E105: Pressed to Kill

In this powerful episode, Rebecca sits down with Tom Marquardt, retired publisher and editor of The Capital Gazette, to discuss his new book, Pressed to Kill. Tom takes us inside the tragic events of June 28, 2018, when a gunman attacked the Gazette newsroom, killing five people. He shares insights on the victims' legacies, newsroom security, the evolving media landscape and the broader issues of mass violence in America.

Chapters

• 0:00 The legacy of local news
• 5:09 June 28, 2018: A Day of Tragedy
• 19:40 Warning signs and the mind of a killer
• 31:10 The changing face of journalism
• 39:37 Honoring the victims and lessons for the future

Transcript

0:01

Welcome. I am delighted to have Tom Marquardt, the retired publisher and editor of the Annapolis Capital Gazette coming to speak with us today about his new book, which is going to publish March 18th called Press to Kill. So Tom, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Rebecca. Glad to be here. It's and actually we go back a long way because in addition to being the retired editor and publisher, you also sat for a long, long time on the MDDC Press Foundation board. And so you've been so for our listeners, why don't you tell us a little bit about your sort of your history with the industry and then we can get into the book and why it's so important now. Sure. So, you know, I've been involved in newspapers for over 40 years. It the only career I had. I joined the Capitol in 1977, first as a managing editor, then as the executive editor, and finally when I retired in 2012, I was the editor and publisher. So, you know, it's been in newspapers have been in my blood since I was able to write a story. And, you know, I was served for a long time in Maryland. probably over 40 years. So that was probably the most of my career was spent in Annapolis. That is a huge trajectory and it doesn't happen very much anymore. you know, just in seeing the changes in the industry and also in the Annapolis Capitol, you went from private ownership to, you know, things changing across the board. Tell us a little bit about that trajectory and sort of the vibe or what the Capitol Gazette kind of meant to Annapolis. Sure, mean it was one heck of a trajectory as you say. You know, we were there in the 80s, know, this paper was owned by Phil Merrill and the circulation was increasing. We had eight out of ten homes in our primary market. We were looking to hit 50,000. Little did we know then that we had hit our peak and that it wasn't going to get any larger. So a lot happened after that. When Phil Merrill died, his wife took over the business. Eventually, she sold out to Landmark Communications, who was a silent partner for all those years. Eventually, they decided as the circulation was declining and the industry was really having a lot of struggles with advertising, they decided to sell it. They put it on the market. And then the recession hit and there really wasn't much of a market for newspapers, so they pulled it off. And eventually did some negotiating off-market with the Baltimore Sun. So the Sun newspapers bought us. can't remember exactly what year it was, but it was after I had left. So it was after 2012. And, you know, I decided to retire when things were just really not going very well. And really, I was just tired of laying people off every day when I walked in. But circulation was declining with the advent of the internet. And advertising was declined with the advent of a lot of other advertising opportunities on the internet. things weren't looking good when I left. And today, I mean, it's even worse. They eliminated the Maryland Gazette, which was one of the oldest newspapers published in the United States. And now it's just the Capitol with a handful of reporters who no longer have an office. So they work out of their homes and they work out of their cars. Not unusual for newspapers across the country, but it just shows you how far newspapers have dropped. Still important in the community. You know, I think back then we were much more relevant because we had so much more circulation. Politicians read our editorials, reacted to them. Today, there's not even an editorial page in the Capitol. So, it's just times have changed to the worse. Well, and certainly in terms of what the Annapolis capital meant or means to the community, it's still very, it's still well thought of, but you're right, there's lots of, in the media landscape, things have fractured quite a bit. So you have the advent of digital publications. And I think there's other entities that are coming in to help cover that community as well, because Annapolis is just like a big, small town. It's... Yeah, I think a lot of people see, yeah, you're right. mean, it's circulation, or it's a population that's under 20,000, but as a state capital, it houses the state legislature, the governor's office. It's right outside DC, it's on the Chesapeake Bay, so you have a lot of influences that drive news. You the environment, you certainly got politics, you got local news, you got the Naval Academy, which is visited by presidents. So, yeah, it's just a lot going on in Annapolis and that's what really made it a great news town and made a great newspaper to read. Yeah, absolutely. And so we're here actually to talk about Press to Kill. And one of the other reasons that Annapolis is so noteworthy in the news media industry is really because it was the site of one of our greatest tragedies. so in tell us a little bit about what you were hoping to cover with Press to Kill and sort of how you arrived at working on that book. Sure. You know, I think the