Rand Hooper trial enters second day

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NORFOLK, Va. – Twenty-five days after initially telling detectives that he and his friend Graham McCormick went to bed after playing cards on the dock, Rand Hooper showed up at the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office with two attorneys and told detectives he now remembered a late-night boat crash that resulted in his friend’s death, but he did not remember who was driving the boat.

That’s according to testimony from Lieutenant Timothy Self, the lead investigator with the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office.

Hooper told detectives that day his memory was slowly coming back to him, and, according to Self, one of his lawyers said he had “amnesia”.

The meeting occurred on September 5, 2017.

On August 11, 2017, McCormick’s body was found floating in the Rappahannock River around 10 a.m. by a man who lived nearby.

According to investigators, when they showed up to Hooper’s parent’s house that day to investigate what happened, Hooper told them he went on a pleasure cruise with McCormick and three others in the late afternoon, then out for dinner, and finally ended up on the dock with McCormick and another man where they played cards and drank.

Detective Johnny Smithart said Hooper told him that day “all the men went upstairs to bed”.

He also told Smithart the group took out his parents’ smaller boat with a blue canopy for the pleasure cruise earlier in the day. Smith checked out that boat but did not find any damage.

Prosecutors showed Ring camera video of Hooper from the morning his friend was discovered missing. In the video, Hooper can be heard saying “I am looking for my friend Graham McCormick. He never came home last night”.

Deputy Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Tiffany Webb highlighted that Hooper later would tell Detective Smithart a different story: that his friend had gone to bed the night before after they were all on the dock.

Winston Blair and Ralph Daniel, who were also staying at the Hooper home that night, said Hooper speculated to them that morning that McCormick had gone to the dock to call his girlfriend and potentially fallen off.

Blair also testified that she explicitly asked Hooper that day if he had gone back out on the boat with McCormick the night before and he said no.

Three days after McCormick’s body was found, investigators returned to the Hooper home and found a second, larger boat on the property was damaged.

Detectives found heavy damage on the rear of that boat, a Boston whaler, according to Self.

“One side of the prop was damaged so bad it was like a razor,” Self said.

Hooper had not mentioned to investigators that he had used that boat. Detectives then seized the boat as part of their investigation on August 16.

Chip Woodson, who owns the property where McCormick’s body was found, testified that he noticed damage to his dock when a conservation officer asked him three days later about the damage he had found there.

Conservation Officer Kenneth Williams with the Department of Wildlife Resources then showed the jury the damage to Woodson’s bulkhead and dock through pictures he had taken during the investigation.

Forensic Science Supervisor Brenda Christy testified she found a fragment match between the damaged boat and the crash scene.

More than two weeks after investigators seized the boat, Hooper sat down with detectives and said he remembered a crash. Lieutenant Self said Hooper told him he had a lot to drink that night, that he was on the boat with McCormick, but he could not remember who was driving.

Hooper said he remembered an impact so hard it threw him to the floor and he reached up to put the boat into neutral, turned on the lights, called for McCormick, looked for him, figured he was a good swimmer and could get to shore, got his bearings straight to the Tides Inn and then he didn’t remember anything after that, according to Self.

Doctor Jennifer Bowers, assistant chief medical examiner, testified that McCormick’s body had a blood alcohol content of .186, had blunt force trauma on the back of his head, but died from drowning.

She said he should have been able to go to the hospital and walk out with the blunt force injuries and it was the drowning that killed him. McCormick’s sister started sobbing in her father’s arms when she heard that testimony.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Matt Kite introduced a motion at the beginning of the day where he requested to be able to tell the jury about Hooper’s prior DUIs.

The judge denied the request and said he would be “unduly prejudicial.”

Kite said he had one more witness to call on Thursday.

‘Ozark’ Season 3 Recap: The Refresher You Need Before Season 4

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Three seasons have passed since unassuming financial advisor Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) cheated death by offering to launder money for a Mexican cartel in the Ozarks. Three seasons of putting out fires, dealing with local criminals, and playing cat and mouse with the FBI. Three seasons over which the Byrdes transformed from an average nuclear family to a quartet of ruthless individuals willing to do whatever it takes to survive.

