Jimmy Carter funeral live updates: Congress to gather for ceremony in DC
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(WASHINGTON) — Members of Congress, the Supreme Court and other dignitaries will gather at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday afternoon for a lying-in-state ceremony for former President Jimmy Carter.
Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver one of the eulogies for Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
Carter leaves Carter Presidential Center for final time
Former President Jimmy Carter is leaving the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta for the final time Tuesday morning as Carter Center employees and their families look on.
The former president had been lying in repose at the center since Saturday, allowing the public to come pay their respects.
At a Saturday service at the Carter Presidential Center, Carter’s son Chip Carter thanked his parents for their service and sacrifice.
“The two of them together changed the world,” he said, overcome with emotion.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded the Carter Center after his presidency to improve health around the world and enhance freedom and democracy.
Carter to head to DC for services at Capitol, Washington National Cathedral
Former President Jimmy Carter’s remains will be escorted from the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for the 39th president’s final trip to the nation’s capital.
His remains will leave the Carter Center at 11:30 a.m. ET.
The first stop in D.C. will be the U.S. Navy Memorial in honor of the former president’s service.
At 4:30 p.m. ET, members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs and other officials will congregate at the U.S. Capitol for a lying in state ceremony. Vice President Kamala Harris, Senator Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are expected to deliver eulogies and lay wreaths.
Carter’s remains will lie in state at the Capitol from Tuesday evening to Thursday morning, allowing the public to pay respects.
On Thursday morning, former presidents and other dignitaries will attend a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.
On Thursday afternoon, Carter’s body will return to his hometown of Plains, Georgia, for a private service and private interment. Carter will be buried next to his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who died on Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96.
(Delphi, Ind.) — Convicted Delphi, Indiana, killer Richard Allen was sentenced on Friday to 130 years in prison for the 2017 murders of two teenage girls as the victims’ families spoke out in court.
Allen was given 65 years for each murder, to run consecutively.
Last month, a jury found Allen guilty on all charges in the double homicide: felony murder for the killing of 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams while attempting to commit kidnapping; felony murder for the killing of 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German while attempting to commit kidnapping; murder for knowingly killing Abby; and murder for knowingly killing Libby.
A gag order prevented the families of Abby and Libby from commenting during or after Allen’s trial.
Libby’s grandmother, Becky Patty, broke her silence on Friday, saying at sentencing, “I can never change my choice to let Libby and Abby go to the trails that day.”
“I hope he lives with the same fear he caused Abby and Libby in the last hour of their lives,” she said.
“You could’ve taken accountability,” Libby’s grandfather, Mike Patty, said to Allen. “You need to stand up and not appeal.”
Abby’s grandmother, Diane Erskin, said, “This is a day of great sadness for our family. We won’t be going home to celebrate with champagne.”
Nearly eight years since her granddaughter’s murder, Erskin said, “I’ve watched her friends graduate college and wonder how many great grandkids were murdered that day, too.”
Erskin said Abby’s last words in Libby’s phone were “don’t leave me up here,” so the grieving grandmother didn’t let herself leave the trial even during tough testimony.
The families, law enforcement and prosecutors are expected to address the public at a post-sentencing news conference on Friday.
Abby and Libby were walking along a Delphi hiking trail when they were attacked on Feb. 13, 2017. Their throats were slit and their bodies were dumped in the nearby woods.
Moments before the murders, Libby posted a photo of Abby on Snapchat showing her on the Monon High Bridge. After crossing the bridge, the girls saw a man behind them — who became known as “bridge guy” — and Libby started a recording on her phone, according to prosecutors.
As police looked for the suspect, they released footage from Libby’s phone to the public: a grainy image of “bridge guy” and an audio clip of him telling the girls to go “down the hill.”
“He developed photos with no remorse and he didn’t blink,” Becky Patty said in court on Friday.
Allen admitted to police he was on the trail that day, but he denied being involved in the crime.
The prosecution’s key physical evidence was a .40-caliber unspent round discovered by the girls’ bodies. Police analysis determined that unspent round was cycled through Allen’s Sig Sauer Model P226, prosecutors said.
Another major focus of the trial was Allen’s multiple confessions in jail and his mental health at the time. The defense argued Allen was in a psychotic state when he confessed numerous times to his psychologist, corrections officers and his wife.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(MEMPHIS, TN) — The gatekeepers of Elvis Presley’s estate are trying to recover a potential trove of records and memorabilia left behind by the King of Rock and Roll, according to a lawsuit filed in California.
The lawsuit, filed just before 6 p.m. on Dec. 24, is a fitting coda to a year that saw Presley’s iconic Memphis home nearly auctioned off as part of what federal authorities now call an attempt to defraud both Presley’s family and Elvis Presley Enterprises.
Now, the operators of Graceland allege “irreplaceable” items they bought more than three decades ago from Presley’s longtime manager, Col. Tom Parker, have fallen into the hands of people who have no right to them and are now trying to sell them in an online auction.
“It is now clear that some of the material that the parties to the Parker Acquisition intended to be transferred to [Elvis Presley Enterprises], never was,” the lawsuit claims. Despite “clear and repeated demands” that the defendants stop hawking what was not theirs to sell, those demands were “ignored,” according to the filing.
At issue is a collection that allegedly includes everything from contracts and agreements signed by Presley, to a telegram from associates congratulating Elvis and his then-wife Priscilla on the birth of their daughter, Lisa Marie. Elvis Presley Enterprises contends the cache of memorabilia is valued at upwards of $2 million, though the “unique” artifacts are “priceless.”
The items were listed on the website of GWS Auctions, a California company that boasts sales of “celebrity” items from the likes of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Johnny Cash. The Presley items listed in the lawsuit appeared as available online in mid-November under the heading “The Lost Collection of Elvis, Col. Tom Parker & More.” Elvis Presley Enterprises alleges the auctioneeing company advertised while knowing the sellers had no legal right to the items, which the company denies.