issue was not unpredictable, but unfortunate in that, you know, maybe a year after the murders, the country, the world, not so much in Appalachia, but certainly most of the country have moved on to the next mass murder. So, you know, Press to Kill is really focusing and trying to make sure that what happened to the people on that day and their legacies are preserved. So it was important for me to say, let's not move on. Let's stop for a minute and talk about their lives. But it's much more than talking about the legacies of those behind us. It's also about what happened in the newsroom that day and whether or not the police responded the best way they could, whether or not the newspaper was at fault for not recognizing that they had a mass murder waiting to kill, you know, whether or not the legal system, particularly the police, did a good job when we identified it as a potential threat. And also just how the community responded. I mean, it was miraculous that they published a newspaper the next day and it was all about the dedication. So, I mean, that's as much of the book as anything is how they responded. And elsewise, I get into things like copycat murders, the prevalence of guns and the influence on that. How the media covers mass murders is as a chapter in this book and whether or not they give it too much publicity in efforts to reduce the name use and photos of the murderers. So it's pretty expansive in the book but you know it's brutally honest as well as what happened in the newsroom that day. Sure. No, it sounds like it's a jumping off point to discuss a lot of the issues that are really surrounding us. So let's take a step back. So on June 28th, 2018, Gerald Ramos, who had a beef, was disgruntled with the Annapolis Capitol, came into the newsroom on Bess Gate Road and opened fire and wound up killing five members of that newsroom. injuring others, traumatizing scores more. So walk us through for people who are not familiar with or deeply familiar with the murders. Tell us a little bit about what happened that day and then we'll step back and talk through the buildup. And you were actually, I think... with the timing you may have crossed paths with this person. So let's talk about the day itself and then we'll go back to kind of the themes. So, Ramis, who's not named in my book, he has a pseudonym in my book, but he had cased out the Capitol building at 880 Besgate for a couple years and chose a day that he thought would have a lot of people there. In particular, the newspaper sponsored a weekly editorial board meeting that included members of the public and oftentimes public officials. This came right after the election. So he had thought there may be people who had won an election that would be in the office that day, as well as even the prosecutor who ended up prosecuting him. So as it turned out, they decided to cancel that meeting since it was right after the election. The editor was on vacation and a couple of other people were on vacation. So they canceled the meeting, which probably saved a lot of lives in itself. rest of the, the majority of the people were in the advertising department. were in Baltimore for a quarterly meeting with their supervisors there to take a look at the budget. So all but one person, all but two people were gone from that department. So really what was left were editors and a few reporters, a photographer who were working on the next day's edition. So when it happened at 2.30, they really had a smaller crew than they would normally have putting out the next day's edition. And weirdly enough, MDDC's executive board was meeting in the Annapolis office that very day, but they had all gone by that point. So it really is just a happenstance. It's such strange quirks of timing. Wow, that's pretty scary. That's one thing I did not know. Yeah, and so, you know, when he came in, he had plotted this thing. He put a barrier that's purchased offline, underneath one of the exit doors, blocking anybody from escaping from the back of the office. He came to the front door, thought it was going to be open, it was locked. He blew his way through, shattered the front door, and then just proceeded down the aisle to find as many people as he could to kill. And that's what he said. was there to kill as many of these people as I could. When he was finished, he hid underneath a desk. And so he did not want to commit suicide. He wanted to live just to see what would happen. And when the police arrived, they immediately went to the attention of the victims and those who the six reporters who had hidden underneath their own desk. They did not check this one area of the newsroom. Their priorities were elsewhere. But for eight minutes, that killer hit underneath a desk within inches of police and their survivors. We were in that newsroom. When one officer decided to go over there and check that area, he was discovered and immediately handcuffed. So, you know, that whole ordeal probably took a good 20 minutes before he actually got out of there. And so he didn't, was he posing as someone from the newsroom or was it very obvious that he was the perpetrator in this? Well, he, the only description they had of him was that he had a ponytail and he's a white male. He didn't really say what his intent was, but he claims he tried to pretend that he was a victim by crying out, but nobody heard him. So I doubt that that was the case. But he may have thought that if they were able to extricate some of the surviving reporters, he could blend in. But when they went over to find him underneath there, the original officer thought that it may be another victim. When we looked