Black Swan Manslaughter Case

 The Black Swan manslaughter case occurred in Lakewood Ranch, Manatee County, Florida, on September 27, 2020. Ashley Benefield (née Byers), a former ballerina was accused of the shooting mariticide of her estranged husband 58-year-old Douglas "Doug" Benefield. The murder trial is known by this name due to the defendant's former profession and in reference to 2010 film Black Swan. The murder and subsequent trial received national media attention.

On September 27, 2020, Doug was found shot twice in Ashley's mother's house, he died in a hospital approximately an hour later. Ashley and her defense attorney during the trial claimed that she did it in self-defense during a domestic dispute. Prosecutors argued that Ashley fabricated the abuse allegations to gain sole custody of their child. On November 4, 2020, Ashley was charged with second-degree murder.

In July 2024, a jury found Ashley guilty of manslaughter with a firearm, instead of second-degree murder. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

Background

Douglas "Doug" Glass Benefield was born in Palo Alto, California on October 2, 1961. Doug grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, where he attended Huntsville High School. He graduated in 1984 from Texas A&M University, in College Station, Texas, with a degree in Biology. Doug was a charter member of Aggie Cowboys (now Beta Theta Pi) fraternity. After college, Doug joined the Navy and was a Naval Flight Officer. Doug was a flight officer for 3 years in San Diego, California.

When he met Ashley, Doug had a daughter and was a widower. He lived in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ashley Benefield

Ashley Benefield (née Byers) is a graduate of the Maryland Youth Ballet; she was a swimsuit model and ballerina.

In August 2016, Doug and Ashley met in Palm Beach, Florida, during the presidential campaign. Ashley was 24 years old and Doug was 54 years old at the time, Ashley was working in a campaign office in support of Donald Trump. Doug and Ashley married 13 days later. The couple moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where they founded the American National Ballet (ANB), a ballet company that closed months later. In July 2017, Ashley became pregnant and gave birth in March 2018.

Abuse accusations

According to some witnesses and reports, the couple had tensions and fights. On one occasion, Doug fired a gun at the roof of their house. One of Doug's close friends said that he told him: “I did the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life", referring to that event. Due to marital and pregnancy complications, Ashley moved with her mother to Florida until she gave birth. When Ashley gave birth, she asked for full custody of her baby and she did not allow Doug to visit or have contact with their child. On March 15, 2018, Doug said in an emailed letter that he wanted to be a part of the child's birth and life.

Ashley filed domestic violence claims in court, alleging that Doug was a "manipulative", "controlling" and "abusive" man. She also accused him of attempting to poison her and of poisoning Doug's late wife. However, the judge considered that Ashley's story didn't possess a "scintilla of truth". In March 2020, Doug wrote an email to the sheriff's office accusing Ashley of having a "split personality". On May 6, 2020, Ashley filed a restraining order against Doug. Shortly after, Ashley planned to move with her mother to Maryland. Around that time, Doug filed for divorce, although he was still in love with her and wanted to live with Ashley in Maryland.

Murder

On September 27, 2020, in Lakewood Ranch, Florida, Ashley with the help of Doug was packing a U-Haul truck for the move. Ashley's mother, Alicia, took her granddaughter to a park, leaving Doug and Ashley alone in her house. Around 7 p.m., the couple started an argument. Ashley claims Doug struck her in the head and he tried to keep her in a room. Ashley claims she feared for her life, shot Doug multiple times in self-defense, and then arrived at a neighbor's house. The neighbor called 911.

When the police and paramedics arrived at the residence, they found Doug shot twice, once in the leg and once in the arm. That second bullet traveled into his chest cavity. Doug died one hour later at a hospital.

Criminal proceedings

Pre-trial

The State of Florida vs. Ashley Benefield

Case Number 2020CF003014AX

On November 4, 2020, Ashley was charged with second-degree murder and without the right to bail. In July 2023, a judge refused to dismiss the charges following a two-day Stand Your Ground hearing.

Trial

On July 23, 2024, the trial began at Manatee County Judicial Center. The prosecution was represented by Assistant State's Attorney Suzanne O'Donnell and Ashley was represented by defense attorney Neil Taylor.

The prosecution explained that this was a case where "the mother already knew she wanted to be a single mother and had no intention of giving the father visitation rights". The prosecution argued that Ashley fabricated the abuse allegations to gain sole custody.

Ashley and her defense attorney Neil Taylor argued that she did it in self-defense. Attorney Taylor also mentioned that the authorities did not give her help when she reported her husband's "abuse". Ashley testified that she did it in self-defense and that she feared for her life. Ashley's defense attorney argued that she suffers from “battered woman syndrome”.

Conviction

After six days of trial, on July 30, 2024, a jury found Ashley guilty of the lesser offense of manslaughter with a firearm. A sentencing date has not yet been set; she faces up to 30 years in prison.

Reactions

The murder and Ashley's imprisonment attracted national media. When the murder trial was presented, received major media coverage, becoming a high-profile trial in Florida.

The case is known by the media as the "Black Swan murder", in honor of the 2010 film Black Swan, a story of a tortured artist whose quest for perfection leads to mental instability since Ashley was a ballet dancer and former owner of a dance academy, which inspired the nickname.

Kim Philby Part II

 

Washington, D.C.

In September 1949, the Philbys arrived in the United States. Officially, his post was that of First Secretary to the British Embassy; in reality, he served as chief British intelligence representative in Washington. His office oversaw a large amount of urgent and top secret communications between Washington and London. Philby was also responsible for liaising with the CIA and promoting "more aggressive Anglo-American intelligence operations". A leading figure within the CIA was Philby's wary former colleague, James Jesus Angleton, with whom he once again found himself working closely. Angleton remained suspicious of Philby but lunched with him every week in Washington.

A more serious threat to Philby's position had come to light. During the summer of 1945, a Soviet cipher clerk had reused a one-time pad to transmit intelligence traffic. This mistake made it possible to break the normally impregnable code. Contained in the traffic (intercepted and decrypted as part of the Venona project) was information that documents had been sent to Moscow from the British embassy in Washington. The intercepted messages revealed that the embassy source (identified as "Homer") traveled to New York City to meet his Soviet contact twice a week. Philby had been briefed on the situation shortly before reaching Washington in 1949; it was clear to Philby that the agent was Maclean, who worked in the embassy at the time and whose wife, Melinda, lived in New York. Philby had to help discover the identity of "Homer", but also wished to protect Maclean.

In January 1950, on evidence provided by the Venona intercepts, Soviet atomic spy Klaus Fuchs was arrested. His arrest led to others: Harry Gold, a courier with whom Fuchs had worked David Greenglass, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The investigation into the embassy leak continued and the stress of it was exacerbated by the arrival in Washington, in October 1950, of Burgess—Philby's unstable and dangerously alcoholic fellow spy.

Burgess, who had been given a post as Second Secretary at the British Embassy, took up residence in the Philby family home and rapidly set about causing offence to all and sundry. Philby's wife resented him and disliked his presence; Americans were offended by his "natural superciliousness" and "utter contempt for the whole pyramid of values, attitudes, and courtesies of the American way of life". J. Edgar Hoover complained that Burgess used British embassy automobiles to avoid arrest when he cruised Washington in pursuit of homosexual encounters. His dissolution had a troubling effect on Philby; the morning after a particularly disastrous and drunken party, a guest returning to collect his car heard voices upstairs and found "Kim and Guy in the bedroom drinking champagne. They had already been down to the Embassy but being unable to work had come back".

Burgess' presence was awkward for Philby, yet it was potentially dangerous for Philby to leave him unsupervised. The situation in Washington was tense. From April 1950, Maclean had been the prime suspect in the investigation into the embassy leak. Philby had undertaken to devise an escape plan that would warn Maclean, in England, of the intense suspicion he was under and arrange for him to flee. Burgess had to get to London to warn Maclean, who was under surveillance. In early May 1951, Burgess got three speeding tickets in a single day—then pleaded diplomatic immunity, causing an official complaint to be made to the British ambassador. Burgess was sent back to England, where he met Maclean in his London club.

The SIS planned to interrogate Maclean on 28 May 1951. On 23 May, concerned that Maclean had not yet fled, Philby wired Burgess, ostensibly about his Lincoln convertible that had been abandoned in the embassy car park. "If he did not act at once it would be too late," the telegram read, "because [Philby] would send his car to the scrap heap. There was nothing more [he] could do." On 25 May, Burgess drove Maclean from his home at Tatsfield, Surrey, to Southampton, where both boarded the steamship Falaise to France and then proceeded to Moscow.

Public denials

Burgess had intended to aid Maclean in his escape, not accompany him in it. The "affair of the missing diplomats," as it was referred to before Burgess and Maclean surfaced in Moscow, attracted a great deal of public attention, and Burgess' disappearance, which identified him as complicit in Maclean's espionage, deeply compromised Philby's position. Under a cloud of suspicion raised by his highly visible and intimate association with Burgess, Philby returned to London. There, he underwent MI5 interrogation aimed at ascertaining whether he had acted as a "third man" in Burgess and Maclean's spy ring. In July 1951, Philby resigned from MI6, preempting his all-but-inevitable dismissal.

Even after his departure from MI6, suspicion towards Philby continued. Interrogated repeatedly regarding his intelligence work and his connection with Burgess, he continued to deny that he had acted as a Soviet agent. From 1952, Philby struggled to find work as a journalist, eventually—in August 1954—accepting a position with a diplomatic newsletter called the Fleet Street Letter. Lacking access to material of value and out of touch with Soviet intelligence, he all but ceased to operate as a Soviet agent.

