CORRUPTION        I said that I would have notes today about the convention center, the “Gambling crackdown” article and Cortney Fry.  And then I realized that all of these stories have one thing in common.  The  Lancaster Newspapers.  They give journalism a bad name.  They are  examples of everything that newspapers should not be.   They have turned their backs on corruption in Lancaster for years.     Four days before I was “banned” from Lancaster Online Talkback, on September 14, 2004, I posted the following under the name “astonished,”     I will tell you that I came on these boards about a month ago.  Since then there are reports of seven bank robberies (two solved), five men with masks and guns robbing a poker party somewhere in East Hempfield that we know almost nothing about, a 19 year old mother of a newborn baby who disappears on the day she gets a DNA test to prove the man she is living with is the father (1. by newspaper reports he was in fact the father when the tests came back; 2. she “disappeared” in the space of 45 minutes with no car and leaving her baby behind; 3. her clothes were found in the trash and the father/boyfriend said she was going to throw them out anyway – which her friends denied – saying many of the clothes she could still wear and would not have thrown away) and yet nothing has been found of her, and a very questionable piece in the Sunday News which everyone appears happy to ignore.  And if that piece isn’t valid then how many others aren’t.      I’m sure there’s a lot more.  This is journalism/reporting/investigation at its worst.  Demand better.     Almost twenty-five years ago I moved to Philadelphia.  Prior to moving, I had covered the Krushinski scandal and done a five part series on rape for LIP.  So I knew the police and courts were far from perfect.     But nothing would prepare me for what was to come.  I saw the Philadelphia Tribune headline on a newsstand, “Man critical after Lancaster lynching try.”  I couldn’t believe it.  Not in my Lancaster.     I called Jim Davis, the city editor.  “Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.  “You know I’m from Lancaster.”      I could hear the change in his voice, “This is bad,” he said.  “This one is really bad.”   To this day I sometimes wish I hadn’t found out how bad it was.  It took two years of my life and I stopped writing for twenty years because of that story.  And now it’s happening again.  This time I’m not going to stop writing.     “I believe this special edition of LIP is an indictment of the Lancaster Newspapers.  This could only have happened in a town with one news outlet.  A news outlet that has never questioned a thing the police have ever done or said,” I wrote in the September 2001 special edition of LIP, “Lancaster Lynching – Twenty Years Later.”     Today, I would take that one step farther, and say these newspapers are in collusion with the police and are deeply, deeply corrupt themselves.  I know it’s very hard for decent people to believe that some police are criminals. But it happens, especially when no one is holding them accountable.  And it’s been happening in Lancaster for over twenty years.                                                                         MORE TO FOLLOW...                     CORTNEY FRY(Posted 2-23-2005)                                                                   On Monday afternoon, February 14, 2005 I placed a call to the Pennsylvania State Attorney General’s office.  It was returned by a Jim Gallagher the next morning at 9:05 a.m. (717-787-6858).  I explained that there was an unsolved murder case in Lancaster that the Lancaster Detectives seemed to need help with.  He seemed quite interested that I had a website and said he needed to let his superiors know that I made the call and they needed to review my website.      I placed at least one follow up  call every business day that week.  On  Friday I asked to speak to his supervisor and was told he was the supervisor.  I asked for his title and was told he is the Supervisory Special Agent in the Criminal Division of the State Attorney General’s Office.  Yesterday, I placed yet another call.  It was returned the same day by Kevin Harley of the Attorney General’s Press Office (717-787-5211).  He basically said there is nothing they can do.     I will relay his exact comments this weekend in a full story on the case.  In the meantime I continue to make calls and pursue the matter and will post names and phone numbers on this site.     The lead story in this morning’s Intell was “Gambling crackdown – DA’s office leads raid on five county businesses, detectives seize 21 illegal gaming machines.”  The article reports this was the result of an “eight-week investigation” by the Lancaster County Detectives.      I was in Lancaster two weeks ago for less than 36 hours and I know where a machine is and it’s not one of the locations listed.  Yes, the “Eagles” jacket you can win is hanging right behind the machine.     Perhaps the Lancaster County Detectives should devote more time to arresting the killer of a 19 year-old mother of a two week-old baby.  There’s a killer on the loose and they are making headlines for seizing 21 “illegal gaming machines.”   I attended the memorial service for Cortney Fry in Columbia yesterday.  Channels 8, 21 and 27 were there.  There was not a sign of a Lancaster Newspaper reporter.  Coming .             UNACCEPTABLE CORTNEY FRY From the absurd to the twilight zone         I spoke on the phone Thursday, February 11, with Chief County Detective Michael Landis who is in charge of the murder investigation of Cortney Fry.  He stated that there are four detectives working full time on this case.  He also stated that Micah Stewart, her boyfriend who is in jail on unrelated charges, has not been questioned once since her body was found.  This is simply an outrage and the detective “work” in this case has gone from the absurd into the twilight zone.  Everyone in Lancaster County should demand answers in this case.  Every detective working on this case and the District Attorney, Donald Totaro, need to be held accountable.      The memorial service for Cortney Fry is this Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Columbia Presbyterian Church, 360 Locust Street in Columbia.  Coming this week, this website will request outside help in obtaining an arrest of the murderer of a nineteen-year old woman who was the mother of a two-week old baby.           A PUBLIC OUTRAGE Cortney Fry Terrible Police Work – Terrible Reporting         Micah Stewart owned a gun and threatened Cortney Fry with it three days before she disappeared.         This incredible information was hidden deep within an Intelligencer Journal article by Brett Lovelace on Friday titled, “Custody fight begins over Fry baby.”     Micah Stewart owned a gun and threatened Cortney Fry with it three days before she disappeared. “Kyle Stewart, Micah’s older brother, later threw the gun into the Susquehanna River.  Adams [Micah Stewart’s mother] said detectives administered a polygraph test to Kyle Thursday.”     Are these the Keystone Cops?  They administered a polygraph test?  They aren’t  admissible in court.  What kind of gun was it?  Did they recover bullets where Cortney’s body was found?  Why would he throw out a gun?  The police were called but no one was arrested over this “incident.”  Why wasn’t Micah arrested after he threatened his girlfriend with a gun?     “Detectives have not questioned Micah since the skeleton was discovered, Adams said.”      Why not?  He owned a gun and threatened her with it three days before she was murdered and they haven’t questioned him?       What are these detectives doing?  Why haven’t they released autopsy information?  Deep within an article we learn for the first time that she did die of a gunshot wound(s).      What type of gun?  Did they recover bullets?  Was she killed where her body was found?  What was used to burn her body?  Why haven’t they questioned Micah Stewart?  The public has a right to know.  We pay the police to protect us.  This is an outrage.      BRING IN OUTSIDE HELP.  THERE IS A KILLER ON THE LOOSE.