The remains of an affluent Connecticut couple who went missing in August were found Thursday in Weston and authorities will charge their adult son with their murders, reports the New York Times.

Let’s take it from the top: Jeffrey and Jeanette Navin went missing in August under suspicious circumstances. Jeffrey Navin owned a trash hauling business for 30 years, and his adult son, 27-year-old Kyle Navin, was the company’s operations manager. According to the report, Kyle also had something of a drug problem:

Both Jeanette and Jeffrey Navin had confided in friends that they were worried about their son’s drug use. The couple planned to sell their trash-hauling business and cut him out of their will, Ms. Navin told a friend in late July.

An NBC Connecticut report says something similar:

Jeanette Navin told a longtime acquaintance her relationship with her son had been “very tempestuous” and that she suspected he was abusing drugs, according to the affidavit. She also confided that the couple had purchased a home for their son but he was failing to pay the mortgage and taxes.

Published texts between the accused and his girlfriend, 31-year-old Jennifer Valiante, would seem to indicate that Kyle Navin may have had some sense of the writing on the wall with respect to his cash faucet:

In May, Kyle Navin sent a text message to Ms. Valiante about plans to “take them down,” referring to his parents, and “get some money out of them somehow.”

In July, he sent a text message to her about a plan to “solve every single problem and give us a wealthy amazing life.”

According to the affidavit, she replied: “I hear ya. It sounds very good I just don’t know.”

After a few exchanges, he wrote, “Wipe out the infection and get $ for life. ... It’s perfect plan.”

The story gets dark and very weird on August 4th—the day the Navins disappeared—when Jeffrey Navin apparently got some idea that his and his wife’s lives were in danger. From the NBC Connecticut report:

According to the arrest warrant affidavit for Valiante, Jeffrey Navin texted his son on Aug. 4 — the day he disappeared — saying he would not go home until he knew his wife was OK. The father also asked his son if he hurt his mother.

“No absolutely not. Why would you think,” Kyle Navin responded, according to the affidavit.

“I go home and get framed for murder,” Jeffrey Navin then texted.

“Oh stop,” Kyle Navin texted back.

On August 9 the Navin’s pickup truck was found with a shattered window in a parking lot in Westport. Police also discovered evidence in Kyle Navin’s pickup: a bullet hole in the front passenger seat and blood that was eventually shown to belong to Jeanette Navin.

In the basement of Kyle Navin’s home—purchased for him by his parents—police reportedly discovered stains on a rug that eventually tested positive for Jeffrey Navin’s blood.

In addition to that physical evidence, Kyle Navin had apparently been shifty during the police investigation of his parents’ disappearance:

In the days after they disappeared, their elder son’s account of when and where he last saw his parents, and what he discussed with them, changed over several days during interviews with the local and State Police, according to an affidavit written last month by Michael Zuk, an F.B.I. agent.

Police searched Kyle Navin’s home during the investigation and discovered drug paraphernalia, two guns, and other circumstantial evidence: a Home Depot receipt “dated the day after the Navins disappeared, for germicidal bleach, drain opener, stain remover and contractor cleanup bags.” Kyle was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm while addicted to heroin (which is a real charge, I looked it up).

Then, on Thursday, a property owner in Weston was clearing brush on his land when he discovered human remains that have since been identified as those of Jeffrey and Jeanette Navin. Police say the accumulated evidence “‘very strongly suggests’ that Navin killed his parents,” according to NBC Connecticut. It is alleged that Kyle Navin killed his parents separately and then dumped their bodies on the lot of the then-vacant home.

Police have charged Valiante, Kyle Navin’s girlfriend, with conspiracy to commit murder and hindering prosecution. Kyle younger brother, when interviewed by police, reportedly said his first thought was that his parents“either went on vacation, or my brother did something to them.”

[New York Times] [NBC Connecticut]

On the list of Bad Halloween Costume Ideas, “Suicide Bomber” has got to be at or near the very top. There will always be social consequences for wearing such a thing. Then there are the consequences of wearing your suicide bomber costume on a goddamn military base, and those are a whole other matter.

This is a lesson that was learned the hard way by a dipshit soldier this Halloween when he tried to enter the Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina, reports The Guardian:

The unidentified soldier, wearing a costume that appeared to be an explosive vest, tried to pass a checkpoint on Saturday evening, the base said in a Facebook post, which has since been removed, according to Military.com.

The post said the incident resulted in an emergency response that consisted of the gate being briefly closed as explosive technicians cleared the site, the military news website said.