(Warning: Major spoilers ahead)

“Ozark” Season 3, which aired in March 2020, ended with the Byrdes at the top of their game after cartel leader Omar Navarro (Felix Solis) chose them over his lawyer, Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer). Getting there required numerous sacrifices in the form of money, alliances and lives – and not just from Marty and Wendy (Laura Linney). Major players like Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner), Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery) and everyone else in the Byrdes’ orbit seemed to pay a price last season.

With the first half of “Ozark” Season 4 debuting on Netflix Jan. 21, here’s a refresher on everything you need to remember from “Ozark” Season 3 – its main characters, plot points and that shocking season finale.

Wendy and Marty on the Brink Of War

Netflix

The Navarro and Lagunas cartels are at war in Mexico, but there’s a battle brewing in the Byrde home as well. After opening the Missouri Belle casino as a new laundering front, Wendy wants to expand the business, but Marty thinks it’s too risky. Wendy and Helen (Janet McTeer) meet with Navarro anyway, and he approves the plan to buy another casino, the Big Muddy, from a couple named Anita (Marceline Hugot) and Carl (Adam LeFevre) Knarlson.

Marty sabotages the proposal by dissuading Carl and then paying Kansas City Mob boss Frank Cosgrove, Sr. (John Bedford Lloyd) to set the Knarlson’s competitor’s boat on fire. Now that her rival has been eliminated, Anita declines Wendy and Helen’s offer.

Once she learns that Marty ordered the fire, Wendy gets revenge by closing the Big Muddy for renovations, preventing him and Ruth from laundering there. She continues pressuring Carl to sell, leading to an argument with Anita that ends with her falling to her death. Marty eavesdrops on a phone call between Wendy and Navarro using monitoring software; when Navarro realizes this, he orders his men to kidnap Marty and bring him to Mexico.

Don’t Mess With Wendy Byrde

Laura Linney in “Ozark” Season 3

Wendy blows through Season 3 like a hurricane, steadily gathering power and obliterating anyone who stands in her way. Her ambition and decisiveness win the respect of Navarro and Helen, allowing her to sidestep and occasionally derail Marty’s objectives. As part of a new laundering tactic, she persuades clueless employee Sam (Kevin L. Johnson) to purposefully lose large sums of money at the casino, which she repays him for in cash.

Season 3 also sees the escalation of a fierce rivalry between Wendy and Darlene Snell, rooted in the latter taking custody of baby Zeke in Season 2. Early in Season 3, Wendy provokes Darlene into hitting her, providing grounds for a custody hearing.

The Odd Couple: Darlene and Wyatt

At the top of Season 3, Wyatt Langmore (Charlie Tahan) turned to petty crime after having a fallout with his cousin Ruth. When he ends up in jail, Darlene posts his bail and hires him to work on her farm. Darlene decides to start producing heroin again, against the cartel’s wishes.

Later, Wyatt lies at the custody hearing, allowing Darlene to retain custody of Zeke. Wyatt and Darlene eventually begin a romantic relationship, which Ruth tries unsuccessfully to stop.

Ben and Ruth

Netflix

Wendy’s brother Ben Davis (Tom Pelphrey), who has bipolar disorder, moves in with the Byrdes following a violent episode at work. Once the cartel abducts Marty, Ben learns the truth about who they work for. Ruth brings Ben into the laundering operation at the Missouri Belle, and the two strike up a romance.

Ben stops taking his medication after he and Ruth get together, leading to increasingly erratic behavior. He gets drunk at a bar and strikes another customer, then punches Marty at the launch party for the Byrde’s charity, landing him in a state mental hospital. Darlene gets him released on Ruth’s behalf.

Ruth vs. Frank Cosgrove Jr.

There’s another well-matched pair of enemies in Ruth and Frank Cosgrove Jr. (Joseph Sikora), who works for his father. Their fiery personalities clash immediately; Episode 1 ends with Ruth pushing Frank off the Missouri Belle after he acts out at a poker game.

Frank Jr. gets back at Ruth by having his employees kidnap her and rough her up; Ben responds by covering Frank Jr.’s car in birdseed, attracting a flock of birds that inflict serious damage. Frank Jr. then retaliates with an attack that lands Ruth in the hospital, causing Marty to end his business dealings with Frank Sr. Ruth gets the last word when Darlene shoots Frank Jr. in the genitals during the season finale.

Ruth and Frank Jr. also clash over business, as Ruth represents Marty’s interests and Frank Jr. represents those of his father, who facilitates the distribution and cash flow for the cartel. At one of the cash drops, Lagunas cartel operatives blow up Frank Jr.’s truck and kill his men, but he and Ruth survive.