On 25 October 1955, following revelations in The New York Times, Labour MP Marcus Lipton used parliamentary privilege to ask Prime Minister Anthony Eden if he was determined "to cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr Harold Philby..." This was reported in the British press, leading Philby to threaten legal action against Lipton if he repeated his accusations outside Parliament. Lipton later withdrew his comments. This retraction came about when Philby was officially cleared by Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan on 7 November. The minister told the House of Commons, "I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called 'Third Man', if indeed there was one." Following this, Philby gave a press conference in his mother's London flat in which—calmly, confidently, and without the stammer he had struggled with since childhood—he reiterated his innocence, declaring, "I have never been a communist."

Return to journalism

After being exonerated, Philby was no longer employed by MI6 and Soviet intelligence lost all contact with him. In August 1956 he was sent to Beirut as a Middle East correspondent for The Observer and The Economist. There, his journalism served as cover for renewed work for MI6. He wrote under his own name and under the pen name "Charles Garner" when writing about subjects he considered too "fluffy"(distasteful), for example the subject of Arab slave girls.

In Lebanon, Philby at first lived in Mahalla Jamil, his father's large household located in the village of Ajaltoun, just outside Beirut. Following the departure of his father and stepbrothers for Saudi Arabia, he continued to live alone in Ajaltoun, but took a flat in Beirut after beginning an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the wife of New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following the death of his second wife in 1957 and Eleanor's subsequent divorce from Brewer, the two were married in London in 1959 and set up house together in Beirut. From 1960, Philby's formerly marginal work as a journalist became more substantial and he frequently travelled throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Yemen.

Defection to Russia

In 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn, a major in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, defected to the United States from his diplomatic post in Helsinki. Golitsyn offered the CIA revelations of Soviet agents within American and British intelligence services. Following his debriefing in the US, Golitsyn was sent to SIS for further questioning. The head of MI6, Dick White, only recently transferred from MI5, had suspected Philby as the "third man". Golitsyn proceeded to confirm White's suspicions about Philby's role. Nicholas Elliott, an MI6 officer recently stationed in Beirut who was a friend of Philby's and had previously believed in his innocence, was tasked with attempting to secure his full confession.

It is unclear whether Philby had been alerted, but Eleanor noted that as 1962 wore on, expressions of tension in his life "became worse and were reflected in bouts of deep depression and drinking". She recalled returning home to Beirut from a sight-seeing trip in Jordan to find Philby "hopelessly drunk and incoherent with grief on the terrace of the flat," mourning the death of a little pet fox that had fallen from the balcony. When Elliott met Philby in late 1962, the first time since Golitsyn's defection, he found Philby too drunk to stand and with a bandaged head; he had fallen repeatedly and cracked his skull on a bathroom radiator, requiring stitches.

Philby told Elliott that he was "half expecting" to see him. Elliott confronted him, saying, "I once looked up to you, Kim. My God, how I despise you now. I hope you've enough decency left to understand why." Prompted by Elliott's accusations, Philby confirmed the charges of espionage and described his intelligence activities on behalf of the Soviets. However, when Elliott asked him to sign a written statement, he hesitated and requested a delay in the interrogation. Another meeting was scheduled to take place in the last week of January. It has since been suggested that the whole confrontation with Elliott had been a charade to convince the KGB that Philby had to be brought back to Moscow, where he could serve as a British penetration agent of Moscow Central.

On the evening of 23 January 1963, Philby vanished from Beirut, failing to meet his wife for a dinner party at the home of Glencairn Balfour Paul, First Secretary at the British Embassy. The Dolmatova, a Soviet freighter bound for Odessa, had left Beirut that morning so abruptly that cargo was left scattered over the docks; Philby claimed that he left Beirut on board this ship.[79] However, others maintain that he escaped through Syria, overland to Soviet Armenia and thence to the Russian SFSR.

It was not until 1 July 1963 that Philby's flight to Moscow was officially confirmed. On 30 July, Soviet officials announced that they had granted him political asylum in the Soviet Union, along with Soviet citizenship. When the news broke, MI6 came under criticism for failing to anticipate and block Philby's defection, though Elliott was to claim he could not have prevented Philby's flight. Journalist Ben Macintyre, author of several works on espionage, speculated that MI6 might have left open the opportunity for Philby to flee to Moscow to avoid an embarrassing public trial. Philby himself thought this might have been the case.

Moscow

Upon his arrival in Moscow in January 1963, Philby discovered that he was not a colonel in the KGB, as he had been led to believe. He was paid 500 rubles a month (the average Soviet salary in 1960 was Rbls 80.60 a month and Rbls 122 in 1970) and his family was not immediately able to join him in exile. Philby was under virtual house arrest and under guard, with all visitors screened by the KGB. It was ten years before he was given a minor role in the training of KGB recruits. Mikhail Lyubimov, his closest KGB contact, explained that this was to guard his safety, but later admitted that the real reason was the KGB's fear that Philby would return to London.

Secret files released to the National Archives in late 2020 indicated that the British government had intentionally conducted a campaign to keep Philby's spying confidential "to minimise political embarrassment" and prevent the publication of his memoirs, according to a report by The Guardian. Nonetheless, the information was publicized in 1967 when he granted an interview to Murray Sayle of The Times in Moscow. Philby confirmed that he had worked for the KGB and that "his purpose in life was to destroy imperialism".

In Moscow, Philby occupied himself by writing his memoirs, which were published in Britain in 1968 under the title My Silent War; they were not published in the Soviet Union until 1980. In the book, Philby says that his loyalties were always with the communists; he considered himself not to have been a double agent but "a straight penetration agent working in the Soviet interest." Philby continued to read The Times, which was not generally available in the USSR, listened to the BBC World Service and was an avid follower of cricket.

Philby's award of the Order of the British Empire was cancelled and annulled in 1965. Though he claimed publicly in January 1988 that he did not regret his decisions and that he missed nothing about England except some friends, Colman's mustard and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, his wife Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova later described Philby as "disappointed in many ways" by what he found in Moscow. "He saw people suffering too much," but he consoled himself by arguing that "the ideals were right but the way they were carried out was wrong. The fault lay with the people in charge." Pukhova said, "He was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. He said, 'Why do old people live so badly here? After all, they won the war.'" Philby's drinking and depression continued; according to Rufina, he had attempted suicide by slashing his wrists sometime in the 1960s.

Philby found work in the early 1970s in the KGB's Active Measures Department churning out fabricated documents. Working from genuine unclassified and public CIA or US State Department documents, Philby inserted "sinister" paragraphs regarding US plans. The KGB would stamp the documents "top secret" and begin their circulation. For the Soviets, Philby was an invaluable asset, ensuring the correct use of idiomatic and diplomatic English phrases in their disinformation efforts.

Personal life

In February 1934, Philby married Litzi Friedmann, an Austrian Jewish communist whom he had met in Vienna. They subsequently moved to Britain; however, as Philby assumed the role of a fascist sympathizer, they separated. Litzi lived in Paris before returning to London for the duration of the war; she ultimately settled in East Germany.

While working as a correspondent in Spain, Philby began an affair with Frances Doble, Lady Lindsay-Hogg, an actress and aristocratic divorcée who was an admirer of Franco and Hitler. They travelled together in Spain through August 1939.

In 1940, Philby began living with Aileen Furse in London. Their first three children, Josephine, John and Tommy, were born between 1941 and 1944. In 1946, Philby arranged a divorce from Litzi. He and Aileen were married on 25 September 1946, while Aileen was pregnant with their fourth child, Miranda. Their fifth child, Harry George, was born in 1950. Aileen suffered from psychiatric problems, which grew more severe during the period of poverty and suspicion following the flight of Burgess and Maclean. She lived separately from Philby, settling with their children in Crowborough while he lived first in London and later in Beirut. Weakened by alcoholism and frequent illness, she died of influenza in December 1957. Through his son John, Philby's granddaughter is the author Charlotte Philby.

In 1956, Philby began an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the wife of New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following Eleanor's divorce, the couple married in January 1959. After Philby defected in 1963, Eleanor visited him in Moscow. In November 1964, after a visit to the US, she returned, intending to settle permanently. In her absence, Philby had begun an affair with Donald Maclean's wife, Melinda. He and Eleanor divorced and she departed Moscow in May 1965. Melinda left Maclean and briefly lived with Philby in Moscow. In 1968, she returned to Maclean.

In 1971, Philby married Rufina Pukhova, a 39-year-old Russo-Polish woman, with whom he lived until his death in 1988.

Death

Philby died of heart failure in Moscow in 1988. He was given a hero's funeral.

Posthumous awards

The USSR posthumously awarded numerous Soviet medals to Philby:

 Order of Lenin

 Order of the Red Banner

 Order of Friendship of Peoples

 Order of the Great Patriotic War (First class)

 Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945".

Motivation

In a 1981 lecture to the Stasi, the East German intelligence agency, Philby attributed the failure of British intelligence to unmask him as due in great part to these things: British class system - it was inconceivable that one "born into the ruling class of the British Empire" would be a traitor, to the amateurish and incompetent nature of the British organisation, and because of so many in MI6 having so much to lose if he was proven to be a spy. He had the policy of never confessing; a document in his own handwriting was dismissed as a forgery.

Philby said that at the time of his recruitment as a spy there were no prospects of his being useful; he was instructed to make his way into the Secret Service, which took years, starting with journalism and building up contacts in the British establishment. He said that there was no discipline there; he made friends with the archivist, which enabled him for years to take secret documents home, many unrelated to his own work, and bring them back the next day; his handler photographed them overnight. When he was instructed to remove and replace his boss, Felix Cowgill, he asked if it was proposed "to shoot him or something" but was told to use bureaucratic intrigue. He said: "It was a very dirty story—but after all our work does imply getting dirty hands from time to time but we do it for a cause that is not dirty in any way". Commenting on his sabotage of the operation to secretly send thousands of anti-communists into Albania to overthrow the communist government, Philby defended his actions by saying that he had helped prevent another world war.

 

 

 

Kim Philby Part I

 

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912 – 11 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during the Second World War and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been the most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.

Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. After leaving Cambridge, Philby worked as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of France. In 1940 he began working for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). By the end of the Second World War he had become a high-ranking member. In 1949 Philby was appointed first secretary to the British Embassy in Washington and served as chief British liaison with American intelligence agencies. During his career as an intelligence officer, he passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union, including the Albanian Subversion, a scheme to overthrow the pro-Soviet government of Communist Albania.

Philby was suspected of tipping off two other spies under suspicion of Soviet espionage, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, both of whom subsequently fled to Moscow in May 1951. Under suspicion himself, Philby resigned from MI6 in July 1951 but was publicly exonerated by then-Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan in 1955. He resumed his career as both a journalist and a spy for MI6 in Beirut, but was forced to defect to Moscow after finally being unmasked as a Soviet agent in 1963. Philby lived in Moscow until his death in 1988.

Early life

Kim Philby was born in Ambala, Punjab, British India, to author and explorer St John Philby and his wife, Dora Johnston. A member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) at the time of Philby's birth, St John later became a civil servant in Mesopotamia and advisor to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia.

Nicknamed "Kim" after the boy-spy in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim, Philby attended Aldro preparatory school, an all-boys school located in Shackleford, Surrey. In his early teens, he spent some time with the Bedouin in the Arabian desert] Following in the footsteps of his father, Philby continued to Westminster School, which he left in 1928 at the age of 16. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history and economics. He graduated in 1933 with a 2:1 degree in Economics.

At Cambridge, Philby exhibited a "leaning towards communism", in the words of his father, who went on to write: "The only serious question is whether Kim definitely intended to be disloyal to the government while in its service." One of the first things Philby did in Cambridge was joining the Cambridge University Socialist Society, attending their meetings but taking little part in their proceedings. However, following the Labour Party's defeat in the 1931 general election, he took a more active role in the society and served as its treasurer between 1932 and 1933. Upon his graduation, Maurice Dobb, a tutor in economics at Trinity, introduced Philby to the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism, an organization based in Paris, which attempted to aid victims of Nazi Germany and provide education on oppositions to fascism. The organization was one of several fronts operated by German communist Willi Münzenberg, a member of the Reichstag who had fled to France in 1933.

Communism and recruitment

While working to aid German refugees in Vienna, Philby met Litzi Friedmann (born Alice Kohlmann), a young Austrian communist of Hungarian Jewish origins. Philby admired the strength of her political convictions and later recalled that at their first meeting:

A frank and direct person, Litzi came out and asked me how much money I had. I replied £100, which I hoped would last me about a year in Vienna. She made some calculations and announced, "That will leave you an excess of £25. You can give that to the International Organisation for Aid for Revolutionaries. We need it desperately." I liked her determination.

Philby acted as a courier between Vienna and Prague, paying for the train tickets out of his remaining £75 and using his British passport to evade suspicion. He also delivered clothes and money to refugees. Following the Austrofascist victory in the Austrian Civil War, Philby and Friedmann married in February 1934, enabling her to escape to the United Kingdom with him two months later.

It is possible that it was a Viennese-born friend of Friedmann's in London, Edith Tudor Hart–herself, at this time, a Soviet agent–who first approached Philby about the possibility of working for Soviet intelligence. In early 1934 Arnold Deutsch, another Soviet agent, was sent to University College London under the cover of a research appointment, but in reality had been assigned to recruit the brightest students from Britain's top universities. Philby had come to the Soviets' notice earlier that year in Vienna, where he had been involved in demonstrations against the government of Engelbert Dollfuss. In June 1934, Deutsch recruited Philby to the Soviet intelligence services. Philby later recalled:

Lizzy came home one evening and told me that she had arranged for me to meet a "man of decisive importance". I questioned her about it but she would give me no details. The rendezvous took place in Regents Park. The man described himself as Otto. I discovered much later from a photograph in MI5 files that the name he went by was Arnold Deutsch. I think that he was of Czech origin; about 5 ft 7in, stout, with blue eyes and light curly hair. Though a convinced Communist, he had a strong humanistic streak. He hated London, adored Paris, and spoke of it with deeply loving affection. He was a man of considerable cultural background."

Philby recommended to Deutsch several of his Cambridge contemporaries, including Donald Maclean, who at the time was working in the Foreign Office, as well as Guy Burgess, despite his personal reservations about Burgess' erratic personality.

Journalism

In London, Philby began a career as a journalist. He took a job at a monthly magazine, the World Review of Reviews, for which he wrote a large number of articles and letters (sometimes under a variety of pseudonyms) and occasionally served as "acting editor." Meanwhile, Philby and Friedmann separated. They remained friends for many years following their separation and divorced only in 1946, following the end of the Second World War. When the Germans threatened to overrun Paris in 1940, where she was then living at this time, Philby arranged for Friedmann's escape to Britain.

In 1936, Philby began working at a failing trade magazine, the Anglo-Russian Trade Gazette, as editor. After the magazine's owner changed the paper's role to covering Anglo-German trade, Philby engaged in a concerted effort to make contact with Germans such as Joachim von Ribbentrop, at that time the German ambassador in London. He became a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, an organization aiming at rebuilding and supporting a friendly relationship between Germany and the United Kingdom. The Anglo-German Fellowship, at this time, was supported both by the British and German governments, and Philby made many trips to Berlin.

In February 1937, Philby travelled to Spain, then embroiled in a bloody civil war triggered by the coup d'état of Falangist forces under General Francisco Franco against the government of President Manuel Azaña. Philby worked at first as a freelance journalist; from May 1937, he served as a first-hand correspondent for The Times, reporting from the headquarters of the pro-Franco forces in Seville. He also began working for both the Soviet and British intelligence, which usually consisted of posting letters in a crude code to a fictitious girlfriend, Mlle Dupont in Paris, for the Soviets. He used a simpler system for MI6, delivering post at Hendaye, France, for the British embassy in Paris. When visiting Paris after the war, he was shocked to discover that the address that he used for Mlle Dupont was that of the Soviet embassy. His controller in Paris, a Latvian national named Ozolin-Haskins (code name Pierre), was shot in Moscow in 1937 during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. His successor, Boris Bazarov, suffered the same fate two years later.

Both the British and the Soviets were interested in analyzing the combat performance of the new Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and Panzer I and Panzer II tanks deployed with Falangist forces in Spain. Philby told the British, after a direct question to Franco, that German troops would never be permitted to cross Spain to attack Gibraltar. Philby's Soviet controller at the time, Theodore Maly, reported in April 1937 to the NKVD that he had personally briefed Philby on the need "to discover the system of guarding Franco and his entourage". Maly was one of the Soviet Union's most powerful and influential illegal controllers and recruiters. With the goal of potentially arranging Franco's assassination, Philby was instructed to report on vulnerable points in Franco's security and recommend ways to gain access to him and his staff. However, such an act was never a real possibility; upon debriefing Philby in London on 24 May 1937, Maly wrote to the NKVD, "Though devoted and ready to sacrifice himself, [Philby] does not possess the physical courage and other qualities necessary for this [assassination] attempt."

In December 1937, during the Battle of Teruel, a Republican shell hit just in front of the car in which Philby was traveling along with correspondents Edward J. Neil of the Associated Press, Bradish Johnson of Newsweek and Ernest Sheepshanks of Reuters. Johnson was killed outright, and Neil and Sheepshanks soon died of their injuries. Philby suffered only a minor head wound. As a result of this accident, Philby, who was well-liked by the Nationalist forces whose victories he trumpeted, was awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco on 2 March 1938. Philby found that the award proved helpful in obtaining access to fascist circles:

...there had been a lot of criticism of British journalists from Franco officers who seemed to think that the British in general must be a lot of Communists because so many were fighting with the International Brigades. After I had been wounded and decorated by Franco himself, I became known as 'the English-decorated-by-Franco' and all sorts of doors opened to me.

In 1938, Walter Krivitsky (born Samuel Ginsberg), a former GRU officer in Paris who had defected to France the previous year, travelled to the United States and published an account of his time in "Stalin's secret service". He testified before the Dies Committee (later to become the House Un-American Activities Committee) regarding Soviet espionage within the US. In 1940 he was interviewed by MI5 officers in London, led by Jane Archer. Krivitsky claimed that two Soviet intelligence agents had penetrated the Foreign Office and that a third Soviet intelligence agent had worked as a journalist for a British newspaper in Spain. No connection with Philby was made at the time, and Krivitsky was found shot in a Washington hotel room the following year.