The original Facebook post was removed after commenters were “profane, sophomoric, or did not treat the subject seriously,” providing further evidence that internet commenters are roughly the same in every commenting area on the whole goddamn internet.

A later post confirmed the incident. Don’t wear suicide bomber Halloween costumes, morons of Earth!

[The Guardian]

Image via Shutterstock

If there’s one thing all 15 (!) Republican presidential candidates can agree on it’s that pretending televised debates are anything more than a sham—and that network TV journalists are actually journalists—is probably, at this point, a whole lot more trouble than it’s worth.

According to the New York Times, resentment against the way that the debates operate has been simmering for a while, only to boil over after CNBC’s last week. “There’s no question that last week’s debate was a disaster,” the Republican National Committee’s communications director, Sean Spicer, said. “Our candidates deserve the best format and the best stage to articulate their vision.”

On Friday, the Times reports, the RNC suspended a debate scheduled for February to be hosted by NBC News and Telemundo, and on Sunday the committee promoted its chief operating officer and former chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, to negotiate terms of the debates with the TV networks going forward.

“I think Sean is an experienced election attorney with significant political connections,” Spicer said. “He will bring a lot to the effort that ensures we achieve the best possible format for the candidates seeking our nomination.”

Also on Sunday, though, representatives for most of the Republican candidates met at a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, to try to come to a consensus about what they want from the networks. (It’s really too bad Scott Walker already dropped out. He might have learned a thing or two about the power of collective bargaining!)

Anyway, the meeting has been leaky as hell, with political reporters tweeting updates on what each campaign wants from the debates all night. Broadly, there seem to be two major axes of conflict: the GOP candidates against the “media” and the GOP candidates still jockeying for position around each other.

The minor candidates, naturally, are tired of getting shunted to their own debate that nobody watches. Campaign representatives for Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum, and Bobby Jindal proposed two debates of seven randomly chosen candidates, the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel reported.

Representatives for Jeb Bush want to reinstate the Telemundo debate, the New York Times’ Ashley Parker reported, and Trump’s team threatened to boycott. However, everyone agreed with the Bush camp’s concern, the Post’s Robert Costa tweeted, that the candidates should get approval of TV graphics during the debate.

Also: “Per more sources in room, the group has decided to lay off Fox, put them in sep category as the camps move fwd. Kasich team pushed for this,” Costa tweeted. “In essence, there is fury about press but camps here are deciding to treat Fox differently moving fwd. More scrutiny for other outlets,” he continued. No one has pulled out of the Fox Business News debate next week.

Meanwhile, as IB Times’ Brendan James points out, the asking price for a 30-second advertising spot during CNBC’s debate last week was reportedly $250,000. Presumably we will find out soon enough how much the other networks’ editorial sensibilities are worth to them as well! That should be interesting.

Update 10:05 pm: Dave Weigel got a copy of a draft letter to networks that GOP lawyer and “dealmaker” (thought that was Trump?) Ben Ginsberg distributed at Sunday’s meeting. One proposed demand: “Can you pledge that the temperature in the hall be kept below 67 degrees?”

The campaigns all agreed that the letter was not strong enough, Weigel reports.

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

A giant hole has opened up on a Wyoming ranch, the end is nigh.

Geologists say the opening of this hole—as surefire a sign of the coming apocalypse as there ever could be—may have been caused by “a landslide.” The Wyoming Geological Survey wants you to think “groundwater has created weakness in what is already a saturated hillside. Further saturation like a wet spring and summer leads to more weakness, then the hillside shifted and caused a landslide with an associated large crack.” But we will not be fooled. Hell is down in that hole, and it will come forth and claim us all. Repent, repent, we are doomed.

We are advised “to stay away from the site because it is considered an active landslide and unsafe,” and also because the Kraken is down there.

The Washington Post says the crack was first discovered by a pair of hunting guides when it was far less impressive. When they returned a few days later, all hell had broken loose:

“I don’t really think anyone knows what happened out there, all of a sudden it was just there. I think the reason it’s so fascinating is it’s so big. And it doesn’t make any sense, where it happened it’s just like the ground opened up, and the size of it is just huge.”

That damn hole is 50 feet wide and “the length of six football fields,” according to SNS Outfitters, the group that first stumbled upon the harbinger of doom.

I mean look at this terrifying thing:

If you’re not panicking already, what are you even doing.

