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Recent Substack Columns 2023

From yours truly: COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS WATCH >> 'Follow your passions': wise words or 'Utter BS'? https://t.co/SgxhmSEJcE pic.twitter.com/yB7GeeVS6f

— Terry D. Cowgill (@terrycowgill) June 4, 2023

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'Follow your passions': wise words or 'Utter BS'? 06.04.23
Boston's little green men 05.30.23
DeSantis Gets In, Chartock Gets Out 05.26.23

Recent CTNewsJunkie Op-eds 2023

My latest for @ctnewsjunkie >> A scandal in the Bay State is a cautionary tale for CT: Don't ever go to a system of elected prosecutors. From Mike Nifong to Rachael Rollins, it's a terrible idea. #RachaelRollins https://t.co/0kz4MvbMXb

— Terry D. Cowgill (@terrycowgill) May 25, 2023

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Bay State Scandal Shows CT Gets It Right On Appointed Prosecutors 05.24.23
It’s High Time For The US Supreme Court To Adopt An Ethics Code 05.10.23
Apropos of Nothing: Weed ‘Evolution,’ Housing Barriers and Bad Bears 04.26.23
Time To End Newspaper Publication Requirement For Towns 04.12.23

WICC Radio Hit

My appearance yesterday on WICC-600AM with Paul Pacelli talking about my latest op-ed for @ctnewsjunkie begins at 12:56. We talk cannabis, affordable housing and bears, oh my! Always a pleasure to jawbone with Paul.

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Welcome to my new Substack newsletter

I've just started a free Substack email newsletter, "What’s Going On Here? Red Meat For Mushy Moderates …" . The plan is to have fun and illuminate. Link is here if you'd like to learn more and subscribe. @ctnewsjunkie https://t.co/EweQm8oWTU pic.twitter.com/EIkYzLWola

— Terry D. Cowgill (@terrycowgill) April 3, 2023

WICC Radio Hit

My appearance yesterday on WICC-600AM with Joe Aguiar starts at 15:30. We shoot the breeze about some ill-conceived proposals I wrote about in my recent CTNewsJunkie op-eds, including rent control and mandatory voting, and what it's like to visit a cannabis store.

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The Peter Reilly-Barbara Gibbons Murder Case: A Chronology

A grave injustice occurred in Litchfield County, Connecticut, beginning on September 28, 1973, when Peter Reilly, 18, was arrested and subsequently coerced by State Police into falsely confessing to -- and was later wrongfully convicted of -- the grisly murder of his mother, Barbara Gibbons. Below, and reproduced here as part of the historical record, is an update and timeline of events as they appeared in the Lakeville Journal on March 17, 2005:

Connecticut Commissioner of Public Safety Leonard Boyle has agreed to give Peter Reilly access to state police files that could help him discover who murdered his mother, Barbara Gibbons, after more than 30 years. For decades, Reilly himself was the prime suspect for the police – in part because, after two days of interrogation without sleep, food or an attorney, the 18-year-old youth was induced to sign a confession saying he killed and sexually assaulted his mother. Reilly was not convicted of the crime but his name was never completely cleared, either. With the help of journalist Donald Connery, a Kent resident, and The Lakeville Journal, Reilly has been able at last to get access to the police files on the case.

[Photo at left of Peter Reilly speaking in 2005 at Noble Horizons by yours truly]

Searching through those files is likely to be a time-consuming endeavor, though. In 1983, The Lakeville Journal ran a chronology of the events up to the point of the investigation. The introduction to that listing notes that, "No other criminal case in Connecticut history has been so thoroughly investigated by so many people for so long a time ... State's Attorney Dennis Santore speaks of the principal investigative file on the case as something occupying not filing cabinets but whole closets."

That 1983 special section also noted that, "In the process, however, there has been much public confusion about what happened, and who did what to whom, and why the case went on and on like an Icelandic saga ... So many were the events and so mountainous the data that even insiders and diligent observers often lost their way."

To help readers understand the scope of the investigation and trial, The Lakeville Journal offers this abbreviated version of that chronology: