[Boston, August 27. Image via Getty]

BOSTON - AUGUST 27: Women cry amongst the hundreds gathered outside of Boston's Fanueil Hall as the motorcade carrying the body of Sen. Ted Kennedy passes by August 27, 2009 in Boston, Massachusetts. Senator Kennedy, the last brother of a pre-eminent American political family, died this week of cancer after a storied career in politics. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

As mentioned yesterday, Markoff has been brought in on charges for the murder of Julissa Brisman, 26 of New York City, who was found in Boston's Copley Marriott Hotel on April 14, unconscious and with multiple gun wounds. ABC reports that Markoff has also been charged with the robbery of Trisha Leffler, who says she was bound and robbed at the Westin Hotel in Boston on April 10. She claims to have recognized Markoff instantly from the police surveillance photo. Leffler has said that that she only survived the attack because she did not fight Markoff. "I just complied with everything he wanted me to do. I didn't resist him in any way and that's why," she said.

Yesterday, Markoff the Boston Herald depicted Markoff as "a clean-cut Boston University medical student preparing to wed a blond beauty." This morning, the press is telling a slightly different story. The Boston Globe reports that Markoff was supposedly "disturbed," according to a former medical school lab partner. Tiffany Montgomery, 26, says that she is "not even remotely surprised" that Markoff has been charged with such violent crimes. After spending hours in the lab with him every day, Montgomery claims she suspected that he may have been suicidal, and even considered alerting school counselors. "He just wasn't right in the head, and I knew it, and probably other people did, too," she said. She cites his drastic mood swings as evidence that Markoff was mentally ill:

"One day, he'd be warm and friendly and smiling," said Montgomery, who now works as a biotech consultant in Boston. "And the next day you'd see him and the clouds had rolled in. And you'd say to yourself, 'This is the 50 percent of the week when it's the upset, brooding Phil, and not the smiling happy Phil.' "

The Boston Herald recently reported that before Markoff became the medical student "on the fast track to achieving the American dream," with a "blond bombshell fiancee" on his arm, he was a "nerdy high school bully." A former classmate, who sat next to him in 9th grade Spanish class, recalls that Markoff was cruel to her on a daily basis.

"He had this hatred for people he thought were beneath him," said Caitlin, a 23-year-old high school classmate who asked that her last name be withheld. "He saw me as beneath him and he needed to degrade me. I think he had a complex."

She goes on to say that although Markoff was often the subject of bulling himself, she still hated him:

"He was just a bully," she said. "He would get picked on, but I never felt sorry for him because he was mean. He had this arrogance that he was better than you."

Others, including Markoff's former neighbors, his first grade teacher, and parents of high school friends, all claim that Markoff was a kind, intelligent boy, if maybe a little withdrawn. Many have also mentioned Markoff's allege gambling problem, which may have begun as early as high school. Police suspect that gambling debts may have sparked Markoff's spree of robberies. ABC reports that after both attacks, Markoff hit the casinos.

Two days after Brisman was murdered, the police source said Markoff hit the casino again, leaving with casino with $5,300 in his pocket.

Markoff is also being looked at in a third attack, this one also a robbery, in a Rhode Island Holiday Inn Express where, again, a woman was tied up after placing an advertisement on Craigslist for massage services.

Prosecutors say Markoff was headed to the casino when they finally caught up with him on Monday. A search of his Quincy, Mass., apartment, they said, turned up a semi-automatic weapon along with ammunition, plastic zip ties and duct tape.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley says that he is in the process of posting an ad on Craigslist, in hopes of finding more of Markoff's victims. "In light of the fact that at least two victims have been attacked after placing ads on Craigslist, it seems a natural place to seek additional victims," said a spokesman for Conley. Conley has said that there is a "strong possibility he has done this before." "This is a brutal, vicious, savage attack. This suspect showed he was willing to take advantage of women," he said.

Update: Markoff's fiancee Megan McAllister has emailed People to defend Markoff:

"Philip has not been convicted," McAllister wrote in an email to PEOPLE. "A policeman who wished to make money off this story sold it to countless companies. Philip is a beautiful man inside and out and did not commit this crime. Unfortunately, somebody else did and needs to be penalized. Philip was set up and you are wrong to be asking me for stories."

