 16.
The year is 1971 and Easy, now 50, is beset by memories of his hardscrabble Southern youth and first loves before he enlisted to serve in World War II in Europe and Africa. And while coming to L.A. after the war meant opportunity, real estate investments and success as “one of the few colored detectives in Southern California,” Easy has not lost his empathy for the underdog. So when he’s approached by the rough-hewn Santangelo Burris to find his auntie, Lutisha James, Easy leans in to help, even after he learns Lutisha is more dangerous than he suspected and brings with her an unexpected tie to his past. Then his adopted son, Jesus, and daughter-in-law run afoul of the feds and Easy must also figure out a way to save them from a certain prison sentence. Add assorted killers, business tycoons, Black militants and crooked law enforcement to the mix, all of whom underestimate Easy’s grit and outspoken determination to protect himself and his chosen family, and the recipe is set for another memorable tale.
Given Easy’s maturity and the world as it was in 1971, Mosley felt the need, for the first time, to write a note to readers to put Easy and his times into context. “When I was writing this book, I realized that, in 2025, there are some readers who may not understand where Easy’s coming from.”
Mosley’s introduction provides that frame, calling the combined tales “a twentieth century memoir” and linking them to the fight for liberation and equality. “Black people, people during the Great Enslavement,” Mosley writes, “weren’t considered wholly human, and, even after emancipation, were only promoted to the status of second-class citizenship. They were denied access to toilets, libraries, equal rights, and the totality of the American dream, which had often been deemed a nightmare.” But Easy, with his passion for community and love for the underdog, is always there to help. “He speaks for the voiceless and tried his best to come up with answers to problems that seem unanswerable.”
Despite these conditions, Mosley explains to me, the series’ recurring characters — Mouse, Jackson Blue, Fearless Jones, among others — who serve as Easy’s family of choice have prospered since the beginning of the series, Easy most of all. “Easy is a successful licensed PI, living on top of a mountain with his adopted daughter, plus his son and his family are around too. So for readers who pick up the series at this point, everything seems great. But then, Easy walks into a place [in the novel] and he’s confronted by some white guy who says, ‘Well, do you belong here?’ Before, when I had written something like that, I assumed that people are going to understand how those kinds of verbal challenges are fueled by the racism of the time. But this time I thought there are readers who may not understand it, even though it’s speaking to something about their lives or their world, even today.”
Easy Rawlins also speaks to other writers, who read the mysteries as a beacon of hope, a crack in the wall through which other voices can be heard.
S.A. Cosby, bestselling author of “Blacktop Wasteland” and “All the Sinners Bleed” and an L.A. Times Book Prize winner, clearly remembers his introduction to Easy’s world. “Reading ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ was like being shown a path in the darkness. It spoke to me as a writer, as a Southerner and as a Black person,” he said in an email. “In some ways, it gave me ‘permission’ to write about the people I love.”
Easy also offers a unique lens through which to view L.A. Steph Cha, Times Book Prize winner for “Your House Will Pay,” discovered “Devil in a Blue Dress” as a freshman in college. “I was totally thunderstruck,” she said in an email. “This was before I had the context and vocabulary to articulate its importance in the broader literary landscape, but I knew I loved Easy Rawlins and his eye on Los Angeles. Walter was one of my primary influences when I started writing fiction. I even named a character Daphne in my second book after the missing woman in ‘Devil.’”
“‘Toes in the soil beneath my feet.’ That’s what a detective has to have. She has to know the city, its peoples, dialects, and languages. Its neighborhoods and histories. Everything you could see and touch. A detective’s mind has to be right there in front of her. Your city was your whole world.”
But why does the series endure? Cha credits the quality of the man himself: “Easy’s been through so much over 35 years, but he’s still the same guy, a man who will go anywhere, talk to anybody and bear anything, while still giving the feeling he bleeds as much as the rest of us.”
But Easy’s also thinking about the future, which in “Gray Dawn” means helping Niska, a young Black woman in his office, develop into a detective. Along the way, he shares his creed and his hope for what she will become one day: “‘Toes in the soil beneath my feet.’ That’s what a detective has to have. She has to know the city, its peoples, dialects, and languages. Its neighborhoods and histories. Everything you could see and touch. A detective’s mind has to be right there in front of her. Your city was your whole world.”
Back on our Zoom call, I ask Mosley whether he was thinking of Raymond Chandler’s seminal 1944 essay “The Simple Art of Murder” and the oft-quoted line “Down these mean streets…” when writing that passage. Not consciously, but he liked the comparison because “Easy in many ways is the opposite of Philip Marlowe.”