down there, he saw the ponytail, long hair. So, he immediately pulled him out and he refused to talk. So, for hours, he refused to talk and identify himself. And the police had no idea who he was or what his motive was. So this is still the largest mass murder for news media in the country. So it was the first, the biggest. Talk a little bit about what that meant for the news media industry, of course. We have a napwiz, but let's go a little larger. Okay, so you know, it is the worst mass murder and certainly in our gut reaction, it's not going to be the last. There were a couple of broadcast reporters that one photographer and one a broadcaster who was killed by a fellow employee, I think might have been after that. There have been, there was another editor who was killed, I can't remember what city it was, but he was investigating a public official who ended up killing him. So, you know, there's evidence of others, but certainly not to the magnitude of what happened in Annapolis. You know, and I think that's part of the things to look at that I look at in a book is why that was happening and, you know, what the possibilities are that it could recur in different terms. So to think that it's the last one would be ludicrous. I just don't believe that's going to be the case. The only thing is that newspapers have less of an influence and there are fewer journalists out there reporting now. So, you know, there may be fewer reasons to take on the newspaper, but, you know, you got a president declares war on newspapers, it doesn't bode well for anybody who's still in the profession. Well, and certainly it sent seismic waves throughout the local news community because all of those, it's such a small community. There's not, you Maryland, the Mid-Atlantic is a small region. Everyone is here for a long time. We all know one another. And so it was particularly, it was very disturbing to think of friends and colleagues that you've known for decades just gotten down for. informing the public. And so just personally, you worked with all of those people or many of those people. all but Rebecca Smith. I mean, she was, she had only worked there for a couple of months and she was a, an aid to both the editorial and advertising department. She was the first one shot, but I did not know her. Well, all the other ones. Yes. I worked beside them. Gerald Fishman in particular, he and I were close because we, wrote the editorials. And so, you know, that involved the editor much more so than, than say the sports reporter, John McNamara who died. But I still knew them personally. So yeah, you know when this thing unfolded, you know, I couldn't believe what was happening number one. But number two, the question was who of those people I knew had died. And it just folded out in a very piecemeal fashion. So it was just painful to hear the names and then get confirmation because for a long time I had heard the names. But there really wasn't official confirmation. So, you you hold out hope that maybe the inside information was incorrect but it all turned out to be true. Right, now, that is, that's so shocking and, you know, your heart just stops thinking of what kind of loss that is. Well, know, one of the things I say in there is that I don't think people perceive the extent of that loss. mean, the obvious loss are those who were part of the family of those who died, in addition to everybody who knew those who died, in addition to those who were able to get out, to experience this whole ordeal. But beyond that, you know, I uncovered a number of people whose lives will forever be changed. the police officers who responded there who had significant ADHD problems afterward, who witnessed what they did and saw that. The witnesses that were across the hallway when they saw him break through the door. The guy on the phone who was left listening to the entire thing happened as the reporter ducked under cover and left his phone operating on the desk. So, you know, and then it's just a community, the community at large suffers. The town is not the same. This is a city that was called Camelot on the Bay by National Geographic. It's going to be now remembered as the site of the worst newspaper mass shooting. So, you know, everybody suffers in a small town like that, but particularly the rippling effect that goes beyond the obvious people who suffer. Absolutely. And so this, as we said, was the first mass murder of news media workers, but your book is really the first book. There's been a lot of coverage. There's been a lot of articles on the survivors and so forth and sort of what this meant. But yours is the first book. So tell me a little bit about why yours is the first and what you bring, why you felt you needed to write this book. Right. So I think for those people who are really close to this, it's just too difficult to write the story. I was told that by at least two people is that they just couldn't write that nor could they read my book because they'd have to relive that whole experience. So, you know, I was, I was certainly the target, one of the targets of this guy and not initially when he was upset with the story we did, both the reporter and me, and then the newspaper. were all sued for defamation and were the subject of daily rants on Twitter. So, you know, it was a position that I knew the story from the start. I knew what provoked this guy. I knew the background of those who died. So I felt I was in a better position to write about it, to address some of those difficult issues. You know, it's just, it's not pretty, you know, what happened there. It's really hard to, to Sugarcoat what happened in