[CBS Denver] [Washington Post]

[Screengrab via CBS Denver]

At least 14 people are dead after a gun battle at the Sahafi hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia on Sunday, the New York Times reports. The Shabab militant group took responsibility for the attack.

According to the Times, Shabab fighters blew up the front gate to the hotel—previously haunted by warlords and militants but recently frequented by government officials and lawmakers—with a car bomb, storming the building, taking hostages, and engaging with security forces from the building’s rooftop.

From the Times:

Around dawn on Sunday, witnesses said, a car rammed into the Sahafi’s front gate and immediately exploded. Several Shabab fighters then scrambled into the hotel, shooting guests. A second car bomb exploded two hours later, wounding several journalists and other people who had rushed to the hotel, located at a busy traffic circle in central Mogadishu, to see what happened. One young journalist, Mustaf Abdinur Safaana, a freelance TV cameraman, was killed.

Among the other dead, witnesses said, were a Somali lawmaker, a Somali Army general and the hotel’s owner, Abdirashid Ilgayte, who used to welcome guests into his incense-scented office just off the hotel’s entrance and regale them with stories of violence and intrigue from Somalia’s darkest days.

“They have killed the owner of the hotel, a former military general and other officials during the attack,” police Captain Mohamed Hussein told Reuters. “There’s a hostage situation inside the hotel.” By 11 am, the Times reports, Somali forces, supported by African Union troops, shot and killed the militants.

The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shabab, which has lost ground in Somalia of late, is the group responsible for the attack on a Kenyan university earlier this year that left 147 dead. “We want to confirm that such terrorist acts does not mean Shabab’s revival, but in the contrary shows clear signs that they are in desperate situation,” Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said Sunday.

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is a professional weightlifter and former silver medalist in the World’s Strongest Man competition. He also plays Gregor Clegane, aka The Mountain, possibly aka Ser Robert Strong (minor spoilerage, but not really) on HBO’s Game Of Thrones. He once declared himself the “future of strength.” I’m inclined to let him have that one.

Conor McGregor is currently the #1 contender in the UFC featherweight division, and even has a sort-of title. He holds an 18-2 lifetime record, and is currently training to fight champion Jose Aldo. Fighting a mountain is as good a way as any, I suppose.

Good on McGregor for avoiding the ole exploded-head trick, which Clegane is famous for.

“Pro-marijuana group ResponsibleOhio introduced its new mascot to supporters this week... Part Superman, part cannabis plant, ‘Buddie’ has a green marijuana bud for a head, sports six-pack abs and wears a cape. On his chest: The letter B over a cannabis leaf and the state of Ohio.”

The University of Notre Dame has fired a female academic coach, the New York Daily News reports, after a student filed a lawsuit against the school on Friday claiming that the tutor had coerced several university football and basketball players into having “racially-motivated” sex with her daughter.

An African American student enrolled at Notre Dame on an academic scholarship in the fall of 2014. He sought tutoring lessons in the spring. The (white) tutor immediately “initiated, directed and coordinated a sexually and racially motivated inappropriate and demeaning relationship,” between the student and her daughter.

The tutor would orchestrate “sexually and racially motivated” trysts at hotel rooms between the student and her daughter, the Daily News reports, and afterwards ask him about the “nature, frequency, and quality of the sexual activities.” Also, the lawsuit claims, the tutor would make “racially-charged comments about his sexual prowess and genitalia.”

From the South Bend Tribune:

The stress of the “hostile sexual environment and degradation” was furthered exacerbated by the woman pressuring the student to convert to Catholicism, according to the suit.

The student claims he brought the situation to the attention of Notre Dame officials two weeks ago, but the university has “failed to act to remedy the situation,” the suit says.

“We were kind of given no choice,” one of the student’s lawyers, Michael Misch, told the Daily News. “When the door was slammed in our face we had to pursue our client’s rights through the courts.”

Notre Dame issued a statement to the Tribune on Saturday. “The allegations against the University of Notre Dame in the complaint are unfounded,” university spokesman Paul Browne said. “As are gratuitous and unfounded references to ‘student athletes’—an allegation that is nothing more than a cynical attempt to attract publicity.”

But on Sunday, the Daily News acquired a six-page, internal school report that found the academic coach, who has been fired, had violated the university’s “values” and its “discrimination harassment policy.”

The suit also alleges that when the student attempted to break off his relationship with the tutor’s daughter, her mother recommended that he seek mental health counseling, and worked with the university’s psychiatric support to “medicate Plaintiff John Doe to keep him passive, cooperative, and under control.”

http://documents.gawker.com/complaint-agai...

http://documents.gawker.com/complaint-agai...