Not the least of which is his willingness to help a woman become a detective. “Even though Easy is skeptical about a woman being a detective,” he explains, “he recognizes it’s the 1970s and, with the women’s movement, he’s willing to help her if that’s what she wants.”
As the song goes, the times they are a-changin’, and Easy with them. What does Mosley hope readers take away from “Gray Dawn,” Easy’s midlife novel? “I want them to see how Easy has developed and changed over the years. And that family, even though Easy’s doesn’t look like the nuclear family, is what America has always been about.”
“I love being a writer so much that even if I had much less success, or even none, I would still be doing it,” Walter Mosley says.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Mosley’s also experienced enough to know that what writers hope readers understand and what readers actually see in their writing can be very different. And while he appreciates comments from writers like Cosby and Cha, he puts it all in perspective. “As a writer, I think it’s important for you to remember not to judge your success by what other writers have said about your work. Because writers more than anybody in literature are confused about what literature actually is. Writers will say, ‘I did this, and I did that, and I wrote this, and this was my intention, and I started here, and I moved it there.’ But the truth is you’ve written a book, you’ve created the best thing you could have written, and all these people have read it. And for every person who has read it, it’s a different book.”
Mosley is also a talented screenwriter, having served as an executive producer and writer on the FX drama “Snowfall.” Most recently, he shared a writing credit (with director Nadia Latif) for the screenplay of the upcoming film “The Man in My Basement” — an adaptation of his 2004 standalone novel — starring Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins. Mosley is particularly cognizant of how book-to-film translations can have different meanings for their creators.
“With very few exceptions, books and the films that they spawn are very different,” he explains. “And they have to be because books come to life in the mind of readers, who imagine the characters and places the writer describes. And books are language, and your understanding through language as a reader is a part of the process. But a film is all projected images. So when somebody says they’re writing a book, you tell them, ‘Show. Don’t tell.’ When you produce or direct a movie, they just say, ‘Show.’”
Mosley praises Latif, who, in her directorial debut, leaned into certain aspects of his novel. “She’s very interested in the genre of horror and uses certain elements of it in the film,” he notes. “But I don’t think she could do that without those elements already being there in the novel.”
Beyond “Gray Dawn” and the forthcoming film, Mosley’s collaborating with playwright, singer and actor Eisa Davis on a musical stage adaptation of “Devil,” as well as working on a monograph about why reading is essential to living a full life. But regardless of the medium, Mosley’s purpose is crystal clear. “For me, it’s about the writing itself,” he says, leaning in to make his point. “I love being a writer so much that even if I had much less success, or even none, I would still be doing it.”
In a police department with a long tradition of colorful nicknames — from “Jigsaw John” to “Captain Hollywood” — LAPD Sgt. Joseph Lloyd stands out.
“The Grim Reaper.”
At least that’s what some on the force have taken to calling the veteran Internal Affairs detective, usually out of earshot.
According to officers who have found themselves under investigation by Lloyd, he seems to relish the moniker and takes pleasure in ending careers, even if it means twisting facts and ignoring evidence.
But Lloyd’s backers maintain his dogged pursuit of the truth is why he has been entrusted with some of the department’s most politically sensitive and potentially embarrassing cases.
Lloyd, 52, declined to comment. But The Times spoke to more than half a dozen current or former police officials who either worked alongside him or fell under his scrutiny.
During the near decade that he’s been in Internal Affairs, Lloyd has investigated cops of all ranks.
When a since-retired LAPD officer was suspected of running guns across the Mexican border, the department turned to Lloyd to bust him.
In 2020, when it came out that members of the elite Metropolitan Division were falsely labeling civilians as gang members in a police database, Lloyd was tapped to help unravel the mess.
At the LAPD, as in most big-city police departments across the country, Internal Affairs investigators tend to be viewed with suspicion and contempt by their colleagues. They usually try to operate in relative anonymity.
Not Lloyd.
The 24-year LAPD veteran has inadvertently become the face of a pitched debate over the LAPD’s long-maligned disciplinary system. The union that represents most officers has long complained that well-connected senior leaders get favorable treatment. Others counter that rank-and-file cops who commit misconduct are routinely let off the hook.
A recent study commissioned by Chief Jim McDonnell found that perceived unfairness in internal investigations is a “serious point of contention” among officers that has contributed to low morale. McDonnell has said he wants to speed up investigations and better screen complaints, but efforts by past chiefs and the City Council to overhaul the system have repeatedly stalled.