the newsroom that day, but if you really want to know the depth of this guy's depravity, I think you have to understand what he did. And the other thing that came out in my investigation with the state's attorney's office was a very, very long and detailed interview he gave to the state psychiatrist who had to determine his sanity. And in that description, it was really the only time he opened up. And you learned a lot about his background, his life, what motivated him, what satisfaction he took. And as raw as that is in the book, it just, I think, really gives you an idea of how evil this guy was. You know, obviously he had to be evil to do what he did, but I think the depth of it shows you what is out on the street now. And I don't think he's the only one who's capable of committing mass murder, as the book shows. mean, the telltale signs. are as simple as you would think. People in everybody's newsroom out there, believe, could probably identify somebody who may do this. And so I'm interested in that. And so we'll unpack that in just a second. But I want to go back to sort of like the, not only the depth, but the breadth of the grudge that he had with the newspaper, because you left in 2012. This happened in 2018. You were aware of the perpetrator before you left. So tell us a little bit about sort of what you were thinking and how you perceived this threat. mean, it's part of news media, get, he had threats all the time. And so did you feel like, did you have any inkling and how did his communications change over time? Yeah, that time frame is important because a lot of people think that I was there during the shooting or somehow I was there after he finished his lawsuit. But the truth of the matter is he sued us when certainly I was editor and he sued the reporter and the newspaper for defamation and invasion of privacy. So I was there when this was winding its way through the courts and he was in the early 2010s, right? The early teens. Okay. he was losing each step of the way and he was representing himself. But with an unlimited budget of nothing, he was able to appeal. He was able to sue judges. He was able to sue attorneys. He broke agreements not to have any contact with his initial victim. So he dragged it out over number of years. And I had retired in 2012 while that lawsuit was still pending. So I was out of the newspaper at that point, but I remained in contact because I was one of the people who were named in the lawsuit. So the attorney and my successor kept in close contact with me. In 2013, I was traveling to Florida for the winter months. but staying in contact. And I kept in close contact with Pat Richardson, my successor, because, you know, she had some questions and it just didn't how the place was operating. I said, I'll answer. I'll be here whenever you want me. So when, when things got progressively worse, there are a couple of Twitter's in which a of us felt uncomfortable. And so we talked and said, you know, I was among the people who said, we need to talk to police about this. So we set up a conference call with police. What about it made you uncomfortable because you've gotten a lot of threats in your time? This isn't the first one. What shifted? been following the... Yeah, so I had not been following the tweets because I just wasn't on Twitter at the time and Eric Cartley had. He kept a close contact and so he would let me know of some of the tweets, but even in his experience, he didn't see all of them. This guy was tweeting like three or four times a day and most of time they didn't make sense. They made references to some science fiction novel that we had no idea what it was. Some game that he had played. But there were a couple of things that became alarming. One was in his lawsuit, which he wrote, he said, I'd like to smash Eric Hartley's face into the ground. Once he said about me, and I think that one in particular was really bad, that he also said to me, or tweeted about me, that he wished I would stop breathing. He wished I would follow Phil Murrow in death. So, you know, it was not saying I want to kill Tom Marquardt, but it was right on the verge of at least implying that. So, as these got progressively worse, we set up this conference call with the police. Unfortunately, I was tied up in a board meeting, library board meeting, and D and C, they noticed that there was going to be this conference call. It was hastily called. So, I was not part of that conversation, but when I came back, they briefed me on it, and you know, I know I made a comment, something referenced, like, what does this guy have to do, come in and kill us? Because the police had looked at all this, and they looked at the tweets. and they had said, we don't see there is immediate threat. So, you know, we felt we had little option. If the police say there's nothing here to charge him with, they offered a opportunity to file, you know, a warrant for him to stay away from us. And so they couldn't have any contact with us, protective work and such. And so we said, you know, we looked at it, we talked to our attorney and said, you know, that may make it worse. If we file that and he's been known to break him in the past, it hands him a victory, but also may make it worse and he'll take the next action. So we opted not to do that. But in re-examining this, I keep going back to the fact that the police said there was no physical threat. And we felt if you can't trust the police in examining that, who else was there to go to? They had even checked in with the state's attorney's office and they didn't see any action that they could take. And this would have been like 2013, 