LANDIS CASE INFORMATION NOW ONLINE
October 12th, 2006
Los Angeles, October 12, 2006 – Floyd Landis, 2006 Tour de France winner, has made public his case documents that use fact-based science to support his innocence in the alleged positive doping test of July 20, 2006. The following documents are available for download from http://www.box.net:

Attorney Howard Jacobs’ motion for dismissal, submitted to the Anti-Doping Review Board (ADRB) on September 11, 2006
The complete World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) document package, inclusive of the testing information from Landis’ ‘A’ and ‘B’ samples
A PowerPoint presentation created by Arnie Baker, M.D. with specific reference to:
The details of the carbon isotope ratio test (CIR), demonstrating that the CIR conducted on Landis’ urine sample does not meet the WADA criteria for a positive doping test
Demonstration of an unacceptable variation in sample testing results
Errors in fundamental testing procedure and protocol
Landis received notice on September 18 that the ADRB has recommended that the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) move forward in the disciplinary process related to the cyclist’s alleged positive drug test. Howard Jacobs, attorney for Landis, has requested an open hearing by the American Arbitration Association to contest potential sanctions against the athlete.

Landis, who underwent the Birmingham Hip Resurfacing procedure on September 27, is fourteen days into a physical rehabilitation program and is steadily increasing strength and range of movement in his right hip. Doctors anticipate that he will be able to begin training in two weeks for the 2007 season, when he hopes to return to France to defend his Tour de France title.

The case files can be downloaded by going to http://www.box.net, clicking “LOGIN” and using PublicAccess as both the Login and Password.

A mirror site has also been set up.

The 60 Slayer

Betty Sue Harris wanted to be a better person. She had survived a cancer scare and a couple of trips to the Los Angeles County Jail. All that mattered to her now was getting turned around so that she could spend more time with her three children.

That didn't keep her from turning a trick or two. The motivations were simple. Money for rent, money for drugs – not necessarily in that order. Eventually, she would turn away from the life.

Maybe she could go back to school at Mt. San Antonio College. Maybe she could go back to being a secretary.

Harris knew how to type. All she needed to get by was $500 or $600 a month – that wasn't too much to ask. It's just that jobs are hard to come by when you've done time and your address is a no-tell hot sheet charging hourly rates on Holt Avenue in Pomona.

Turning tricks wasn't easy work either. Almost 40 years old, Betty stood 5-foot-8-inches tall and weighed over 150 pounds. She competed for work with younger and prettier girls who shared her addiction to rock cocaine.

The west end of Holt Avenue where Betty Sue worked, and the surrounding neighborhood of Pomona, were built up in the mid 1960s as a refuge from the urban blight, crime and riots that plagued South Central Los Angeles 25 miles to the west. The hope behind this suburban utopia faded and the neighborhoods slowly decayed into a collection of cheap hotels, rundown housing projects and weather-beaten trailer parks.

Summers were dusty, hot and shadeless; winters cold and foggy. The 1991 closing of the General Dynamics plant, which employed many of the city's residents, didn't help lighten the mood. In 1992, the three-day riot following a not guilty verdict for four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King spread east to Pomona spawning looting and sporadic arsons.

Originally the eastern portion of Rancho San Jose, a Mexican land grant from the 1830s, Pomona took its name from the Roman goddess of fruits and nuts. Vineyards flourished in the 1880s. Soon the area became dominated by citrus and fruit orchards.

The town became an incubator of sorts for the technological revolution of the early 20th Century. It was the first town in the west to supply alternating current electricity to businesses and homeowners, the first to install a semi-automatic telephone switchboard and among the first locations in the country to offer direct dial telephone service.

Massive churches were built; the town flourished. Rail lines coursed through, and when the automobile came into vogue, major highways linking the southwest with the rest of the United States made the town part of their corridor.

After World War II, a housing boom revitalized the community. General Dynamics, a prime defense contractor during the Cold War, moved in and put much of the town on its payroll. General Telephone employed the rest.

Slowly the vineyards vanished and the orange groves dwindled. The payrolls of General Dynamics and General Telephone began to shrink and the wealthier residents either died or moved on to tonier neighboring suburbs like La Verne, Diamond Bar and Claremont.

In the 1980s crack cocaine moved in and street gangs took over. They named their neighborhoods. "Ghost Town" covered the north, Cherryville and "Trey-Five-Seven" (as in the 357 Magnum revolver) were the middle of town. "Trece" or "Pomona Sur" to the south was primarily Latino gang territory. The neighborhood bordering the abandoned General Dynamics plant was where the prostitutes and drug dealers plied their trade. It earned a moniker all its own: "Sin Town." Despite her misgivings and dreams of a better life, Harris fit right in.
In 1988 Betty Sue pleaded with a municipal court judge to give her one more chance. Locked up for a probation violation on a simple trespassing charge, Harris begged for the opportunity to make up lost time.