The origin of the dispute dates back to 1990, when Col. Parker, “known as a meticulous record keeper and a real pack rat who held onto everything,” directly sold EPE “perhaps the greatest collection of Elvis-related documents and memorabilia ever held by anyone other than Elvis himself,” the suit alleged, adding it is the “entire collection” as it pertained to “Elvis and Elvis related memorabilia, irrespective of where such material was located.”
EPE acquired the collection as part of its ongoing effort to catalogue, preserve and showcase artifacts connected to the life and career of one of rock and roll’s first global superstars. One of the company’s executives, Jack Soden, “had dealt with and known Col. Parker for many years” and said he “was acting with the authority of Elvis’s widow Priscilla Presley, was intent on acquiring from Parker every scrap of Elvis-related material Parker owned.”
The lawsuit alleges company leaders believed all the items covered in the agreement “had been collected,” only now to find otherwise. Some of those items “ended up in the possession” of one of Parker’s former longtime employees after Parker’s death in 1997, according to the filing.
Then in December 2021, the lawsuit says, the co-founder of GWS Auctions, Brigitte Kruse, reached out to both Priscilla Presley and Graceland’s chief archivist to tell them she knew that the employee had items that should be in EPE’s custody. Kruse allegedly even shared videos of her discussions with him acknowledging who owned what.
Kruse allegedly told Graceland’s archivist Angela Marchese “that she knew these materials were involved in ‘theft’ and rightfully belonged to EPE,” according to a signed declaration by Marchese obtained by ABC News.
When a Presley executive confronted the employee directly, he backtracked, saying it had all been “a misunderstanding,” and he only had “photocopies,” not originals, the suit says.
“Some of the very documents and memorabilia Kruse claimed [the employee] possessed have now been listed for sale,” the suit alleges, adding “it is apparent” how those items “made their way” to the auction house.
“Kruse listed the Property for sale despite knowing, as she made clear in her email to Marchese and contemporaneous conversations with Marchese, that Kruse knew these items to be stolen Property rightfully belonging to [EPE],” the suit said.
EPE sent a cease-and-desist letter to Kruse earlier this month.
In response, a lawyer for GWS said the company “denies any wrongdoing whatsoever,” and denies that the “characterizations of the communications between” Kruse and Marchese “are accurate or complete.” GWS also denied EPE’s property interest and said that they would “proceed with the auction,” according to the suit and appended exhibits.
In a statement to ABC News, Kruse pushed back on the allegations against her and her company, saying that the assertions are “unfounded and without merit.”
“EPE and Graceland’s assertions are unfounded and without merit. This is merely another attempt to discredit our founder and the company. Under no circumstances would we engage in the sale of “stolen” items, and this collection was sought after by auction houses globally,” Kruse said.
“The items in question successfully passed our auction house’s due diligence process and were subsequently offered for public sale. Furthermore, no police report has ever been filed by EPE/Graceland, and the owner has possessed this collection for several decades,” Kruse added.
As of Monday night, the auction site is still up, though bidding is closed.
The keepers of the Presley legacy say the decades-long story of Elvis is one of people trying to profit off of the King – and often at the expense of him and his family.
In May, Elvis’ idyllic Graceland retreat was mysteriously announced for auction by an unknown company calling itself “Naussany Investments,” which claimed that Lisa Marie used Graceland as collateral to take out a $3.8 million loan and had not repaid it.
The ensuing investigation stretched all the way from Memphis to Florida, where the notary whose fake seal was used for the alleged fraud spoke up — and Presley’s granddaughter countersued, stopping a possible sale. In August, the alleged perpetrator behind that alleged fraud was arrested in the Ozarks: Lisa Findley was apprehended on Aug. 16, the 47th anniversary of Elvis’ death. Federal prosecutors charged the Missouri woman with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. The case is still pending, and Findley is last listed in custody in Tennessee.
“People have been trying to take from Elvis since Elvis was Elvis,” Joel Weinshanker, managing partner of Elvis Presley Enterprises, told ABC News this fall. “Elvis was a human being. He was a really good human being,” he said. “Pick on somebody else. Have a heart, have a conscience. And even if you don’t have a heart or have a conscience — know that you won’t get away with it.”
The entrance doors of the River Glen of St. Charles, in St. Charles, Illinois, are seen in a screengrab of a video shot Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024. (WLS)
(ST. CHARLES, IL) — A man wielding a chainsaw inside a senior-living facility in St. Charles, Illinois, was shot and killed by police early Sunday, state and local law enforcement said.
The man, whom police have not publicly identified, was allegedly attempting to cut down a tree on the facility’s property at about 8:45 a.m. on Sunday. He was “shirtless” when police arrived at the facility, on the 900 block of North 5th Avenue, the St. Charles Police Department said in a press statement.
“Just before police arrival, witnesses advised the subject had now gained entry to the lobby of the building and began confronting residents with the chainsaw,” the department said.
Officers sought to deescalate the situation, but “the suspect continued his attempts to use the chainsaw against residents of the building,” as well as against responding officers, the department said.
Officers used a taser on the man, “but his attack continued,” the press statement said. An officer then fired his gun, striking the alleged attacker, police said.
“The male suspect was transported to an area hospital where he was pronounced deceased,” the Illinois State Police said in a press release.
Officers and residents of the assisted-living facility were treated at the scene for minor injuries, police said.
“We are deeply grateful for the swift action of our team and law enforcement,” a spokesperson for the facility, the River Glen of St. Charles, said in a statement. “We want to emphasize that our community is secure, and all residents and staff members are safe.”
The Illinois State Police said it would investigate the shooting.