Alexander Orlov (born Lev Feldbin; code-name Swede), Philby's controller in Madrid, who had once met him in France, also defected. To protect his family, still living in the Soviet Union, Orlov said nothing about Philby, an agreement Stalin respected. On a short trip back from Spain, Philby tried to recruit Flora Solomon as a Soviet agent; she was the daughter of a Russian banker and gold dealer, a relative of the Rothschilds and wife of a London stockbroker. At the same time, Burgess was trying to get her into MI6. But the resident (Russian term for spymaster) in France, probably Pierre at this time, suggested to Moscow that he suspected Philby's motives. Solomon introduced Philby to the woman who would become Philby's second wife, Aileen Furse. Solomon went to work for the British retailer Marks & Spencer.

British intelligence career

World War II

In July 1939, Philby returned to The Times office in London. When Britain declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939, Philby's contact with his Soviet controllers was lost and he failed to attend the meetings that were necessary for his work. During the Phoney War from September 1939 until the Dunkirk evacuation, Philby worked as The Times' first-hand correspondent with the British Expeditionary Force headquarters. After being evacuated from Boulogne on 21 May, he returned to France in mid-June and began representing The Daily Telegraph in addition to The Times. He briefly reported from Cherbourg and Brest, sailing for Plymouth less than 24 hours before France surrendered to Germany in June 1940.

In 1940, on the recommendation of Burgess, Philby joined MI6's Section D, a secret organisation charged with investigating how enemies might be attacked through non-military means. Philby and Burgess ran a training course for would-be saboteurs at Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire. His time at Section D, however, was short-lived; the "tiny, ineffective, and slightly comic" section was soon absorbed by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the summer of 1940. Burgess was arrested in September for drunken driving and was subsequently fired, while Philby was appointed as an instructor on clandestine propaganda at the SOE's finishing school for agents at the Estate of Lord Montagu in Beaulieu, Hampshire.

Philby's role as an instructor of sabotage agents again brought him to the attention of the Soviet Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU). This role allowed him to conduct sabotage and instruct agents on how to properly conduct sabotage. The new London resident, Ivan Chichayev (code-name Vadim), re-established contact and asked for a list of British agents being trained to enter the Soviet Union. Philby replied that none had been sent and that none was undergoing training at that time. This statement was underlined twice in red and marked with two question marks, clearly indicating confusion and questioning of this, by disbelieving staff at Moscow Central in the Lubyanka, according to Genrikh Borovik, who saw the telegrams much later in the KGB archives.

Philby provided Stalin with advance warning of Operation Barbarossa and of the Japanese intention to strike into Southeast Asia instead of attacking the Soviet Union as Adolf Hitler had urged. The first was ignored as a provocation, but the second, when confirmed by the Russo-German journalist and spy Richard Sorge in Tokyo, contributed to Stalin's decision to begin transporting troops from the Far East in time for the counteroffensive around Moscow.

By September 1941, Philby began working for Section Five of MI6, a section responsible for offensive counter-intelligence. On the strength of his knowledge and experience of Franco's Spain, he was put in charge of the subsection that dealt with Spain and Portugal. This entailed responsibility for a network of undercover operatives in several cities such as Madrid, Gibraltar, Lisbon and Tangier. At this time, the German Abwehr was active in Spain, particularly around the British naval base of Gibraltar, which its agents hoped to watch with many detection stations to track Allied supply ships in the Western Mediterranean. Thanks to British counter-intelligence efforts, of which Philby's Iberian subsection formed a significant part, the project (Abwehr code-name Bodden) never came to fruition.

During 1942–43, Philby's responsibilities were then expanded to include North Africa and Italy, and he was made the deputy head of Section Five under Major Felix Cowgill, an army officer seconded to SIS. In early 1944, as it became clear that the Soviet Union was likely to once more prove a significant adversary to Britain, SIS re-activated Section Nine, which dealt with anti-communist efforts. In late 1944 Philby, on instructions from his Soviet handler, maneuvered through the system successfully to replace Cowgill as head of Section Nine. Charles Arnold-Baker, an officer of German birth (born Wolfgang von Blumenthal) working for Richard Gatty in Belgium and later transferred to the Norwegian/Swedish border, voiced many suspicions of Philby and his intentions but was repeatedly ignored.

While working in Section Five, Philby had become acquainted with James Jesus Angleton, a young American counter-intelligence officer working in liaison with SIS in London. Angleton, later chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Counterintelligence Staff, became suspicious of Philby when he failed to pass on information relating to a British agent executed by the Gestapo in Germany. It later emerged that the agent—known as Schmidt—had also worked as an informant for the Rote Kapelle organisation, which sent information to both London and Moscow. Nevertheless, Angleton's suspicions went unheard.

In late summer 1943, the SIS provided the GRU an official report on the activities of German agents in Bulgaria and Romania, soon to be liberated by the Soviet Union. The NKVD complained to Cecil Barclay, the SIS representative in Moscow, that information had been withheld. Barclay reported the complaint to London. Philby claimed to have overheard discussion of this by chance and sent a report to his controller. This turned out to be identical with Barclay's dispatch, convincing the NKVD that Philby had seen the full Barclay report. A similar lapse occurred with a report from the Japanese embassy in Moscow sent to Tokyo. The NKVD received the same report from Sorge but with an extra paragraph claiming that Hitler might seek a separate peace with the Soviet Union. These lapses by Philby aroused intense suspicion in Moscow.

Elena Modrzhinskaya at GUGB headquarters in Moscow assessed all material from the Cambridge Five. She noted that they produced an extraordinary wealth of information on German war plans but next to nothing on the repeated question of British penetration of Soviet intelligence in either London or Moscow. Philby had repeated his claim that there were no such agents. She asked, "Could the SIS really be such fools they failed to notice suitcase-loads of papers leaving the office? Could they have overlooked Philby's Communist wife?" Modrzhinskaya concluded that all were double agents, working essentially for the British.

A more serious incident occurred in August 1945, when Konstantin Volkov, an NKVD agent and vice-consul in Istanbul, requested political asylum in Britain for himself and his wife. For a large sum of money, Volkov offered the names of three Soviet agents inside Britain, two of whom worked in the Foreign Office and a third who worked in counterintelligence in London. Philby was given the task of dealing with Volkov by British intelligence. He warned the Soviets of the attempted defection and travelled to Istanbul—ostensibly to handle the matter on behalf of SIS but, in reality, to ensure that Volkov had been neutralized. By the time he arrived in Turkey, three weeks later, Volkov had been removed to Moscow.

The intervention of Philby in the affair and the subsequent capture of Volkov by the Soviets might have seriously compromised Philby's position. Volkov's defection had been discussed with the British embassy in Ankara on telephones which turned out to have been tapped by Soviet intelligence. Volkov had insisted that all written communications about him take place by bag rather than by telegraph, causing a delay in reaction that might plausibly have given the Soviets time to uncover his plans. Philby was thus able to evade blame and detection.

A month later Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in Ottawa, took political asylum in Canada and gave the Royal Canadian Mounted Police names of agents operating within the British Empire that were known to him. When Jane Archer (who had interviewed Krivitsky) was appointed to Philby's section he moved her off investigatory work in case she became aware of his past. He later wrote "she had got a tantalizing scrap of information about a young English journalist whom the Soviet intelligence had sent to Spain during the Civil War. And here she was plunked down in my midst!"

Years after the war, Sir Hardy Amies, who had served as an intelligence officer, recalled that Philby was in his mess and on being asked what the infamous spy was like, Hardy quipped, "He was always trying to get information out of me—most significantly the name of my tailor". Philby, "employed in a Department of the Foreign Office", was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946.

Istanbul

In February 1947, Philby was appointed head of British intelligence for Turkey and posted to Istanbul with his second wife, Aileen, and their family. His public position was that of First Secretary at the British Consulate; in reality, his intelligence work required overseeing British agents and working with the Turkish security services.

Philby planned to infiltrate five or six groups of émigrés into Soviet Armenia or Soviet Georgia, but efforts among the expatriate community in Paris produced just two recruits. Turkish intelligence took them to a border crossing into Georgia but soon afterwards shots were heard. Another effort was made using a Turkish gulet for a seaborne landing, but it never left port. Philby was implicated in a similar campaign in Communist Albania. Colonel David Smiley, an aristocratic Guards officer who had helped Enver Hoxha and his communist guerillas to liberate Albania, now prepared to remove Hoxha. He trained Albanian commandos—some of whom were former Nazi collaborators—in Libya or Malta. From 1947, they infiltrated the southern mountains to build support for former King Zog.

The first three missions, overland from Greece, were trouble-free. Larger numbers were landed by sea and air under Operation Valuable, which continued until 1951, increasingly under the influence of the newly formed CIA. Stewart Menzies, head of SIS, disliked the idea, which was promoted by former SOE men now in SIS. Most infiltrators were caught by the Sigurimi, the Albanian Security Service. Clearly there had been leaks and Philby was later suspected as one of the leakers. His own comment was, "I do not say that people were happy under the regime but the CIA underestimated the degree of control that the Authorities had over the country." Philby later wrote of his attitude towards the operation in Albania:

The agents we sent into Albania were armed men intent on murder, sabotage and assassination ... They knew the risks they were running. I was serving the interests of the Soviet Union and those interests required that these men were defeated. To the extent that I helped defeat them, even if it caused their deaths, I have no regrets.