Sarah Dunster, 40, was a sergeant working in the LAPD’s Hollywood division in 2021 when she learned she was under investigation for allegedly mishandling a complaint against one of her officers, who was accused of groping a woman he arrested.
Dunster said she remembers being interviewed by Lloyd, whose questions seemed designed to trip her up and catch her in a lie, rather than aimed at hearing her account of what happened, she said. Some of her responses never made it into Lloyd’s report, she said.
“He wanted to fire me,” she said.
Dunster was terminated over the incident, but she appealed and last week a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge granted a reprieve that allows her to potentially get her job back.
Others who have worked with Lloyd say he is regarded as a savvy investigator who is unfairly being vilified for discipline decisions that are ultimately made by the chief of police. A supervisor who oversaw Lloyd at Internal Affairs — and requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media — described him as smart, meticulous and “a bulldog.”
“Joe just goes where the facts lead him and he doesn’t have an issue asking the hard questions,” the supervisor said.
On more than one occasion, the supervisor added, Internal Affairs received complaints from senior department officials who thought that Lloyd didn’t show them enough deference during interrogations. Other supporters point to his willingness to take on controversial cases to hold officers accountable, even while facing character attacks from his colleagues, their attorneys and the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League.
Officers have sniped about his burly build, tendency to smile during interviews and other eccentricities. He wears two watches — one on each wrist, a habit he has been heard saying he picked up moonlighting as a high school lacrosse referee.
But he has also been criticized as rigid and uncompromising, seeming to fixate only on details that point to an officer’s guilt. People he has grilled say that when he doesn’t get the answer he’s looking for, he has a Columbo-esque tendency to ask the same question in different ways in an attempt to elicit something incriminating.
And instead of asking officers to clarify any discrepancies in their statements, Lloyd automatically assumes they are lying, some critics said.
Mario Munoz, a former LAPD Internal Affairs lieutenant who opened a boutique firm that assists officers fighting employment and disciplinary cases, recently released a scathing 60-page report questioning what he called a series of troubling lapses in the LAPD’s 2023 investigation of the Mission gang unit. The report name-drops Lloyd several times.
The department accused several Mission officers of stealing brass knuckles and other items from motorists in the San Fernando Valley, and attempting to hide their actions from their supervisors by switching off their body-worn cameras.
Munoz said he received calls from officers who said Lloyd had violated their due process rights, which potentially opens the city up to liability. Several have since lodged complaints against Lloyd with the department. He alleged Lloyd ultimately singled out several “scapegoats to shield higher-level leadership from scrutiny.”
Until he retired from the LAPD in 2014, Munoz worked as both an investigator and an auditor who reviewed landmark internal investigations into the beating of Black motorist Rodney King and the Rampart gang scandal in which officers were accused of robbing people and planting evidence, among other crimes.
Munoz now echoes a complaint from current officers that Internal Affairs in general, and Lloyd in particular, operate to protect the department’s image at all costs.
“He’s the guy that they choose because he doesn’t question management,” Munoz said of Lloyd.
In the Mission case, Munoz pointed to inconsistent outcomes for two captains who oversaw the police division accused of wrongdoing: One was transferred and later promoted, while another is fighting for his job amid accusations that he failed to rein in his officers.
Two other supervisors — Lt. Mark Garza and Sgt. Jorge “George” Gonzalez — were accused by the department of creating a “working environment that resulted in the creation of a police gang,” according to an internal LAPD report. Both Garza and Gonzalez have sued the city, alleging that even though they reported the wrongdoing as soon as they became aware of it, they were instead punished by the LAPD after the scandal became public.
According to Munoz’s report and interviews with department sources, Lloyd was almost single-handedly responsible for breaking the Mission case open.
It began with a complaint in late December 2022 made by a motorist who said he was pulled over and searched without reason in a neighboring patrol area. Lloyd learned that the officers involved had a pattern of not documenting traffic stops — exploiting loopholes in the department’s auditing system for dashboard and body cameras. The more Lloyd dug, the more instances he uncovered of these so-called “ghost stops.”
A few months later, undercover Internal Affairs detectives began tailing the two involved officers — something that Garza and Gonzalez both claimed they were kept in the dark about.