2014. So in fact, it did take several more years for it to bubble up in some ways. there other, did you feel like it escalated over those years or were there periods of dormancy? Well, that what's normal, right? So what happened after that? He went totally silent. And so, you know, we thought, okay, he lost all his legal appeals. both the reporter and me had left the newspaper. the person who had, he had harassed, she left, the state. so we thought he gave up, you know, as we look into this, what was happening is that he was preparing, and he was being very careful not to trip any wire, so he stayed off of social media and he just plotted his attack. You know, if you look at people who do professional threat assessments, which the book goes into, they will tell you that this is classic. You know, we just didn't see, we didn't know that there were actually people out there who did threat assessments, let alone that this was a telltale sign. So, that's the unfortunate part. So how does this compare, you know, I think you've done a really good job of contextualizing mass murders and showing how this is both similar but also has different repercussions. So how does this mass murder, sort of the pattern and the escalation, match up to what we see really across the country? There's so many, there are so many mass murders now. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, it's fairly typical. There are some differences and there have been studies done since then. In fact, one person who does threat assessments professionally for organizations in Washington, D.C., did a study on this and saw that he met like five out of seven criteria of what would identify a mass murder or project that he could be capable of committing mass murder. And for instance, he was collecting injustices and that's the term that they use, but it's basically collecting things that had done wrong against him. You know, there was the lawsuit, there was the story, there was the woman who sought a protective order against him. There were the judges who were, by the way, a very primary target. So all those people had done him wrong and he was simply trying to collect all these. So I mean, that was one. Another one was that his personality was such that he you know was a loner Didn't really have any social connections and so and he was He he tried to form female relationships that he was unsuccessful in doing He had nothing to lose He felt that a life in prison was no different than a life in his apartment. So I mean check marks of the threats, you know, like not having relationships, feeling like prison's not such a bad deal, you know, like are those really like boxes to check on these types of assessments? Yeah, I mean, there's truly a checkbox on this. And I think what is remarkable on the book, which was a discovery, I wish had I'm glad I made it, but I wish I would known something differently. And that was he went after the attorney of the woman who charged him with sexual harassment. And that attorney coincidentally had a brother-in-law who was a professional threat assessor. So Late in the game after I left, he says to his brother-in-law, said, hey, would you mind looking at this and just giving me your thoughts? And the professional threat assessor came back and said, get a weight on this guy. He could be collecting his injustices right now and preparing. So that attorney did things in the office to make sure that they were protecting themselves. And he also, his wife, who was also part of the law firm, have forwarded to the state's attorney's office that, you better take a look at this guy. In that context, they were looking at the threat against judges, which really was his primary target, but he felt he couldn't go into court room and be successful. So they warned the judge's office that, be on the lookout for this guy. We don't know if he's going to do it, but just be aware that he's out there. They never told anybody at the newspaper. So, it's an oversight, but I mean, it was like, that wasn't what was first in their mind. They thought if anybody was in danger, was the judges, and the attorneys. you know, had we known that there was an informal, again, it's informal. There's no written report. It was just, a brother to brother-in-law. And had we known that there was at least an informal assessment out there that something was, was amiss and something was happening, I think. Other steps may have been taken by my successors. I can't speak on their behalf because I wasn't there anymore. Sure. And I think it's interesting that when you say that the perpetrator was focused on judges, but felt like they couldn't just go into a courtroom and shoot it up. And so that makes me also think about the role of news media in our communities, that it really is kind of a centering space. And so many of the news, and this was, I think, a seismic change after the killings, so many of our members kind of like, closed in on themselves and thought more about security, whereas previously they were almost like gathering places. People would come in to place their ads or come in to talk to reporters or have editorial board meetings. Tell me what you've seen with the change and how news media is relating to the outside world after the shooting. yes, that was a seismic change. When we were on West Street, which is the last office I worked in, we had a very open office. I you come in there, there's nothing stopping you. There is a woman to help you. But you could see probably four departments just by walking in that door. And there was very little to stop them from going back and talking to people in editorial. We changed