Philby's wife had suffered from psychological problems since childhood which caused her to inflict injuries upon herself. In 1948, troubled by Philby's heavy drinking and frequent depressions and his life in Istanbul, she experienced a breakdown, staging an accident and injecting herself with urine and insulin to cause skin disfigurations. She was sent to a clinic in Switzerland to recover. Upon her return to Istanbul in late 1948, she was badly burned in an incident with a charcoal stove and returned to Switzerland. Shortly afterward, Philby was moved to the job as Chief SIS representative in Washington, with his family.

Astor Place Riots

 

The Astor Place Riot occurred on May 10, 1849, at the now-demolished Astor Opera House in Manhattan and left between 22 and 31 rioters dead, and more than 120 people injured. It was the deadliest to that date of a number of civic disturbances in Manhattan, which generally pitted immigrants and nativists against each other, or together against the wealthy who controlled the city's police and the state militia.

The riot resulted in the largest number of civilian casualties due to military action in the United States since the American Revolutionary War and led to increased police militarization (for example, riot control training and larger, heavier batons). Its ostensible genesis was a dispute between Edwin Forrest, one of the best-known American actors of that time, and William Charles Macready, a similarly notable English actor, which largely revolved around which of them, was better than the other at acting the major roles of Shakespeare.

Background

In the first half of the 19th century, theatre as entertainment was a mass phenomenon, and theatres were the main gathering places in most towns and cities. As a result, star actors amassed an immensely loyal following, comparable to modern celebrities or sports stars. At the same time, audiences had always treated theaters as places to make their feelings known, not just towards the actors, but towards their fellow theatergoers of different classes or political persuasions, and theatre riots were not a rare occurrence in New York.

In the early- to mid-19th century, the American theatre was dominated by British actors and managers. The rise of Edwin Forrest as the first American star and the fierce partisanship of his supporters was an early sign of a home-grown American entertainment business. The riot had been brewing for 80 or more years, since the Stamp Act riots of 1765, when an entire theatre was torn apart while British actors were performing on stage. British actors touring around the United States had found themselves the focus of often violent anti-British anger, because of their prominence and the lack of other visiting targets.

The fact that both Forrest and Macready were specialists in Shakespeare can be ascribed to Bard's reputation in the 19th century as the icon of English culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for instance, wrote in his journal that beings on other planets probably called the Earth "Shakespeare." Shakespeare's plays were not just the favorites of the educated: in gold rush California, miners whiled away the harsh winter months by sitting around campfires and acting out Shakespeare's plays from memory; his words were well known throughout every stratum of society.

Genesis

The roots of the riot were multifold, but had three main strands:

A dispute between Macready, who had the reputation as the greatest British actor of his generation, and Forrest, the first real American theatrical star. Their friendship became a virulent theatrical rivalry, in part because of the poisonous Anglo-American relations of the 1840s. The question of who was the greater actor became a notorious bone of contention in the British and, particularly, the American media, which filled columns with discussions of their respective merits.

A growing sense of cultural alienation from Britain among mainly working-class Americans, along with Irish immigrants; though nativist Americans were hostile to Irish immigrants, both found a common cause against the British.

A class struggle between those groups who largely supported Forrest, and the largely Anglophile upper classes, which supported Macready. The two actors became figureheads for Britain and the United States, and their rivalry came to encapsulate two opposing views about the future of American culture.

According to historian Nigel Cliff in The Shakespeare Riots, it was ironic that both were famous as Shakespearean actors: in an America that had yet to establish its own theatrical traditions, one way to prove its cultural prowess was to do Shakespeare as well as the British, and even to claim that Shakespeare, had he been alive at the time, would have been, at heart at least, an American.

Proximate causes

Macready and Forrest each toured the other's country twice before the riot broke out. On Macready's second visit to America, Forrest had taken to pursuing him around the country and appearing in the same plays to challenge him. Given the tenor of the time, most newspapers supported the "home-grown" star Forrest. On Forrest's second visit to London, he was less popular than on his first trip, and he could only explain it to himself by deciding that Macready had maneuvered against him. He went to a performance of Macready playing Hamlet and loudly hissed him. For his part, Macready had announced that Forrest was without "taste". The ensuing scandal followed Macready on his third and last trip to America, where half the carcass of a dead sheep was thrown at him on the stage. The climate worsened when Forrest instigated divorce proceedings against his English wife for immoral conduct, and the verdict came down against Forrest on the day that Macready arrived in New York for his farewell tour.

Forrest's connections were substantial with working people and the gangs of New York: he had made his debut at the Bowery Theatre, which had come to cater mostly to a working-class audience, drawn largely from the violent, immigrant-heavy Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan a few blocks to the west. Forrest's muscular frame and impassioned delivery were deemed admirably "American" by his working-class fans, especially compared to Macready's more subdued and genteel style. Wealthier theatergoers, to avoid mingling with the immigrants and the Five Points crowd, had built the Astor Place Opera House near the junction of Broadway (where the entertainment venues catered to the upper classes) and the Bowery (the working-class entertainment area). With its dress code of kid gloves and white vests, the very existence of the Astor Opera House was taken as a provocation by populist Americans for whom the theater was traditionally the gathering place for all classes.

Macready was scheduled to appear in Macbeth at the Opera House, which had opened itself to less elevated entertainment, unable to survive on a full season of opera, and was operating with the name "Astor Place Theatre". Forrest was scheduled to perform Macbeth on the same night, only a few blocks away at the huge Broadway Theater.

Riot

On May 7, 1849, three nights before the riot, Forrest's supporters bought hundreds of tickets to the top level of the Astor Opera House and brought Macready's performance of Macbeth to a grinding halt by throwing at the stage rotten eggs, potatoes, apples, lemons, shoes, bottles of stinking liquid, and ripped up seats. The performers persisted in the face of hissing, groans, and cries of "Shame, shame!" and "Down with the codfish aristocracy!", but were forced to perform in pantomime, as they could not make themselves heard over the crowd. Meanwhile, at Forrest's May 7 performance, the audience rose and cheered when Forrest spoke Macbeth's line "What rhubarb, Senna or what purgative drug will scour these English hence?"

After his disastrous performance, Macready announced his intention to leave for Britain on the next boat, but he was persuaded to stay and perform again by a petition signed by 47 well-heeled New Yorkers – including authors Herman Melville and Washington Irving – who informed the actor that "the good sense and respect for order prevailing in this community will sustain you on the subsequent nights of your performance." On May 10, Macready once again took the stage as Macbeth.

On the day of the riot, police chief George Washington Matsell informed Caleb S. Woodhull, the new Whig mayor, that there was not sufficient manpower to quell a serious riot, and Woodhull called out the militia. General Charles Sandford assembled the state's Seventh Regiment in Washington Square Park, along with mounted troops, light artillery, and hussars, a total of 350 men who would be added to the 100 policemen outside the theater in support of the 150 inside. Additional policemen were assigned to protect the homes in the area of the city's "uppertens", the wealthy and elite.

Astor Place Riot

On the other side, similar preparations took place. Tammany Hall man Captain Isaiah Rynders was a fervent backer of Forrest and had been one of those behind the mobilization against Macready on May 7. He was determined to embarrass the newly ensconced Whig powers, and distributed handbills and posters in saloons and restaurants across the city, inviting working men and patriots to show their feelings about the British, asking "Shall Americans or English Rule This City?" Free tickets were handed out to Macready's May 10 show, as well as plans for where people should deploy.

By the time the play opened at 7:30 as scheduled, up to 10,000 people filled the streets around the theater. One of the most prominent among those who supported Forrest's cause was Ned Buntline, a dime novelist who was Rynders' chief assistant. Buntline and his followers had set up relays to bombard the theater with stones and fought running battles with the police. They and others inside tried (but failed) to set fire to the building, many of the anti-Macready ticket-holders having been screened and prevented from coming inside in the first place. The audience was in a state of siege; nonetheless, Macready finished the play, again in "dumb show", and only then slipped out in disguise.

Fearing they had lost control of the city, the authorities called out the troops, who arrived at 9:15, only to be jostled, attacked, and injured. Finally, the soldiers lined up and, after unheard warnings, opened fire, first into the air and then several times at point-blank range into the crowd. Many of those killed were innocent bystanders, and almost all of the casualties were from the working class; seven of the dead were Irish immigrants. Dozens of injured and dead were laid out in nearby saloons and shops, and the next morning mothers and wives combed the streets and morgues for their loved ones.

Fight between rioters and militia

The New York Tribune reported: "As one window after another cracked, the pieces of bricks and paving stones rattled in on the terraces and lobbies, the confusion increased, till the Opera House resembled a fortress besieged by an invading army rather than a place meant for the peaceful amusement of civilized community."

The next night, May 11, a meeting was called in City Hall Park which was attended by thousands, with speakers crying out for revenge against the authorities whose actions they held responsible for the fatalities. During the melée, a young boy was killed. An angry crowd headed up Broadway toward Astor Place and fought running battles with mounted troops from behind improvised barricades, but this time the authorities quickly got the upper hand.

Consequences

Between 22 and 31 rioters were killed, and 48 were wounded. Fifty to 70 policemen were injured. Of the militia, 141 were injured by the various missiles. Three judges presided over a related trial, including Charles Patrick Daly, a judge on the New York Court of Common Pleas, who pressed for convictions.