The Cartel and the FBI

Netflix

Omar Navarro has a lot on his plate between his war with the Lagunas cartel and expanding his foothold in the Ozarks. Wendy and Marty leverage his conflict with the Lagunas to get the upper hand in their relationship with the FBI, which is auditing the Byrdes’ various businesses.

At first, Marty accepts Agent Maya Miller’s (Jessica Frances Dukes) offer to work for the FBI following an 18-month prison sentence, but after Navarro permits Marty to launder on his own terms, he changes his mind. He pretends to go along with Maya while secretly working on a plan to turn Maya into a double agent for the cartel.

Meanwhile, Navarro instructs the Byrdes to purchase a horse farm, where his operatives castrate a horse owned by the Lagunas.

Wild Cards: Erin Pierce and Ben Davis

Ben isn’t the only new person in town in Season 3. Erin Pierce (Madison Thompson), the teenage daughter of Helen, accompanies her mom to the Ozarks for the summer. Helen’s family is in the dark about who her boss is, and she intends to keep it that way, even as Erin spends time with Jonah and Charlotte, who are fully aware of (and participate in) their parents’ illegal activities.

This drives a wedge between Helen and Wendy, who start off on the same side and slowly become rivals as Helen vies to take over for the Byrdes. Helen has the Byrdes’ therapist killed for knowing too much and grows increasingly irritated about their various setbacks. The rift between Helen and the Byrdes reaches a tipping point when Ben tells Erin that Helen works for the cartel, making Erin a potential target. Helen sends her back to Chicago.

Ruth realizes that Ben is in serious trouble and the Byrdes work frantically to hide his location from Helen. Wendy and Ben go on the run; he calls the police on himself, and when they arrive at the scene Wendy convinces the officers not to arrest him. After he tries to call Helen to apologize, Wendy sees the writing on the wall. She abandons him at a restaurant, where Helen tracks their location and has Ben killed. Wendy and Marty reconcile as she suffers a mental breakdown.

A Bloody Season Finale

Netflix

In the aftermath of Ben’s death, Ruth cuts ties with the Byrdes. In Mexico, the Lagunas execute a deadly attack on Navarro’s son’s baptism.

Helen and the Byrdes make their cases to Navarro. Marty and Wendy demonstrate their value by providing the FBI with footage of the Cosgrove truck attack from Jonah’s (Skylar Gaertner) drone, resulting in the arrest of key Lagunas operatives. Helen counters by obtaining a copy of the confession Marty made to Agent Miller earlier in the season.

Navarro summons Helen, Marty and Wendy to Mexico. In the finale’s final moments, he has Helen shot and killed. Covered in her blood, he embraces Marty and Wendy and welcomes the dawn of a new era in their partnership.

“Ozark” Season 4 – Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix

Bono Admits He’s “So Embarrassed” by U2’s Music

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Bono recently revealed that Apple forcing U2’s album Songs of Innocence on every iPhone user in the world might have actually been more painful for him than it was for listeners.

While U2 has been one of the biggest bands in the world for decades, its lead singer confessed during an interview on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast that he finds most of their music mortifying. “I’ve been in the car when one of our songs has come on the radio and I’ve been the color of, as we say in Dublin, scarlet,” he said. “I’m just so embarrassed.” But he added that there’s still some salvageable hits within their extensive discography. “The one that I can listen to the most is ‘Miss Sarajevo’ with Luciano Pavarotti. Genuine, most of the other ones make me cringe a little bit,” he said, admitting that he’s “probably proudest” of the song “Vertigo.”

And it’s not just the tracklist that he regrets, Bono said he was also seriously against the band’s name when they first came up with it. Ultimately, their first manager Paul McGuinness convinced the singer to keep it, calling it “great” and insisting that it would “look good on a t-shirt, a letter and a number.” But, apparently, the name still hasn’t grown on him. “I didn’t realize that The Beatles was a bad pun, either,” he said. “In our head, it was like the spy plane, U-boat. It was futuristic…It turned out to imply this kind of acquiescence—no, I don’t like that name. I still don’t really like the name.” He added, “I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot, and maybe that’s the place to be as an artist—you know, right at the edge of your level of embarrassment.”