"I've been doing a lot of researching since I've been locked up," Harris wrote in a March 24, 1988 letter to the court. "I've been through a lot of counseling and I've been working and going to school.

 

"I'm determined that my life is going to be much better and happier. I will go back to work and my life will be straighten (sic) out. I owe that to my children and myself. I have not been in any trouble and Only (sic) God knows if I can make it on the inside, I can make it on the outside also."
 

* * *

Ivan Hill had been on the inside too -- for his entire adult life. As a teenager he had been sent to state prison for his role in a 1979 robbery and murder.
 

It was a botch job. The robbery occurred in the small town of Glendora, just minutes north of Pomona. A quiet suburb, Glendora seems stuck in a time warp. Tree-lined streets lead to a well preserved downtown populated with candy stores and malt shops. Storied Route 66, which linked Los Angeles and Chicago runs right through the center of town.
 

That small town atmosphere may have enticed Hill and his buddies Michael Benton and Venson Myers into making an easy score. The three men entered the town liquor store, stole money and cigarettes then shot the store clerk and a customer.
 

The customer, Thomas Leavell, a Glendora resident, died after being in a coma for 27 days.
Responding to a tip in the case, Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested Hill, Benton and Myers. The trio were convicted and sent to state prison. Hill did his time in Blythe, a desolate outpost in the desert on the California/Arizona border.
 

Thirteen years into his sentence, Hill, 30, was released. Even though he was on parole, he was free to roam his old stomping grounds. Hill got a car and returned to the Pomona neighborhoods he knew best.

 

SUNDOWN * * *

Halloween 1993 fell on a Sunday. Sin Town would have been busy with out-of-town customers making their way through to the annual top fuel funny car races at the Pomona drag strip. Through the course of the preceding week, temperatures had been unseasonably warm in the 90s and 100s. Wildfires raged in communities from Malibu on the coast to Banning in the desert.
 

Santa Ana Winds, blowing as hard as 25 miles per hour, stoked the fires and littered the sky with ash. Raymond Chandler's quote about the winds that roar down through the canyons each fall is clichéd but appropriate.
 

"(The Santa Anas)," Chandler wrote, "curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband's necks. Anything can happen."
 

Just after midnight on the 31st, with the Santa Anas blowing, and a full moon high in the night sky, actor River Phoenix snorted drugs with friends in the bathroom of the Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard. He collapsed on the sidewalk outside the club, went into convulsions and died.
 

Throughout the morning, television and radio broadcasts were filled with news of the actor's untimely death. Later in the day, 30,000 fans traveled to the Los Angeles Coliseum and saw the San Diego Chargers defeat the Los Angeles Raiders 30-23. The highlight of the game was a 102-yard touchdown run by Charger Donald Frank.
 

At sundown the sky turned bright orange, the mountains lost their color and loomed black on the horizon. The moon, which had been full the night before, rose nearly full just after sunset.
Around 9 p.m ., in Pasadena, 20 miles northwest of Pomona, Blood gang members ambushed a group of middle school trick-or-treaters on their way home from a birthday party. Three teenagers were killed. The killers fled, leaving the mother of one of the victims to find her son dead on the sidewalk a block from home.
 

Throughout the day and into the night, traffic sped through "Sin Town." Cars rolled down Mission Boulevard and Holt Avenue and out of Pomona. Somewhere along the line Betty Sue Harris likely stepped into Ivan Hill's car.
 

Like River Phoenix and the three teenagers shot to death in Pasadena, Betty Sue's life was about to end. Ivan Hill was about to be reborn as the man detectives and the press would call "The 60 Freeway Slayer."

 

Hill's trial in the case gets underway this week. The Halloween Homicides have been solved and three murderers committed to San Quentin, where they will ultimately face the death penalty. Hill could face the death penalty too, but he and his attorneys are hoping that by admitting to the string of murders, a jury will instead sentence him to life without the possibility of parole.

 

Its funny how things run in circles. A jury recommended death for Lorenzo Newborn, Herbert McCain, and Karl Holmes on Halloween day 1996. Hill's trial will likely end around Halloween this year.

 

Howard Davidowitz, a retail sales expert often quoted on television, once said, "Other holidays have become less important. Halloween is the exception. It has become more important."

 

I agree, but for an entirely different set of reasons.

 

--30--

 

The James Ellroy Documentary "Murder by the Book" for which I was interviewed this past spring will show Nov. 20 on Court TV. A recent Ellroy interview regarding the success of the Black Dahlia and his writing has been posted at the Court TV site.

Column: Landis Takes His Case to Internet

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Marschka <luxamor@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 11, 2006 10:09 AM
Subject: Fwd: Column: Landis Takes His Case to Internet
To: fgirardot@gmail.com
Cc: dmarschka@lnpnews.com

Frank,

I thought you might want to read this email and Jim's recent column:

Hope you are well. If you see Floyd and his family, please tell him I
still hope for the best.