The city's elite were unanimous in their praise of the authorities for taking a hard line against the rioters. Publisher James Watson Webb wrote:

The promptness of the authorities in calling out the armed forces and the unwavering steadiness with which the citizens obeyed the order to fire on the assembled mob, was an excellent advertisement to the Capitalists of the old world, that they might send their property to New York and rely upon the certainty that it would be safe from the clutches of red republicanism, or chartists, or communionists of any description.

Astor Opera House did not survive its reputation as the "Massacre Opera House" at "DisAstor Place," as burlesques and minstrel shows called it. It began another season but soon gave up the ghost, the building eventually going to the New York Mercantile Library. The elite's need for an opera house was met with the opening of the Academy of Music, farther uptown at 15th Street and Irving Place, away from the working-class precincts and the rowdiness of the Bowery. Nevertheless, the creators of that theater learned at least one lesson from the riot and the demise of the Astor Opera House: the new venue was less strictly divided by class than the old one had been. Though Forrest's reputation was badly damaged, his heroic style of acting can be seen in the matinee idols of early Hollywood and performers such as John Barrymore.

According to Cliff, the riots furthered the process of class alienation and segregation in New York City and America; as part of that process, the entertainment world separated into "respectable" and "working-class" orbits. As professional actors gravitated to respectable theaters and vaudeville houses responded by mounting skits on "serious" Shakespeare, Shakespeare was gradually removed from popular culture into a new category of highbrow entertainment.

In popular culture

Richard Nelson's play Two Shakespearean Actors deals mainly with the events surrounding and leading up to the riot.

The riot was featured in a 2006 episode of Weekend Edition on NPR.

The riot is mentioned in Booth, a 2022 novel by Karen Joy Fowler. This novel tells the story of the Booth family of American Shakespearean actors whose members included John Wilkes Booth.

Murder of Laken Riley

 

On February 22, 2024, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student, was murdered while she was jogging at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Her body was found in Oconee Forest Park near Lake Herrick; her death was caused by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.

The perpetrator, José Antonio Ibarra, is a 26-year-old Venezuelan who had entered the United States illegally. He was arrested by UGA police and was charged with 10 charges, including felony murder, malice murder, false imprisonment, aggravated assault with intent to rape, and kidnapping. Ibarra was found guilty on all charges on November 20, 2024, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Riley's death made international news, generating extensive media attention. It sparked a debate over illegal immigration in the United States after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed Ibarra was not a U.S. citizen and was caught crossing the border but was released into the United States. On March 7, 2024, the House of Representatives passed an immigration bill named the Laken Riley Act, requiring federal detention of illegal immigrants who commit burglary or theft.

Victim

Laken Hope Riley was born on January 10, 2002, in Marietta, Georgia, to Jason Riley and Allyson Phillips. She had three siblings. In 2020, she graduated from River Ridge High School in Woodstock, Georgia, where she was a cross-country team member.

Riley, who was 22 years old at the time of her death, was a nursing student at Augusta University in Athens, Georgia, and had previously, attended the University of Georgia as an undergraduate. She was an active member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority.

Murder

On February 22, 2024, Riley went for a morning run at the University of Georgia (UGA). During her attack, Riley's phone called 911. Riley was attacked and killed between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., according to arrest warrants.

At 12:07 p.m., Riley's roommate reported her disappearance to the UGA police after she did not return. At 12:38 p.m., Riley's body was discovered by UGA police in Oconee Forest Park behind Lake Herrick. Her death was caused by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation, according to the Athens-Clarke County Coroner. UGA police described Riley's murder as a "crime of opportunity" and reported that the killer appeared to have acted alone. There had not been a murder on the university's campus since 1983.

Perpetrator

The perpetrator was 26-year-old José Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan man who had entered the United States illegally in September 2022, crossing the United States' southern border with Mexico near El Paso, Texas. He was apprehended by federal authorities after crossing the border, who subsequently released him into the country. Ibarra initially stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel migrant shelter in New York before taking a flight to Georgia. UGA police stated that he lived in an apartment complex about 1 mile (1.6 km) from the wooded area where Riley's body was federal and state officials had previously arrested in multiple jurisdictions. In September 2023, Ibarra was arrested in New York City and charged with "acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation." In October 2023, José and his brother, who was reported by authorities to be a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua who temporarily worked at UGA, were arrested by Athens police on theft charges; both were released after reportedly possessing stolen merchandise from a local Walmart. Ibarra had a bench warrant issued for his arrest in December 2023 after failing to appear in court in a shoplifting case in Georgia. ICE stated that it had missed the opportunity to detain Ibarra after an arrest in New York because he was released by New York officials before a detainer could be issued.

After Riley's death, Ibarra was questioned by police after a jacket with Riley's hair was found in a dumpster near his apartment. Ibarra's roommate identified him as the man throwing away the jacket from surveillance footage of the dumpster. Police questioning Ibarra noticed red knuckles and scratches on his arms. Ibarra was subsequently arrested on murder charges.

Criminal proceedings

On May 8, 2024, a grand jury in Clarke County indicted Ibarra with ten charges: three charges of felony murder, malice murder, false imprisonment, kidnapping, aggravated assault with intent to rape, hindering a 911 call, concealing the death of another and peeping Tom. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. Bail was denied. The district attorney was seeking the sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In a court filing, the defense attorneys submitted a motion to move the trial to another county due to the media attention surrounding the case, but Judge H. Patrick Haggard denied it.

Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial and opted for a bench trial, which began on November 15, 2024. Prosecutors presented evidence that included Ibarra's DNA under Riley's fingernails and Ibarra's fingerprint on Riley's phone screen. Ibarra's defense said that the evidence against him was circumstantial. On November 20, 2024, Judge Haggard found him guilty of all charges and sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Reactions

Tributes and media attention

Riley's funeral was held on March 1, 2024, at the Woodstock City Church. She was buried at Enon Cemetery in Woodstock, Georgia. Sarah Dorn, writing for Forbes, said Riley's murder became a "national political case" during a "historic surge in border crossings during Biden's tenure". The Laken Riley case drew widespread public interest and international media attention, especially in the United States. A memorial was made for Riley at Lake Herrick. Her family said they plan to establish a foundation in her honor. Her stepfather said: "She will be missed every day, but we promise to honor her life moving forward in a very big way". Riley's family started an online fund to raise money for the foundation, called the "Laken Hope Riley Foundation".

Riley's parents, Jason Riley and Allyson Phillips were invited to the State of the Union by Georgia Congressman Mike Collins, but they turned down his invitation. Donald Trump mentioned Riley during his speech for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. President Joe Biden mentioned the murder of Riley during the 2024 State of the Union address after Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted Riley's name at the president. Biden was criticized by Democratic members of Congress for referring to Riley's suspected killer as "an illegal" instead of "undocumented", for which he later expressed regret.

Laken Riley Act

On March 7, 2024, the House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Act in a 251–170 vote, with 37 Democratic members joining all Republican members in voting for the bill. If enacted, the Laken Riley Act would mandate federal detention of illegal immigrants who commit burglary or theft and would allow states to file suit against the federal government for failing to enforce immigration laws.

The Laken Riley Act was introduced in the United States Senate on March 12, 2024. The author of the Laken Riley Act, Alabama Senator Katie Britt, is calling for Senate passage before the trial.

Notes

According to Georgia state law on "Peeping Tom", a person violates the statute when they enter or remain on another's premises with the intent to act as a peeping tom. In this case, Ibarra was charged for allegedly going to a University of Georgia apartment building on the same day as the murder, looking through a window, and spying on a student.

Kent State Shooting Part III

 Strubbe Tape and further government reviews

In 2007 Alan Canfora, one of the wounded students, located a static-filled copy of an audio tape of the shootings in a Yale library archive. The original 30-minute reel-to-reel audio tape recording was made by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State communications student who turned on his recorder and put its microphone in his dormitory window overlooking the campus. At that time, Canfora asserted that an amplified version of the tape reveals the order to shoot, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!". The tape was declared to have been recording for 10 minutes prior to the sound of the first shot, with the entire sequence of shots lasting 12.53 seconds. Lawrence Shafer, a guardsman who admitted he fired during the shootings and was one of those indicted in the 1974 federal criminal action with charges subsequently dismissed, told the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier newspaper in May 2007: "I never heard any command to fire. That's all I can say on that." Referring to the assertion that the tape reveals the order, Shafer went on to say, "That's not to say there may not have been, but with all the racket and noise, I don't know how anyone could have heard anything that day." Shafer also said that "point" would not have been part of a proper command to open fire.

A 2010 audio analysis of the Strubbe tape by Stuart Allen and Tom Owen, who were described by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "nationally respected forensic audio experts", concluded that the guardsmen were given an order to fire. It is the only known recording to capture the events leading up to the shootings. According to the Plain Dealer description of the enhanced recording, a male voice yells, "Guard!" Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!" "Get down!", someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! ..." followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds. Further analysis of the audiotape revealed that what sounded like four pistol shots and a confrontation occurred approximately 70 seconds before the National Guard opened fire. According to The Plain Dealer, this new analysis raised questions about the role of Terry Norman, a Kent State student who was an FBI informant and known to be carrying a pistol during the disturbance. Alan Canfora said it was premature to reach any conclusions.

In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice determined that there were "insurmountable legal and evidentiary barriers" to reopening the case. Also in 2012, the FBI concluded the Strubbe tape was inconclusive because what has been described as pistol shots may have been slamming doors, and that voices heard were unintelligible. Despite this, organizations of survivors and current Kent State students continue to believe the Strubbe tape proves the Guardsmen were given a military order to fire and are petitioning State of Ohio and United States government officials to reopen the case using independent analysis. The organizations do not desire to prosecute or sue individual guardsmen, believing they are also victims.