As of last month, four officers involved had been fired and another four had pending disciplinary hearings where their jobs hung in the balance. Three others resigned before the department could take action. The alleged ringleader, Officer Alan Carrillo, faces charges of theft and “altering, planting or concealing evidence.” Court records show he was recently offered pretrial diversion by L.A. County prosecutors, which could spare him jail but require him to stop working in law enforcement. Carrillo has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In an interview with The Times, Gonzalez — the sergeant who is facing termination — recalled a moment during a recorded interrogation that he found so troubling he contacted the police union director Jamie McBride, to express concern. McBride, he said, went to Lloyd’s boss, then-deputy chief Michael Rimkunas, seeking Lloyd’s removal from Internal Affairs.
The move failed. Lloyd kept his job.
Rimkunas confirmed the exchange with the police union leader in an interview with The Times.
He said that while he couldn’t discuss Lloyd specifically due to state personnel privacy laws, in general the department assigns higher-profile Internal Affairs cases to detectives with a proven track record.
Gonzalez, though, can’t shake the feeling that Lloyd crossed the line in trying to crack him during an interrogation.
He said that at one point while Lloyd was asking questions, the detective casually flipped over his phone, which had been sitting on the table. On the back of the protective case, Gonzalez said, was a grim reaper sticker.
“And then as he turned it he looked at me as if to get a reaction from me,” Gonzalez said. “It was definitely a way of trying to intimidate me for sure.”
July 31 (UPI) — New York’s police commissioner promoted slain officer Didarul Islam to detective during his funeral at a Bronx mosque on Thursday morning.
Thousands of police officers, local officials and mourners lined the street outside the Parkchester Jame Masjid mosque in the Bronx to honor Islam.
“Look at all the NYPD officers here and outside this mosque and across this city who stand with you,” New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch told Islam’s family while speaking at the funeral.
“I am so heartbroken for you and your family,” Tisch said.
“As we scan the sea of blue, you will notice they look a whole lot like Didarul,” she continued.
“They wear his uniform, his shield [and] his collar brass,” Tisch said.
“They carry on his purpose and are sworn to finish the work he started,” she added, “and they will be there for you, always.”
Tisch then promoted Islam to detective-first grade, which is an NYPD tradition.
Islam, 36, was among four people who were killed by Las Vegas resident Shane Tamura during a mass shooting at an office building at 345 Park Ave. in New York City on Monday.
Tamura was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James were among elected officials who attended the funeral.
The funeral service started at 10 a.m. EDT, followed by prayer services at noon.
A “solid wall of blue” stood in a downpour as the hearse carrying Islam’s body from the mosque following the funeral service.
Death in Paradise will return tonight with a repeat episode of the BBC drama
Death in Paradise favourite Josephine Jobert will grace television screens once more this evening in a repeat broadcast of the beloved BBC series.
Josephine portrayed Detective Florence Cassell in the Caribbean-set police drama.
Lucky in Love, the third episode of series 10, initially transmitted in 2021, will be screened at 9pm tonight on BBC One.
The episode summary states: “It seems money doesn’t buy happiness when lottery winner Cherry is found dead at her luxurious villa, much to the horror of her husband and their visiting friends,” reports the Express.
“As usual, Neville and the team are presented with a real head-scratcher when it turns out no one was in the house at the time – and the mystery deepens when the victim’s body apparently vanishes into thin air.”
Josephine Jobert in Death in Paradise(Image: BBC)
It concludes: “Meanwhile, JP is training unruly new officer Marlon, aware that his wife Rosey is due to give birth at any time.”
This marks another recent repeat showing, following last week’s broadcast of episode two from series 10 on BBC One.
Florence Cassell won’t be the only familiar face returning to screens, as the programme’s longest-serving detective, Neville Parker (Ralf Little), also features in the episode.
Tobi Bakari returns as police officer JP Hooper, whilst Tahj Miles reprises trainee police officer Marlon Pryce.
Following the episode’s original transmission, Tobi, Tahj, Ralf, and Josephine have all departed the programme to pursue different ventures.
Ralf Little and Josephine left Death in Paradise together(Image: BBC)
Tobi became the first to exit in 2021 following the conclusion of series 10. Ralf and Josephine’s departures came in series 13 after their characters sailed off into the sunset together following Neville’s declaration of love to Florence.
Tahj Miles also departed the programme at the conclusion of series 13.
Ralf’s role was swiftly filled by the island’s fresh lead detective, Mervin Wilson, portrayed by Don Gilet.
In an earlier chat with Hello! Josephine discussed her comeback to the programme in series 10 and confessed she was aware it wouldn’t be permanent.
