| SF POLICE RECOVER $1 MILLION PAINTING, VALUABLES
San Francisco police say a 42-year-old man has confessed to masterminding the holiday heist of millions of dollars of artwork and antiques from a Presidio Heights home. Burglary Inspector Denise Fabbri said that James Reem, a San Francisco man, confessed last week to gathering a group of thieves who were able to steal several valuable antiques, including a book of etchings, coins, furniture and a John Singer Sargent portrait of a gray-haired woman valued at over $1 million. The painting, along with a smaller portrait and two antique chairs are now being stored safely in the Hall of Justice where burglary detectives continue their investigation. According to Fabbri, a scheme to burglarize the Jackson Street home of Robert Kendrick began in September when Reem snuck into the mansion and stole jewels and other small items.
Flemington fiction
The story surrounding the 250-year-old farmhouse that sits on Bonnell Street in Flemington had long been cemented into local lore. Known as Fleming Castle, the tidy white house had been Samuel Fleming's tavern, a renowned gathering place during the Revolutionary War and home to the man who gave the town its name. The locals called it a castle, the story went, because it towered over the log cabins and Native American lean-tos of the day. It also served as a post office, a stagecoach stop and later the home of former U.S. senator and New Jersey governor Samuel Southard. It is the pride of Flemington. And its charming tale has been touted in tourist literature, retold by docents dressed in period costumes and passed on to generations of schoolchildren and Brownie troops.
LEX 18 Storm Tracker Chief Meteorologist Bill Meck
Bill Meck never dreamed of anything but being a TV weatherman. The dream became a reality while a sophomore at Iowa State University when Bill joined the staff at WOI-TV in Des Moines. After 2 years chasing tornadoes and finishing his degree, Meck moved to WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was there he met his wife, Connie. During his tenure in South Carolina, Bill produced and hosted an award winning severe weather documentary, "Danger From the Sky." A 3 year stint as the Chief Meteorologist at WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia followed. It was here Meck developed a program called Bill's Weather 101 which takes the complexities of meteorology and science and makes it understandable and fun for the students. Before coming to LEX 18, Bill was weekend meteorologist at WTHR-TV in Indianapolis.
An owner leaves his mark on antique home
For over two centuries, the six-bedroom white clapboard colonial farmhouse that sits on nearly five acres in what's known as Somers' Historic Corridor, has stood witness to generations of lives lived. Known as Blackberry Hill Farm for the blackberry bushes that once pervaded the site, its most recent inhabitants are Ken and Irene Duskin, who purchased the house in 1964 and raised their two children there. During that time, Ken Duskin not only flourished in the advertising industry in Manhattan, kept nine horses in the property's two-stall salt-box barn, and produced wine in his basement winery, he also restored the entire interior of the house, which dates back to before the Revolution, with antique woods and other period materials. "It's been a love affair," he says.
Little has changed at site of collapsed building
Wood debris still hangs over broken bricks and chunks of concrete that once held together the east side of a downtown structure, now a hollowed tower of aging masonry near the corner of Clay and Washington streets.It is a scene largely unchanged from a year ago today at 11:15 a.m., when the building at 707-713 Clay Street collapsed just after workers inside cleaning it heard creaks and cracks and fled for their lives. All escaped unharmed.The old structure was to get new life as an antique mall. Instead, it remains a mess in the city's historic district - mired in pending litigation.The initial reaction of Mayor Laurence Leyens was hands off.“We're not going to touch a brick," Leyens said. “If we touch one brick and another building falls, we can be sued."Yet to hear the owners tell it, the city thwarted efforts to clear the site and rebuild.
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