One of these groups, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, was founded in 2010 by the family of Allison Krause, along with Emily Kunstler, to demand accountability by the United States government for the massacre. In 2014, KSTT announced their request for an independent review by the United Nations Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the human rights treaty ratified by the United States.

Memorials and remembrances

In January 1970, only months before the shootings, a work of land art, Partially Buried Woodshed, was produced on the Kent State campus by Robert Smithson. Shortly after the events, an inscription was added that recontextualized the work in such a way that some people associate it with the event.

Each May 4 from 1971 to 1975, the Kent State University administration sponsored an official commemoration of the shootings. Upon the university's announcement in 1976 that it would no longer sponsor such commemorations, a group of students and community members formed the May 4 Task Force for this purpose. The group has organized a commemoration on the university's campus each year since 1976; events generally include a silent march around the campus, a candlelight vigil, a ringing of the Victory Bell in memory of those killed and injured, speakers (always including eyewitnesses and family members), and music.

On May 12, 1977, a tent city was erected and maintained for more than 60 days by several dozen protesters on the Kent State campus. The protesters, led by the May 4 Task Force but also including community members and local clergy, were attempting to prevent the university from erecting a gymnasium annex on the part of the site where the shootings had occurred seven years earlier, which they believed would obscure the historical event. Law enforcement finally brought the tent city to an end on July 12, 1977, after the forced removal and arrest of 193 people. The event gained national press coverage, and the issue was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1978, American artist George Segal was commissioned by the Mildred Andrews Fund of Cleveland, in agreement with the university, to create a bronze sculpture in commemoration of the shootings, but before its completion, the sculpture was refused by the university administration, who deemed its subject matter (the biblical Abraham poised to sacrifice his son Isaac) too controversial. Segal's completed cast-from-life bronze sculpture, Abraham and Isaac: In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State, was instead accepted in 1979 by Princeton University and currently resides there between the university chapel and library.

In 1990, twenty years after the shootings, a memorial commemorating the events of May 4 was dedicated on the campus on a 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) site overlooking the university's Commons where the student protest took place. Even the construction of the monument became controversial and, in the end, only 7% of the design was constructed. The memorial does not contain the names of those killed or wounded in the shooting; under pressure, the university agreed to install a plaque near it with the names.

In 1999, at the urging of relatives of the four students killed in 1970, the university constructed an individual memorial for each student in the parking lot between Taylor and Prentice halls. Each of the four memorials is located on the exact spot where the student fell, mortally wounded. They are surrounded by a raised rectangle of granite featuring six lightposts approximately four feet high, with each student's name engraved on a triangular marble plaque in one corner.

In 2004, a simple stone memorial was erected at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview, New York, which Jeffrey Miller had attended.

On May 3, 2007, just before the yearly commemoration, KSU president Lester Lefton dedicated an Ohio Historical Society marker. It is located between Taylor Hall and Prentice Hall between the parking lot and the 1990 memorial. Also in 2007, a memorial service was held at Kent State in honor of James Russell, one of the wounded, who died in 2007 of a heart attack.

Kent State University: May 4, 1970 in 1968, Richard Nixon won the presidency partly based on a campaign promise to end the Vietnam War. Though the war seemed to be winding down, on April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, triggering protests across college campuses. On Friday, May 1, an anti-war rally was held on the Commons at Kent State University. Protestors called for another rally to be held on Monday, May 4. Disturbances in downtown Kent that night caused city officials to ask Governor James Rhodes to send the Ohio National Guard to maintain order. Troops put on alert Saturday afternoon were called to campus Saturday evening after an ROTC building was set on fire. Sunday morning in a press conference that was also broadcast to the troops on campus, Rhodes vowed to "eradicate the problem" of protests at Kent State.

Kent State University: May 4, 1970 On May 4, 1970, Kent State students protested on the Commons against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the presence of the Ohio National Guard called to campus to quell demonstrations. Guardsman advanced, driving students past Taylor Hall. A small group of protesters taunted the Guard from the Prentice Hall parking lot. The Guard marched back to the Pagoda, where members of Company A, 145th Infantry, and Troop G, 107th Armored Cavalry, turned and fired 61–67 shots during thirteen seconds. Four students were killed: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder. Nine students were wounded: Alan Canfora, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Dean Kahler, Joseph Lewis, D. Scott MacKenzie, James Russell, Robert Stamps, and Douglas Wrentmore. Those shot were 20 to 245 yards away from the Guard. The Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest concluded that the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."

In 2008, Kent State University announced plans to construct a May 4 Visitors' Center in a room in Taylor Hall. The center was officially opened in May 2013, on the anniversary of the shootings.

A 17.24-acre (6.98 ha) area was listed as "Kent State Shootings Site" on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 2010. Places normally cannot be added to the Register until they have been significant for at least fifty years, and only cases of "exceptional importance" can be added sooner. The entry was announced as the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of March 5, 2010. Contributing resources in the site are: Taylor Hall, the Victory Bell, Lilac Lane and Boulder Marker, The Pagoda, Solar Totem, and the Prentice Hall Parking Lot. The National Park Service stated the site "is considered nationally significant given its broad effects in causing the largest student strike in United States history, affecting public opinion about the Vietnam War, creating a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings, and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force."

Every year on the anniversary of the shootings, notably on the 40th anniversary in 2010, students and others who were present share remembrances of the day and its impact on their lives. Among them are Nick Saban, who was a freshman in 1970 and later won seven college football National Championships as the head coach of the LSU Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide football teams; surviving student Tom Grace, who was shot in the foot; Kent State faculty member Jerry Lewis; photographer John Filo; and others.

In 2016, the site of the shootings was named as a National Historic Landmark.

In September 2016, Kent State University Libraries Department of Special Collections and Archives began a project, sponsored by a grant from the National Archives' National Historical Publications and Records Commission, to digitize materials related to the actions and reactions surrounding the shootings.

Cultural references

Documentary

1970: Confrontation at Kent State (director Richard Myers) – documentary filmed by a Kent State University filmmaker in Kent, Ohio, directly following the shootings.

1971: Allison (director Richard Myers) – a tribute to Allison Krause.

1971: Part of the Family (Director Paul Ronder) – one of the three segments profiles the family of Allison Krause.

1979: George Segal (director Michael Blackwood) – documentary about American sculptor George Segal; Segal discusses and is shown creating his bronze sculpture Abraham and Isaac, which was initially intended as a memorial for the Kent State University campus.

2000: Kent State: The Day the War Came Home (director Chris Triffo, executive producer Mark Mori), the Emmy Award-winning documentary featuring interviews with injured students, eyewitnesses, guardsmen, and relatives of students killed at Kent State.

2007: Vier Tote in Ohio: Ein Amerikanisches Trauma ("4 dead in Ohio: an American trauma") (directors Klaus Bredenbrock and Pagonis Pagonakis) – documentary featuring interviews with injured students, eyewitnesses and a German journalist who was a U.S. correspondent.

2008: How It Was: Kent State Shootings – National Geographic Channel documentary series episode.

2015: The Day the '60s Died (director Jonathan Halperin) – PBS documentary featuring build-up of events at KSU, archival photos, and film, as well as eyewitness reminiscences of the event.

2017: The Vietnam War: The History of the World (April 1969 – May 1970) Episode 8 (directors, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick) – PBS documentary series featuring build-up of events at KSU, archival photos and film as well as eyewitness reminiscences of the event.

2020: Fire in the Heartland: Kent State, May 4, and Student Protest in America – documentary featuring the build-up to, the events of, and the aftermath of the shootings, told by many of those who were present and in some cases wounded.

Film and television

1970: The Bold Ones: The Senator – A television program starring Hal Holbrook, aired a two-part episode titled "A Continual Roar of Musketry" which was based on a Kent-State-like shooting. Holbrook's Senator character is investigating the incident.

1974: The Trial of Billy Jack – The climactic scene of this film depicts National Guardsmen lethally firing on unarmed students, and the credits specifically mention Kent State and other student shootings.

1981: Kent State (directed by James Goldstone) – television docudrama.

1995: Nixon – directed by Oliver Stone, the film features actual footage of the shootings; the event also plays an important role in the course of the film's narrative.

2000: The '70s, starring Vinessa Shaw and Amy Smart, a mini-series depicting four Kent State students affected by the shootings as they move through the decade.

2002: The Year That Trembled (written and directed by Jay Craven; based on a novel by Scott Lax), a coming-of-age movie set in 1970 Ohio, in the aftermath of the Kent State killings.

2005: Thank You For Smoking (directed by Jason Reitman) – In the satirical film, based on the novel of the same name, the narrator Nick Naylor describes fellow lobbyist Bobby Jay as having joined the National Guard after the Kent State shooting "so that he too could shoot college students."

2009: Watchmen (directed by Zack Snyder) – Depicts a reenacted scene of the shooting in the few opening moments of the film.

2013: "Freedom Deal: The Story of Lucky" (directed by Jason Rosette (as 'Jack RO') – Cambodia-made film dramatizing the US & ARVN incursion into Cambodia on May 4, 1970, as told from the perspective of two refugees fleeing the conflict. Includes US Army radio references to the Kent State protests, with accompanying archival footage.