that. I changed that when one time a guy who was convicted of a crime went back and talked to one of the people in our community department. And so she raised the alarm and saying, we can't have that. And so we tried stopping people from going past that desk and they had to be escorted back or reporter or editor had to go meet them. So we tried to change that. But at that time, you're right, it was gathering place and we encouraged, we want to be open. We want to be transparent. We want to be available. We want to be accessible. So people could come in and just say, I'd like to talk to the editor. And I would make time. Everybody did. Reporters, everybody would find time to go talk to this person. And I think it was something that the community valued. After this incident, we all realized, especially other newspapers, of their vulnerability, that the world had changed. And you couldn't be so trusting. It wasn't just newspapers. It was office spaces. It was schools. It was churches. It was stadiums. all those had experienced mass murders in which it seemed like a safe place to go. So I don't think it was unique to newspapers, but we all had to change. you know, when they moved to a temporary office after the shooting, because nobody's going to go back to that office, they had two armed guards there that screened everybody who came through. When they moved to permanent headquarters, they had bulletproof doors and they reinforced the walls. They didn't put a name on the door so nobody knew that they were even there. So we went from an office that was totally open, from an office that couldn't be found. And I feel like that has repercussions for the community because it's hard to be as transparent as you want to be central in a community, but yet you also have to protect oneself. And so I'm thinking also in terms of sort of mass killings in the U.S., is there, did your research uncover sort of any reasons that we're starting to see more and more? mass killings? Is it simply, you know, that guns are more available or is there something else bubbling up here? Yeah, the book does deal with that. The persistence of mass murders in our lives, especially in the United States, and what the future holds. The availability of weapons is really number one. That's what they found. If you have available weapon, you're more likely to commit a murder than somebody who can't get their hands on weapons. And so, you know, that's why you get the red flag laws, and you've got all sorts of laws that you're required to follow in order to procure a weapon. But beyond that, I mean, it's a matter of people who feel that they're not getting justice from the normal course. In the old days, as we all knew with the newspaper, if you didn't like an editorial or a story, you wrote a letter to the editor and you're satisfied that we ran that letter to the editor and we gave you your say. Sometimes we even give you an op-ed piece that you could go on and on about why we were wrong. We're very liberal in providing opportunities for people to disagree with us. But this is taken to another level where that process isn't good enough. And so they seek revenge. And that's just, I think, problem that's through American society, not necessarily unique to newspapers. So people not feeling heard coupled with the fact that there's so many more guns available right now, it gives people the opportunity. Whereas they might have always had the motive, now they have the outlet as well. Yeah, outlets and the opportunity. And there is also the thing about copycat killers. And that's one of the things that really involved journalism that I learned is that there have been many organizations out there that stem from Stone and Douglas and some of the other mass killing sites in which the victim families got together and said, you know, you're glorifying this guy. Don't give him a name. Change the way you report these stories. And when I looked at the coverage of what happened in Annapolis, it just basically violated a lot of that. was just excessive coverage and excessive use of the guy's name was just made him happy. And these copycat killers, they've gone out there and tried to outdo somebody that had, you know, a high fatality list. It almost became like a contest, which just shows you the depth of depravity out there. So, I mean, you know, I think, and I talked to lot of journalists and professors about, you know, Are we in a position now that when we look at the five W's and H of a story, that we take out the who? Are we short-changing readers by not giving them the details of what caused this guy, what his background was? You know, should we tamp down on that? Never run his photo. You know, it's just, I think it's given an opportunity for newspapers to reconsider how they approach mass murders. Sure. And also, I think in the media coverage after the killings, I think so many people locally were kind of working out their own feelings and their own fears and trepidations. How do you feel like the coverage should have been different? We talked a little bit about not glorifying the perpetrator, and I'm assuming that's the reason you're not naming him in your book. But what else do you think media could learn from their own response to these killings in terms of their coverage. Well, you know, I think the lesson learned here is that if it does unfortunately happen in your community, the focus on the victims and not the person who did it. Um, there was a mass killing. think it was in St. Louis a while back when they were, it might've been the shooting at the concert, wherever that was, uh, Las Vegas. And the local newspaper had