Photo via Shutterstock. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Lifehacker What to Do if You Cheated on Your Partner, but Want to Stay Together | Deadspin Tiger Woods’ Former Caddy Says Working For Him Was Like Being His “Slave” | Gizmodo This Turning-The-Clocks-Back Nonsense Needs To Stop | Jalopnik Car Dealer Dances To Rap Song In Potentially The Most Awkward Commercial Ever

Metrojet officials announced Monday that the Russian jetliner crash that killed 224 people in the Sinai Peninsula was caused by “an external impact on the plane” that caused it to disintegrate mid-air.

http://gawker.com/russian-plane-...

According to the New York Times, officials say the investigation has ruled out other causes for the the crash, which occurred early Saturday morning. Reports indicate the St. Petersburg-bound 18-year-old Airbus A321-200 had been in the air about twenty minutes when it suddenly plummeted from around 33,000 feet above the Peninsula.

Egyptian authorities initially suggested the crash may have been caused by a technical failure, a theory the airline has now explicitly rejected.

“We absolutely exclude the technical failure of the plane, and we absolutely exclude pilot error or a human factor,” Alexander A. Smirnov, a Metrojet deputy director for aviation, said at a press conference Monday.

The airline has not identified the source of the impact and authorities have not confirmed it was an attack. But according to unconfirmed reports, an ISIS-affiliated group called the Sinai Province of the Islamic State has claimed responsibility, saying it downed the plane in retaliation for Russia’s military interference in Syria.

http://gawker.com/isis-group-cla...

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Ohio University’s Acacia fraternity chapter has been suspended pending a university investigation, The Athens News reports. The school began looking into the chapter after a student posted a short video of Acacia bros singing a dirty version of “Hey Jude” to sorority girls last week. The new lyrics, per the whistleblower, were as follows:

Send nudes, don’t let me down. Take my soft dick, and make it harder.

The short clip, posted on October 28, shows the bros jamming to the breakdown portion of the song on Ohio’s ADPi sorority porch:

University spokesperson Katie Quaranta told the Athens News that “a preliminary investigation has produced information linking the behavior to Acacia, a registered fraternity at Ohio University.”

The university is taking the matter seriously, perhaps, because Acacia has been accused of sexual misconduct before. In August, OU’s student union passed out a pamphlet to freshmen warning that Acacia is “notorious for drugging their free drinks and raping girls.” Acacia’ national headquarters responded by saying there was “no evidence” that these crimes occurred.

The year before, student organization “FuckRapeCulture” circulated a petition to ban Acacia after anonymous Yik Yak posts accused the frat of sexually assaulting women at its off-campus location known as the “Blue House.” The university investigated these claims at the time, but Acacia was not found in violation of any university policy.

If you have anything you’d like to share about Ohio’s Acacia chapter, feel free to email allie@gawker.com or tips@gawker.com.

Photo via Twitter. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright/In the forests of the night/What immortal hand or eye/Did you eat this weekend?

An allegedly drunk woman’s, it turns out:

Jacqueline Eide, 33, managed to get inside Henry Doorly Zoo before it had opened with the intention of petting a tiger, according to a police statement. When she allegedly reached into a cage, a tiger — which zoo officials believe to have been Mai — bit Eide’s hand, causing severe trauma.

A friend of the woman took her to Creighton University Medical Center, where she remains for treatment.

And they say nothing happens in Nebraska.

[The Washington Post]

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

The husband of the mayor of a small Oklahoma town celebrated Halloween by donning a white robe emblazoned with a crucifix and then holding a large wooden cross near torches to make it look like it was aflame.

Cary Sharp, the husband of Lahoma mayor Theresa Sharp, told News 9 the ill-advised costume came about after a night of drinking.

“Sit around the bonfire and drink a couple of beers and thought well my buddy his last name is White and the subject got brung (sic) up,” Sharp said.

That subject, apparently, involved several men dressing in white robes—some wore hoods as well—and lighting a bonfire and several torches in the proximity of a cross.

“There was no cross that burned,” Sharp explained to Enid News, denying reports that spread once a photo of the incident went viral on Facebook. “It was held behind the fire to look like it was burning, but there was no fire. The pictures we’ve seen claimed they were burning one, but there was not one burnt.”

Cross-burning or not, the display caught the attention of a concerned resident, who called the sheriff’s department.