Bono’s musical regrets aren’t just limited to his band, but also his own singing ability. “I only became a singer, like, recently,” he said. “Maybe it hasn’t happened yet for some people’s ears and I understand that.” He even recalled a time the late singer Robert Palmer told U2’s bassist Adam Clayton in the ’80s, “God, would you ever tell your singer to just take down the keys a little bit? He’d do himself a favor, his voice a favor, and he’d do us all a favor who have to listen to him.” Bono agreed with that assessment, explaining, “I was thinking out of my body. I wasn’t thinking about singing. I didn’t really think about changing keys. Did we ever change a key?”

La Fortuna On Netflix: Should You Stream It Or Skip It (Entire Series)? What Our Critic Has To Say?

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The series La Fortuna comes under the genre of drama. T’Nia Miller, Ana Polvorosa, Blanca Portillo, Duncan Pow, Álvaro Mel, Stanley Tucci, Karra Elejalde, Pedro Casablanc, Clarke Peters, Manolo Solo will be featured in the series as well. An unassuming fortune, unlike the freight conveyed by its nominal vessel, La Fortuna should sparkle at home.

However, there’s sheer quality in the pacing, which implies it should depend intensely on the names of Amenabar and Tucci to stand out in business sectors further abroad. Like the old coins at the core of the question between such countless invested individuals, a few pieces of La Fortuna could do with a clean, while others have a more conspicuous radiance as well.

La Fortuna on Netflix: Should You Stream It or Skip It (Entire Series)?

Treasure tracker Frank Wild and the team of his boat Atlantis have made an undeniably exhilarating disclosure off the bank of Spain – a boat on the seabed stacked with gold and silver coins as well. When Wild declares that he is desperate in search of the world, Spanish government authorities speculate the boat to be La Fortuna, a Spanish ship sunk by the English in 1805 while getting back from the New World with wealth for the ruler as well.

The Spanish government is hesitant to get involved in a costly legitimate question with Wild; however, youthful negotiator Alex Ventura, with the support of the free thinker Minister of Culture, collaborates with service chronicler Lucia Vallarta to affirm that the boat is to be sure La Fortuna and get ready for a brutal fight with Wild as well.

Their ace card is sea legal advisor Jonas Pierce, whose dependable quarrel with Wild – a man he calls ‘a privateer’ – seems, by all accounts, to be over significantly more than simply submerged fortune as well.

La Fortuna on Netflix: What Our Critic has to Say?

An unassuming fortune, dissimilar to the freight conveyed by its nominal vessel, La Fortuna should sparkle at home; however, there’s a delicate quality in the pacing which implies it should depend intensely on the names of Amenabar and Tucci to stand out in business sectors further abroad. Like the old coins at the core of the question between such countless invested individuals, a few pieces of La Fortuna could do with a clean, while others have a more conspicuous radiance as well.

Oneself realizing series recognizes that it is so precarious with a journey by Spanish government workers to recuperate a freight manifest. Amenabar confounds the thing by setting up his young legend Alex Ventura (Alvaro Mel) as a meek beginner in the workplaces of the Culture Ministry in Madrid. It’s not exactly as energizing on a visual level as advanced privateer Frank Wild (Stanley Tucci) as well.

It’s not the reality of the situation that will see Amenabar’s TV series do or die. The excitement of the areas, solid acting in all cases, and the contention of those qualities with the apathetic pacing. It appears to be that this series might have been finished in three or four episodes rather than the six appointed, and the last two, on the other hand, tarry and accelerate again to decreasing outcomes as well.

The series, which is basically an experience/show, can’t exactly decide who is the scoundrel – Tucci, who is loads of fun, or the Deep State, which isn’t exactly so engaging. Regardless of whether they’ll finish the excursion is not yet clear as well. Watchers are not unsafe as recorded by Spanish DoP superstar Carlos Catalon and energetically scored by Roque Banos.

La Fortuna on Netflix Plot

Where to Watch La Fortuna?

La Fortuna will be available on Netflix.

How (and why) agencies are adapting to stay relevant in the metaverse

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As brands speed up their metaverse activity in 2022, agencies are adjusting their game plans to stay relevant in the virtual world to come.