“I already left in series eight, I thought it would be for good, honestly, I thought, ‘I’m done,'” she revealed. “Then they asked me back for series ten as I was like, ‘Hmmm, I don’t know, okay, I’m going to do it.'”.
“But I knew it wouldn’t be forever, I knew it. How long, I didn’t know. I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure.”
Scottish detective Karen Pirie is back on our screens for a second season of the ITV drama – here’s everything you need to know about the cast
Karen Pirie is making a comeback to our screens for a second series of the ITV detective drama, welcoming several fresh faces to the cast.
The show initially premiered in 2022, featuring Outlander star Lauren Lyle as the intrepid Scottish detective Karen Pirie.
Drawing inspiration from Val McDermid’s second Inspector Karen Pirie novel, A Darker Domain, the upcoming series will unfold across three episodes.
The official synopsis reveals: “After her bittersweet success in series one, Karen has been promoted to Detective Inspector and seemingly given the authority she has long been fighting for.
“Just as she’s getting into the swing of her powerful new role, she is assigned an infamous unsolved case that will put her under intense scrutiny; from her boss, from the media, and ultimately, from sinister forces that would rather the past stayed in the past,” reports the Express.
Karen Pirie is back for season two(Image: ITV)
Karen Pirie series two cast:
Lauren Lyle (Outlander) as Karen Pirie
Chris Jenks (Sex Education) as DC Jason ‘Mint’ Murray
Zach Wyatt (Timestalker) as DS Phil Parhatka
Steve John Shepherd (EastEnders) as DCS LEes
Emer Kenny (EastEnders) as River Wilde
Rakhee Thakrar (Sex Education) as Bel Richmond
Saskia Ashdown (Six Four) joins as newcomer DC Isla Stark
James Cosmo (Braveheart) as Sir Broderick Grant, the father of victim Catriona
Frances Tomelty (Inspector Morse) as Broderick’s ex-wife Mary
John Michie (Holby City) as Fergus Sinclair, the father of Catriona’s son Adam
Julia Brown (World on Fire) as Catriona Grant
Mark Rowley (One Day) as Mick
Kat Ronney (Dinosaur) as Bonnie
Conor Berry (Schemers) as Andy
Stuart Campbell (The Winter King) as Kevin
The cast also includes Jamie Michie, Madeleine Worrall, Jack Stewart, Thoren Ferguson, and Helen Katamba.
Season two will see the return of familiar faces as well as newcomers(Image: ITV)
The historical case at the heart of series two centres on the 1984 abduction of wealthy oil heiress Catriona Grant and her two-year-old son Adam.
The pair were snatched at gunpoint outside a chip shop in Fife and vanished without trace, despite widespread media coverage.
When human remains surface with connections to the original abduction – the first breakthrough in decades – Karen and her colleagues face one of their most daunting investigations yet.
“As Karen delves deeper into what happened in the autumn of 1984, political grudges and painful secrets reveal themselves, and it soon becomes clear… the past is far from dead,” the synopsis hints.
Karen Pirie season 2 will air on Sunday, July 20, with the first episode premiering at 8pm on ITV1.
As Midsomer Murders continues to be a hit, some fans may be wondering why Daniel Casey left the show – but he is now set to return in a new role in a stage adaptation
John Nettles and Daniel Casey tackle a string of murder mysteries
ITV’s beloved series Midsomer Murders is treating fans to a nostalgic trip with reruns starring Daniel Casey, who became a household name as Gavin Troy, DCI Tom Barnaby’s (John Nettles) original sidekick.
He left the show in 2003 but made a brief return for Cully’s (Laura Howard) wedding in season 11.
Fans are still mourning his exit as he became one of the murder mystery show’s most iconic characters.
Speaking to Saga magazine, Casey revealed his departure was about seeking new challenges.
He said: “I was just aware I didn’t want to stay with the same thing for too long and I wanted to branch out.”
Despite moving on, he fondly remembers his time on the show, especially working with Nettles: “I had a fantastic time,” he reminisced.
“John and I got on really well, from the first day really.”
In a thrilling twist for fans, reports from May 2025 indicate that Casey will be returning to the world of Midsomer Murders, not on screen but on stage, in ‘The Killings at Badger’s Drift’, where he’ll intriguingly step into the shoes of Tom Barnaby, not as his former character Gavin Troy.
In a recent chat with Norwich Theatre, the actor shared his astonishment at returning to the Midsomer universe: “I never expected to revisit the world of Midsomer, with its weird and wonderful characters and all their dark, twisted secrets.”