Dan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Marschka <luxamor@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 11, 2006 12:56 PM
Subject: re: Column: Landis Takes His Case to Internet
To: jlitke@ap.org

Jim,

You write your column as if it is a given that what cycling
authorities have claimed about Floyd Landis is fact.
He is judged and convicted in your eyes, so what is the point of
allowing him to defend himself - right?

What do you know for fact that has been attributed to Floyd? You know
what you have read. You are aware of nebulous test results from
experts you trust personally (?).
You do not know anything about Floyd the man or his determination to
clear his name except what you assume to be a desperate waste of time.
Consider that the conspiracy to smear him is true. Why would anyone do
that? I can think of many reasons.
Put yourself in Floyd's shoes. If he is telling the truth, what would
you do? Anything you could to raise doubt. Play the same game. Win.
You may be thinking - you are so naive. I would say the same thing to you.
If you believe Floyd's defense is a farce - defend the lab procedures,
defend the technical facts as to why levels are different one day and
not different on consecutive days.
Consider that he may also have been spiked by someone else - like a
cycling date rape cocktail.
Prove it to me and I will believe. Until then, your opinion is
meaningless and predictably cynical, as are most columnists that write
without doing sufficient research.
I am disappointed you are riding with the herd and not working harder
to delve deeper.
Lord help you write something that matters.

Regards,

Dan Marschka
Lititz, PA

LA Tribune?

10-10-06

Dear Mr. Kinsley,

I really enjoyed your article in the Times Sunday. I
worked at Los Angeles' greatest newspaper the
Herald-Examiner when it was in its death throes. Then,
as one of many writers for the Los Angeles News Group
during the 1990s my colleagues and I endured many of
the same cost cutting measures now being employed at
the Times. Much of the griping about implementing
so-called "economy of scale" had as much to do with
egos as with any effort to produce a good newspaper.
But, I was comforted, because I believed that somehow
management was implementing cost measures as a way of
preserving the job I was born to do and the job I
loved so much.

That said, I often reflect on what makes a good
newspaper. I think strong editorials, lively writing
and timely coverage are essential. The old Times
(perhaps before your tenure as editorial pages editor)
did very few of these things right. Editorials were
boring. Writing style was stuck in the 1970s and
timely coverage of real news events seldom occurred.
I can't tell you how many times a reporter would write
something for the Pasadena Star-News on Wednesday only
to see that story picked up (sometimes verbatim) on
Friday in the Times-- then get regional coverage via
radio and local tv and national attention via the wire
services.

As you pointed out Sunday, story placement could be
bizarre and it still is in many situations. Case in
point: a well-known local television reporter and
radio talk show host got picked up Sunday by the FBI
for suppossedly molesting two young boys in a sauna on
one of those Long Beach to Ensenada weekend cruises.
Where does the Times play this story? On B-5. WTF? KFI
led with the story all morning. Sure with the Foley
scandal and nukes in North Korea, this isn't
necessarily A-1 material, but I think it points out
why readers might turn to the Ventura
Who-Cares-What-It's-Called.

I really believe the first rule of good newspapering
is you've got to sell the fish wrap with the best
material out front -- and celebrity local reporter
nabbed in molestation sting is nothing if not a good
story -- even if it goes nowhere, there's a follow
people will want to read the next day.

Fortunately, over the past few years the paper has
morphed into something better -- in spite of whatever
mismanagement is being perpetuated. For example, I
believe the Times has one of the best and most
thorough sports sections of any paper in the country.
(Although of late they've been implementing some sort
of redesign that's cut into column inches and
ultimately depth.)

Tim Ruttan's thoughtful Saturday columns on media are
always worth a good read. The obits should be
mandatory reading for anyone who wants to learn how to
weave a good tale. The Times turning reportorial
muscle inward on itself has also made for good
newspapering of late.

I agree with you that selling the paper to Eli Broad
or any of the other pretend saviors would be a fatal
mistake. You are right on in your description of a new
boss going into a tizzy precisely because he doesn't
understand newspapering.

So, what about a "National Tribune" ? Something that
fits the mix between the highbrow grey old lady and
the cartoonish USA Today. Unfortunately, I don't think
that solution works as a fix for short term or long
term problems at the Times. Frankly, the target
demographic (travellers, pols, and the over $100,000
salary crowd) aren't going to read it, they are in the
habit of reading the NYT if they watch CNN and USA
Today if FNC is their preference. The real solution is
going to have to come via the Internet. For the Times
to survive it is going to have to carve out a niche
for itself in the new media -- something that will
make it a hot, buzz worthy property. Something that
will make Google want to shell out the millions (or
billions) for traffic generation. Until then, sadly,
the Times I have grown to love will end up like the
Her-Ex or the typewriter. A distant relic of a bygone
time.

__________________________________________________
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Kinsley piece on the state of the Los Angeles Times
A great opinion piece by Michael Kinsley ran in the LAT sunday. You can read it here