These days, proto-metaverse platforms like Roblox and Fortnite are chock-full of virtual activations by brands such as AT&T and Ralph Lauren. These branded spaces are often designed by in-game developer studios, most of whom began as casual players. “At first, we would hear from [Fortnite developer] Epic Games, and they would put us in touch with different brands,” said Michael Herriger, CEO of Fortnite studio Atlas Creative, whose clients include LG, Alienware and the NBA. “Our business model now is kind of broken up into the two different deals we get — an Epic Games brand deal, and then a third-party deal.”

These in-game studios essentially act as metaversal agencies, designing and implementing brands’ virtual activations much as a traditional agency would in a physical space. This doesn’t mean traditional agencies have been made obsolete by the metaverse — Atlas Creative’s LG activation was designed by the electronics company’s in-house agency, for example — but activations such as NASCAR’s recent foray into Roblox have been designed and implemented entirely by developers, without agencies’ help. NASCAR provided the intellectual property and visual assets, and the developer studio Badimo implemented them into its Roblox game, Jailbreak, and that was it — no need for an agency to get involved.

The emergence of these in-game studios, and their ensuing brand partnerships, has created competition for traditional agencies. “I don’t think agencies can ignore this new space,” said Charles Hambro, CEO of esports and gaming consultancy and data platform GEEIQ. “You know, we went from print advertising in the 90s, and then suddenly social media came up, and everyone went, ‘oh my god, we need a social media strategy.’ A lot of the brands and agencies that I speak with, they refer back to that and say this feels like when we went from print to social media. Suddenly, we had to learn this whole new world.”

To get more comfortable in this new environment, some agencies are getting involved in experimental projects to stake their claim to the metaverse. Companies such as agency holding group S4 Capital have held board meetings in Horizon Workrooms; in December, Mediahub moved into the metaverse by establishing both a virtual office in the metaverse platform Decentraland and a dedicated channel on the messaging service Discord.

“Our use of Decentraland is less of an attempt at mirroring an office space; it’s more that we have this starting point with one of the major platforms,” said Simeon Edmunds, svp and creative director at Mediahub. “More than being a proxy office, it’s a starting point for conversations with clients. Any conversation about the metaverse can go in any number of directions — it’s much easier to say, ‘hey, if you click on this link, you can drop in and W-A-S-D yourself around.’”

Initiatives such as Mediahub’s virtual office are more of a toe-dipping than a leap of faith into the metaverse. Some agencies are investing in more practical metaverse knowledge as well. In December, dentsu agency Isobar Italy designed its own industry-inspired Roblox game, Pitch Blitz, to demonstrate its in-house metaverse design capabilities. “We used the Roblox editor,” said Isobar CEO Massimiliano Chiesa. “But since we have 3D guys, that let us improve the editor, in terms of polygons and all that stuff.”

Once brands become more comfortable operating in the metaverse, some observers anticipate that traditional agencies and the newly formed in-metaverse developer firms will reach an equilibrium that allows both types of businesses to benefit from the rise of virtual space. “Both media and creative [agencies] say they do everything,” said Matt Maher, whose creative agency M7 Innovations is focused on future technologies such as VR and AR. “The reality is, it’s not real because a creative agency just can’t take the overhead of 25 visual effects artists just because one client might want to move into 3D modeling.”

Indeed, as the metaverse takes shape, traditional agencies are unlikely to succeed by muscling out the in-game developers that have organically arisen in the space. Instead, Edmunds said, metaverse-minded agencies should simply continue to do what they do best: connect brands with creators and their audiences. Though studios such as Atlas Creative are beginning to forge their own relationships with brands, agencies have long-standing brand relationships and can help brands with cross-platform campaigns, not just platform-specific activations. “Those developers — the thing that they don’t have, that we as an agency do, is the long-term relationship, not just with the clients, but with that brand, and understanding what makes strategic sense for them,” Edmunds said. “So, yes, from a pure production standpoint, you can have anybody build anything. But having somebody who’s been through three years of presenting things and knows how all the key stakeholders are going to respond to something — that is a level of knowledge that still needs to be in place.”

Whether we end up calling it the metaverse or not, it’s clear that consumers and the brands that serve them are increasingly spending their time (and money) inside virtual space. Agencies that missed the boat on past innovations, such as social media and gaming, will look to assert their authority in the metaverse during these early days. “If you want to be relevant, if you want to be part of this change, you need to do this,” said Fikret Fetahovic, CPO of the Publicis Groupe agency Boomerang. “For agencies to survive in the future, it is essential to be able to adapt; it should be in the DNA of a modern agency.”