Heather Ann Thompson

And that story will grow far grimmer when he then has a terrible episode of pneumonia because, of course, if you don't have the muscles thanks to paralysis, your lungs do not clear as easily or regularly.

He has pneumonia.

He goes into a life-threatening coma.

and emerges brain damaged.

And it is an incredibly poignant story of what the wreckage of allowing rage to be unleashed really looks like.

So, yeah, the thing about his confession that he will eventually make after being on the lam for nine days on the run from the law is an extraordinary piece of video.

He is confessing to everything he did audaciously, aggressively, and it all comes down to, for him, he didn't like the look.

in Troy Canty's eyes, or as he put it, the gleam in his eye.

And he ultimately decides not to go over there and gouge his eyes out after he's already shot him in the chest because he had changed the look in his eye.

Well, the look in his eye was terror.

And bewilderment.

And so the confession is this astonishing piece of tape that also really resonated with me in terms of the contemporary moment we are in because we are watching someone tell us exactly who they are, exactly what they did, and it will not matter.

Up will become down.

Down will become up.

And that also felt very, very familiar to where we are today.

You know, just as I do, digging, digging, digging, finding pieces of paper, reading articles, seeing where it might have been reported the first time.

One of the extraordinary pieces of paper that I first saw and then began digging for more was the hate mail that poured into the teens that was sort of the mirror image of the celebratory, congratulatory messages that Goetz was receiving.

And both sets of sentiments were passionate messages.

And scary, frankly, really scary.

And it made me also realize that the moment we are in, just to keep kind of connecting that dot, is less new than we think.