The witness was informed by sheriff’s deputies that the incident, while in “poor taste,” was legal, though Sharp and his pals agreed to extinguish the flames and change when asked by a deputy.

Mayor Sharp, wisely, distanced herself from her husband’s costume, which she described as a “prank gone bad,” before, dumbly, expressing resentment at the ensuing controversy.

“I was out trick-or-treating with my son, and I in no way support the activities that occurred,” she told Enid News.

“This is ridiculous, really,” she added. “It was a Halloween night.”

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, goes Wayne LaPierre’s axiom, is a good guy with a gun. What if the bad guy’s gun is fake? Another shopworn motto for gun-lovers applies: kill ‘em all, and let god sort ‘em out.

http://gawker.com/its-really-har...

In Chicago, 55-year-old Reginald Gildersleeve died Saturday night while allegedly attempting to hold up a store. Gildersleeve had a gun, and so did the unnamed bystander who allegedly fired multiple shots at him during the stickup, killing him. A nice illustrative case for the quote—which NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre first trotted out in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting—except that, according to law enforcement sources, Gildersleeve’s weapon was a toy or a paintball gun.

The shooter, who is licensed to carry a weapon, will likely not be charged, the Chicago Tribune reports. A woman who opened fire on a suspected shoplifter in a crowded Michigan parking lot earlier this month will also avoid charges, as will the man who fired one shot at alleged shoplifters outside an Indiana farm supply store days later.

Robbery with a fake weapon is not punishable by the death penalty in Illinois or anywhere else, and a yokel with a handgun and a messiah complex is not a substitute for the police, judge, jury, and executioner.

Image via Flickr. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Leonardo DiCaprio certainly looked one kind of way when he was younger. But is there another guy now—a Swedish one—who looks sort of like that kind of way, also?

And is he on Instagram?

Lemme see:

Huh, I guess there is a Swedish guy who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio.

Image via Instagram. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

Here’s the story: a group of roommates decided it would be a good idea to leave boxes of full-size candy bars unattended on their porch on Halloween night. The idea was to see—via a security camera feed—which kids would be considerate and take just one candy bar, and which kids would be greedy and take a few extra.

Kids. Which kids. And most of the kids did great! Even one big knobby kid who looks like his costume is that of a surly adolescent—surely he represented the most likely candy bar bandit, right?

Wrong!

With the help of little Jason Voorhees, the bunny cleans out the joint. For a second there you think the kid will be like little Cindy-Lou Who, but nah. This is like the Grinch saying “you want in on this shit or not,” and little Cindy making off with the roast beast.

Don’t steal Halloween candy, adults.

Screencap via YouTube

Between 1999 and 2013, the death rate for middle-aged white people with less than a college education in America rose markedly, in contrast with comparable demographic groups in other wealthy nations as well as with steadily dropping death rates for that group before 1999.

According to a review of statistics published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, after falling an average of 2 percent each year for the 20 years before 1999, mortality rates for white American men and women aged 45-54 who have not received a college degree rose an average of half a percent each year.

So: altogether, for middle-aged white Americans who have not received a college education, the mortality rate has risen by 22 percent since 1999. However, the New York Times reports that for those with a college education, mortality rates continued to fall.

Were it not for this reversal, a half-million more people would be alive today, the researchers, 2015 Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and his wife, Anne Case—both economics professors at Princeton—found. According to the Washington Post, the most recent precedent for such a precipitous rise in mortality rates is in Russian men following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Drugs and alcohol, and suicide...are clearly the proximate cause,” Deaton told the Post. “Half a million people are dead who should not be dead,” he said. “About 40 times the Ebola stats. You’re getting up there with HIV-AIDS.”

Middle-aged people are reporting more pain in recent years than they have in the past, Case found: between 2011 and 2013, a third reported chronic joint pain and one in seven said they had sciatica.

The least educated, meanwhile, reported the most pain, the worst general health, and the most financial stress, the Times reports. Since 1999, income for households headed by a high school graduate without a college degree has fallen by 19 percent.

For this demographic group, deaths from drug overdoses and alcohol poisoning rose fourfold, The Guardian reports, suicides by 81 percent, and deaths from liver disease and cirrhosis by 50 percent.

“Addictions are hard to treat and pain is hard to control, so those currently in midlife may be a ‘lost generation’ whose future is less bright than those who preceded them,” Deaton and Case wrote.

Even with the rise, though, the death rate for African Americans of this group is still greater than that for whites, the Post reports. This is because socioeconomic circumstances tend to “gang up on African Americans, who have lower education, lower incomes and race all working against them,” according to David Weir, director of the health and retirement study at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, who reviewed the study. But: “In this case, that’s not happening.”