2017: The Vietnam War (TV series), episode 8 "The History of the World" (April 1969 – May 1970), directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Includes a short segment on the background, events, and effects of the Kent State shootings, using film footage and photographs taken at the time.

Literature

Graphic novels

Issue No. 57 of Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's comic book Transmetropolitan contains homage to the Kent State shootings and John Filo's photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio.

Derf Backderf's 2020 graphic novel, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio depicts the events and the circumstances leading to them in detail.

Plays

1976: Kent State: A Requiem by J. Gregory Payne. First performed in 1976. Told from the perspective of Bill Schroeder's mother, Florence, this play has been performed at over 150 college campuses in the U.S. and Europe in tours in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; it was last performed at Emerson College in 2007. It is also the basis of NBC's award-winning 1981 docudrama Kent State.

1993 – Blanket Hill explores conversations of the National Guardsmen hours before arriving at Kent State University ... activities of students already on campus ... the moment they meet face to face on May 4, 1970 ... framed in the trial four years later. The play originated as a classroom assignment, initially performed at the Pan-African Theater and was developed at the Organic Theater, Chicago. Produced as part of the Student Theatre Festival 2010, Department of Theatre and Dance, Kent State University, it was again designed and performed by current theatre students as part of the 40 May 4 Commemoration. The play was written and directed by Kay Cosgriff. A DVD of the production is available for viewing from the May 4 Collection at Kent State University.

1995 – Nightwalking. Voices From Kent State by Sandra Perlman, Kent, Franklin Mills Press, first presented in Chicago April 20, 1995, (Director: Jenifer (Gwenne) Weber). Kent State is referenced in Nikki Giovanni's "The Beep Beep Poem".

2010: David Hassler, director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State, and theater professor Katherine Burke teamed up to write the play May 4 Voices, in honor of the incident's 40th anniversary.

2012: 4 Dead in Ohio: Antigone at Kent State (created by students of Connecticut College's theatre department and David Jaffe '77, associate professor of theater and the director of the play) – An adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone using the play Burial at Thebes by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. It was performed November 15–18, 2012, in Tansill Theater.

Poetry

The incident is mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's 1975 poem Hadda be Playin' on a Jukebox.

The poem "Bullets and Flowers" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko is dedicated to Allison Krause. Krause had participated in the previous days' protest during which she reportedly put a flower in the barrel of a Guardsman's rifle, as had been done at a war protest at The Pentagon in October 1967, and reportedly saying, "Flowers are better than bullets."

Peter Makuck's poem "The Commons" is about the shootings. Makuck, a 1971 graduate of Kent State, was present on the Commons during the incident.

Gary Geddes' poem "Sandra Lee Scheuer" remembers one of the victims of the Kent State shootings.

Deborah Wiles' book Kent State (2020) provides a multi-perspective view of the Kent State shootings.

Prose

Harlan Ellison's story collection, Alone against Tomorrow (1971), is dedicated to the four students who were killed. An essay in his Los Angeles Free Press column The Other Glass Teat dated May 15, 1970, discusses the events and his reaction to them. He describes television interviews with BGen Robert Canterbury (without naming him), who commanded the guard that day, and the student strikes in response to the murders.

Lesley Choyce's novel, The Republic of Nothing (1994), mentions how one character hates President Richard Nixon due in part to the students of Kent State.

Gael Baudino's Dragonsword trilogy (1988–1992) follows the story of a teaching assistant who narrowly missed being shot in the massacre. Frequent references are made to how the experience and its aftermath still traumatize the protagonist decades later when she is a soldier.

Stephen King's post-apocalyptic novel The Stand includes a scene in Book I in which Kent State campus police officers witness U.S. soldiers shooting students protesting the government cover-up of the military origins of the Superflu that is devastating the country.

Music

The best-known popular culture response to the deaths was the protest song "Ohio", written by Neil Young for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They promptly recorded the song, and preview discs (acetates) were rushed to major radio stations, although the group already had a hit song, "Teach Your Children", on the charts at the time. Within two and a half weeks of the shootings, "Ohio" was receiving national airplay. Crosby, Stills, and Nash visited the Kent State campus for the first time on May 4, 1997, where they performed the song for the May 4 Task Force's 27th annual commemoration. The B-side of the single release was Stephen Stills' anti-Vietnam War anthem, "Find the Cost of Freedom".

There are many lesser-known musical tributes, including the following:

 

John Denver wrote the song "Sail Away Home" in response. When he introduced the song at the 1970 Philadelphia Folk Festival, he told the audience he wrote the song two days after the shootings. The song appeared on his 1970 album Whose Garden Was This.

Paul Kantner and Grace Slick wrote the song "Diana", which appears on their 1971 album Sunfighter. This song also appears on the bonus tracks version of the Jefferson Airplane album Thirty Seconds over Winterland as an introduction to the song "Volunteers". Part 1 of the song was written in response to the story of Weather Underground member Diana Oughton, and part 2 is a response to the Kent State shootings.

Harvey Andrews' 1970 song "Hey Sandy" was addressed to Sandra Scheuer.

Steve Miller's "Jackson-Kent Blues", from the Steve Miller Band album Number 5 (released in November 1970), is another direct response.

The Beach Boys released "Student Demonstration Time" in 1971 on Surf's Up. Mike Love wrote new lyrics for Leiber & Stoller's "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine", referencing the Kent State shootings along with other incidents such as Bloody Thursday and the Jackson State killings.

Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called "Where Was Jesus in Ohio" in May or June 1970 in response to the Kent State shootings.

Former Yes frontman Jon Anderson has said that the lyrics of "Long Distance Runaround" (from the album Fragile, released in 1971) are also in part about the shootings, particularly the line "hot color melting the anger to stone."

Pete Atkin and Clive James wrote "Driving through Mythical America", recorded by Atkin on his 1971 album of the same name, about the shootings, relating them to a series of events and images from 20th-century American history.

In 1970–1971 Halim El-Dabh, a Kent State University music professor on campus when the shootings occurred composed Opera Flies, a full-length opera, in response to his experience. The work was first performed on the Kent State campus on May 8, 1971; it was revived for the 25th commemoration of the events in 1995.

In 1971, the BBC commissioned George Newson's Arena, a sociopolitical piece of contemporary music theatre climaxing in the Kent State shootings (conductor, Boulez; singer, Cleo Laine). The piece is said to be one of the most important of its time in Britain.[169]

Actress and singer Ruth Warrick released in 1971 a single with the song "41,000 Plus 4 – The Ballad of the Kent State", homage to the four students killed at Kent State.

Dave Brubeck's 1971 cantata Truth Is Fallen was written in response to the slain students at Kent State University and Jackson State University; the work was premiered in Midland, Michigan, on May 1, 1971, and released on LP in 1972.

The Isley Brothers' antiwar medley "Ohio/Machine Gun" was included on their 1971 album Givin' It Back. Both parts of the medley are covers, with "Ohio" being the aforementioned Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song, and "Machine Gun" being a Jimi Hendrix song.

The All Saved Freak Band dedicated its 1973 album My Poor Generation to "Tom Miller of the Kent State 25". Tom Miller was a member of the band who had been featured in Life magazine as part of the Kent State protests and lost his life the following year in an automobile accident.

Holly Near's "It Could Have Been Me" was released on A Live Album (1974). The song is Near's response to the incident.

The industrial band Skinny Puppy's 1989 song "Tin Omen" on the album Rabies refers to the event.

Lamb of God's song "O.D.H.G.A.B.F.E." on the 2000 album New American Gospel, references Kent State, together with the Auschwitz concentration camp, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Waco Siege.

A commemorative 2-CD compilation featuring music and interviews was released by the May 4 Task Force in May 2005, commemorating the 35th anniversary of the shootings.

Magpie covered the topic in their 1995 album, Give Light. The song "Kent" was written by band member Terry Leonino, a survivor of the Kent State shootings.

Genesis recreates the events from the perspective of the Guards in the song "The Knife", on Trespass (October 1970). Against a backdrop of voices chanting, "We are only wanting freedom", a male voice in the foreground calls, "Things are getting out of control here today", then "OK men, fire over their heads!" followed by gunshots, screaming and crying.

Barbara Dane sings "The Kent State Massacre" written by Jack Warshaw on her 1973 album I Hate the Capitalist System.

Photography

In her 1996 still/moving photographic project Partially Buried in three parts, visual artist Renée Green aims to address the history of the shootings both historically and culturally.

Other references and impacts

In September 2013, a Louisiana State University fraternity hung a sign outside of their house with the text "Getting Massacred Is Nothing New to Kent St.", after a football game. Delta Kappa Epsilon later issued an apology.

In September 2014, Urban Outfitters was criticized by media and social media for the release of a faux vintage Kent State University sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had a red and white vintage wash finish but also included what looked like bullet holes and blood splatter patterns.

On September 1, 2023, vice president and director of athletics, at the University of Central Florida (UCF), Terry Mohajir, apologized to Kent State director of athletics, Randale L. Richmond for a social media post following the UCF Knights, 56-6 August 1, 2023 football victory over the Kent State Golden Flashes in which the UCF Athletics account posted the phrase, "Someone call the National Guard." The post was reportedly intended in reference to an NFL sideline video clip from 1996 of Shannon Sharpe of the Denver Broncos pretending to phone the president of the United States during the Broncos 34–8 victory over the New England Patriots and telling him, "...we need the National Guard….call the dogs off, send the National Guard."