done a short story on every victim and it was a number of victims. And I talked to a journalist professor. says, That was a turning point. Nobody has ever really gone to that extent of taking pages to talk about each victim. And when you see it now, whether it's in Israel or whether it's here, newspapers have spent a lot of time talking about the life and the sacrifices of those who died. And I think that happened here, but it happened alongside with a lot of detail about the shooter. Fortunately, The only photo that was available really out there was his mugshot that the police had when he was charged with sexually harassing that woman. So that was really the only photo that appeared. So I mean, you know, was still though, why he did it, his grudge, you know, interviewing people who were there. It's a lot of publicity on this guy. You can't ignore it because it's a breaking news story. And I don't know how, you know, a legitimate news organization could even on their own terms, walk away from providing readers with all the detail. And the capital was really ahead of that game. They had more information in the days after than anybody did. So, know, testimony to them. But I don't see how that changes. But I think everybody agrees. You really got focus on the people who died. So you, breaking news is breaking news. You have to cover that. But then sort of in, rather than going deep in continuing coverage when the perpetrator turned the focus more to the victims and the aftermath is what I'm hearing you say. And so I want to before, I'm noticing our time and I just want to make sure that we're giving full flower to your book. So tell us a little bit about, when it comes out, the name, how people can access it and purchase it. And then we'll turn to what you want people to take away from the book itself. so the full title of the book is Press to Kill colon inside newspapers worst mass murder. It's going to be released on March 18th as you said currently available on Amazon, Books.com, Barnes & Noble, any outlet there where you buy your books. It's available in hardback, softback, Kindle. So there many ways of getting it. You know, it's going to be published by Prentice Hall. They looked at it there at Loyola University. So they took on the project, worked with me to hone it, make sure it was delivering what we expected it to. And, you know, hopefully it's going to be read. I've got some book science coming up, some in Annapolis, some here in Naples. Details aren't worked out yet, but I hope to get back to Maryland to do some book signings. It's, a book standpoint, when you go into it, you have to understand that by the nature of this thing, it's very raw. I walk the reader through what happened in the newsroom that day, because I was able to see the cams that were in the office that day, as well as the cams that were worn by the police officer. So, I have a pretty good idea. you know, what had happened. And it's important because it wasn't, it wasn't just the killings of the five who died, but the struggle of those who were caught and tried to escape couldn't live through this thing. And then when the police came in, how, what their response was, how long they stood at the front door. So, if you get past the violence of what had happened and you get into understanding how the police responded and how this guy made it out. I think there's a reason to go into that kind of detail. But if you're all sensitive to that, it's probably not a book to read. Thank you for the warning there. I appreciate that. And hopefully, MDDC can have you at a book signing sometime this spring. What are you hoping people take away from reading the book? Well, a couple of things. One was those who died had incredible lives and they sacrificed a great deal. You know, one actually charged a shooter and probably protected one or two other people in doing so. So there's that. mean, just examining the lives of those who died. Number two, the effort of not only the newspaper to respond, but also the community who just supported that newspaper like no other could. I mean, they may have hated their newspaper during the day, but when this happened, they surrounded that newspaper with love. And so there was a lot that came after that, that shows you a community that got their act together. And that's remarkable. And I don't know if other communities have done that to this extent, but I think it was important that the book point that out. And lastly, I think is that for anybody, not just newspapers, for any business out there, the signs are out there. And if you read this book, You can say there are five or six things I need to look out as a manager of my workplace. And if there is somebody out there, maybe do that threat assessment, pay for that threat assessment, or at least acknowledge the fact that you need to protect your staff. you know, those are, I think the elements that I think people should look for and I hope they read. Thank you. Well, I hope they do as well. Is this sort of the first and only book you're going to be writing, or do you have another project in the works? I know you write a wonderful wine column. an exhausting process. There's a time involved in writing the book. It's the time involved trying to find a publisher, the marketing. There's just a lot involved and at this stage of my life, I'm not as sure. I want to do it again. Well, I'm glad you did it this time and thank you for helping us understand more fully what happened June 18th and or June 28th. And I hope that we'll see you again soon. Thank you so much for coming to talk with us. Thank you, Rebecca. I hope to see you again as well.