Daniel Casey is returning to Midsomer Murders on the stage(Image: GETTY)
He expressed his excitement about taking on a new challenge: “So to be asked to play the iconic role of Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby in this new stage adaptation of The Killings at Badger’s Drift was a real surprise.”
Further reflecting on his past experiences, he added: “It has brought back some wonderful memories of such a happy time in my career playing Sgt Troy and the fantastic time I had working with the amazing John Nettles and to be stepping into his shoes as Barnaby is both a little daunting and incredibly exciting.”
Influencer Liver King says he still has his sights on Joe Rogan, even after he was arrested in Texas earlier this week for making online threats toward the popular podcaster.
The 47-year-old social media personality known for his carnivorous and “primitive” lifestyle was released from Travis County Jail Wednesday afternoon on $20,000 bail, officials confirmed to The Times. He was arrested Tuesday in Austin on suspicion of one count of misdemeanor terroristic threat. Court records show that the influencer — born Brian Johnson — must stay at least 200 yards away from and must not contact Rogan and his family. Johnson is also prohibited from possessing firearms and must undergo a mental health evaluation within a week of his release.
Johnson addressed his release and its terms in a video posted Thursday to his Instagram and Facebook pages. Standing on a vibrating exercise plate, Johnson seemingly hints at plans to confront Rogan — namedropping a Hollywood star to sidestep mentioning the podcaster’s name — while respecting the terms of his restraining order.
“If anybody knows where Seth Rogen is — the other version of him that rhymes with ‘blow’… where his family’s gonna be today, if you can let my team know so that we can stay away from them,” he said, before immediately walking back his request.
“Don’t do anything to their family,” Johnson continues, before contradicting himself and asking fans again to alert him and his team if they are near anyone with “the last name Rogan.” He pans the camera down to display his ankle monitor and rambles about his plans to appear at the state capitol building.
He adds, naming the wrong celebrity: “I’m picking a fight. Who’s it with? Seth Rogen. It’s with Seth Rogen. What’s it for? Family.”
Neither representatives for Johnson nor Rogan immediately responded to The Times’ request for comment on Friday.
Liver King booking image.
(Austin Police Department)
A spokesperson for the Austin Police Department told The Times on Wednesday that detectives learned Tuesday morning that Johnson, 47, had “made threats against the “Joe Rogan Experience” host on his Instagram profile.” Detectives reviewed the posts and saw that Johnson was en route to Austin, where Rogan lives, “while continuing to make threatening statements,” the spokesperson said.
Detectives contacted the podcaster who claimed he never interacted with Johnson and felt threatened by Liver King’s online posts. The spokesperson said officials obtained an arrest warrant for Johnson and detained the social media star at an Austin hotel.
Johnson on Monday posted an Instagram video of himself bear-crawling as he calls out Rogan: “I challenge you man-to-man to a fight.” Johnson rambled in his video about his weight, the stakes of this would-be battle and the “real tension” he has with Rogan. Johnson continued to post Instagram videos — some still name-dropping Rogan and some filmed while he’s in a shower — throughout the day, even after he arrived at the hotel in Austin.
Johnson’s Instagram account also posted several lengthy videos documenting the moments prior to his arrest Tuesday. In one clip, Johnson can be seen getting dressed in a burgundy sweatsuit, including a hoodie featuring a design that essentially pits his brand logo against that of the “Joe Rogan Experience.” Videos also see Johnson haphazardly picking up dishes and various items — including a screwdriver and a multi-tool — as he instructs someone off-camera to keep recording.
A second video shows Johnson huddling and praying with his family in the hotel room before officers escort him down a hallway and into an elevator. In another video posted to Johnson’s account, the person off-screen explains to the influencer’s wife that her husband will be “in and out” and will “need to see a judge before he is dismissed.” They exit the hotel and approach the law enforcement vehicle, where officers are seen securing Johnson into the back seat.
In court documents reviewed by The Times on Friday, a detective noted that Johnson’s social media posts featured “long rants that didn’t appear to make much sense.”
“Affiant knows that behavior such as that can indicate some sort of mental health episode, indicating that Brian Johnson could be a danger to himself and others,” the detective wrote before detailing other videos from Johnson that raised concern.
The detective also wrote of their correspondences with Rogan, who spoke of Johnson’s alleged “significant drug issue” and said he feels “Johnson appears to be significantly unstable and seems like he needs help,” according to the court filing.
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.’”