From the Post:

Weir said economic insecurity, the decay of communities and the breakdown of families probably have had some impact on death and illness rates, in addition to the nation’s opioid epidemic and the factors the authors identified. But the study clearly shows they are not the result of diseases such as lung cancer or diabetes, which are declining and increasing slowly, respectively.

“I think it has to have something to do [with] the pain underlying it,” both physical and psychic, he said. “That is the age when people have their midlife crisis...I think it has to do with that stage of life, and physical ailments do start to accumulate at that age.

“This paper really is a question, not an answer,” he added.

“It may be that they have less hope about their ability to live a good life,” Case speculated.

Photo via Shutterstock. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The ever-controversial steel tunnel of black viscous oil meant to dig through the United States has been paused, for now.

The Alberta-based company TransCanada Corp. sent a letter to the U.S.State Department on Monday asking to suspend its application while the company undergoes a review process in Nebraska. The company wrote:

“In order to allow time for certainty regarding the Nebraska route, TransCanada requests that the State Department pause in its review of the Presidential Permit application for Keystone XL. This will allow a decision on the Permit to be made later based on certainty with respect to the route of the pipeline.”

The proposed 1,179-mile pipeline would supposedly bring 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Not coincidentally, the State Department was in the final stages of a review of the pipeline, which has become a symbol of fossil fuel dependence for environmentalists. The State Department was expected to reject the permit earlier this week.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama vetoed a bill to approve the construction of the pipeline, claiming that the legislation took away his authority to make a final decision on it.

The conduit has been called “the most famous pipeline in the history of the world, even without being built yet.” It’s been commissioned since 2010, and it’s not likely to be built — or to be scrapped — any time soon.

[Image via Getty]

Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.

Baltimore’s Housing Authority is just a total mess. They’ve been sued by public housing residents who allege that maintenance workers forced women to exchange sex acts for necessary repairs. Now two employees who joined the lawsuit are claiming they’ve been retaliated against, reports the Baltimore Sun.

Anthony Coates works for the Housing Authority and is president of the union. After filing an affidavit in U.S. District Court “alleging that he and others had previously informed top Housing Authority officials that some workers were demanding sexual favors from tenants as a condition for making repairs to their homes,” he received a letter from his employer:

In an letter to Coates Friday, a top Housing Authority official told him he was being suspended for violating the authority’s “Code of Conduct policy.” The letter does not elaborate. Housing Authority officials declined to discuss Coates’ suspension, citing the need for confidentiality in personnel matters.

The Baltimore City Council—finally making noise about getting around to holding hearings about the Housing Authority—has reportedly expressed concern that this could look like retaliatory action against a whistleblower. I think they might be on to something!

This has been a bad few days for the embattled Housing Authority, already “the subject of a criminal investigation by city prosecutors and another investigation by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.” Saturday afternoon the Sun reported that the Housing Authority had eliminated the position of Inspector General, described in the report as “the office designed to root out misconduct and hold employees accountable.” Housing Authority spokesperson Tania Baker said it was apparently eliminated as a cost-cutting measure:

“When the most recent Inspector General left HABC, we did a thorough review of the role and functions of the Office of the Inspector General of HABC and determined they should be consolidated as a unit under HABC’s Office of Legal Affairs in light of severe budgetary constraints and to better coordinate efforts,” she said in an emailed statement.

It’s possible the “better coordinated efforts” may have hit a snag, you guys.

This is an ugly situation. Coates and another union member, Lucky Crosby Sr., say in their affidavits that they warned “multiple senior housing officials about the allegations” and were subsequently instructed to stop their investigation, and told “not to put any of the allegations in writing.” Crosby was fired last month, and he believes it was punishment for speaking out against Housing Authority. His union agrees:

“It appears that the Housing Authority of Baltimore City has taken retaliatory action against these two employees for exercising their protected rights as local union representatives,” said Middleton, executive director of AFSCME Council 67, Maryland Public Employees Union.

The Housing Authority reportedly will begin settlement talks in January with the women who brought the sex-for-repairs allegations. Meanwhile, no date has been set for the City Council to begin their own investigation.

Get it together, Baltimore.

[Baltimore Sun] [Baltimore Sun]

Image via AP

There is simply no reason why this would be an appropriate series of behaviors.

Please, if you must skydive, do it respectfully. Like this.

h/t Digg

Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.