Alleged 'Craigslist Killer' recalled as nice, smart boy [Boston Globe]
Accused Craigslist killer was a nerdy high school 'bully' [Boston Herald]
Behind 'perfect' life, a darker side [Boston Globe]
Police Say Accused Craigslist Killer Owed Gambling Debts [ABC]
Victim of Accused Craigslist Killer Says She Survived By Not Fighting Back [ABC]
District Attorney Using Craigslist To Find More Victims [Boston Herald]

Related: Fiancée Of Accused Craigslist Killer Says He's Innocent

Philip Markoff, of Quincy, Massachusetts, will be arraigned this morning on charges that he murdered Julissa Brisman, 26 of New York City, who was found unconscious with multiple gunshot wounds in Boston's Copley Marriott Hotel on April 14, reports CNN. Police says Brisman advertised her massage services on Craigslist. According to a statement by Boston police, "It appears that there was a struggle between the victim and the suspect in the threshold of the hotel room immediately prior to the shooting."

Markoff is also charged with kidnapping and armed robbery in a separate case involving another woman he met on Craigslist, according to The Boston Globe. Police say he tied up and robbed a prostitute at gunpoint at the Westin Copley Hotel on April 10. Police are still investigating whether Markoff is linked to an incident that took place on April 16 at a hotel in Warwick, Rhode Island, where a gunman tied up an exotic dancer and tried to rob her, but fled when the woman's husband entered the room. The same plastic zip-tie cuffs were used in all three cases, according to The Boston Herald.

Markoff was stopped by police and arrested while driving south on Interstate 95. Though he is innocent until proven guilty, a large amount of damning evidence has been turned over to the press. The man captured on surveillance cameras at each crime scene is shown checking his Blackberry, and police say Markoff's email address and IP address helped identify him.

A portrait of Markoff as "a clean-cut Boston University medical student preparing to wed a blond beauty," as The Boston Heald put it, was quickly assembled from searching online sources like his Facebook page, online class schedule, and a website for his wedding to Megan McAllister, which was supposed to take place this summer.

In addition to the horror of having her fiance accused of murder, Megan McAllister now has to deal with the intimate details of her life being reported in the press. Many news articles commented on her appearance, analyzed the details of her wedding registry, and made jokes about the wedding being off. All of Markoff's personal sites have been taken down, but Gawker posted screenshots of the wedding website, which reveals that the couple were both students at the State University of New York-Albany, and met three years ago while volunteering at a hospital.

Though password protection was added to their profile on TheKnot.com in the past few hours, their guestbook quickly filled with anonymous posts blaming McAllister for not realizing what was going on, such as:

from: Common Sense 4/21/2009
How could you NOT see that you were with a psychopath? Forget the Noritake China place setting and thank God you're still alive!

from: GetReal 4/21/2009 She had no idea ... right! All these unexplained absences ...where did he say he was for 3 or 4 hours at a time? I've sat next to someone on the bus and after 30 seconds I knew they were up to no good.

from: a Mom 4/21/2009 Dumb girl, You have have had to see something in this creep! Too bad you could have saved the girl he killed. Shame on you stupid fuck.

And making cruel jokes:

from: brandon 4/21/2009
this is what happens to a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown with a BRIDEZILLA up his all 24/7

from: Nurse Ratchet 4/21/2009
What's the difference between a 22 year old doctor wasting his youth in prison, or in marriage? . . . None.

Though the public seems to have already condemned Markoff, McAllister still insists that her fiance is innocent. In the clip below, Good Morning America reports that this morning McAllister sent an email to ABC News saying:

Philip is a beautiful person inside and out and could not hurt a fly! A police officer in Boston (or many) is trying to make big bucks by selling this false story to the TV stations. What else is new?? Philip is an intelligent man who is just trying to live his life so if you could leave us alone we would greatly appreciate it. We expect to marry in August and share a wonderful, meaningful life together.

Pre-med Student To Be Arraigned In Craigslist Slaying [CNN]
BU Medical Student Arrested In Hotel Killing, Robbery [The Boston Globe]
Cops: BU Med Student The Craigslist Killer [The Boston Herald]
Accused Craigslist Killer's Prosaic Facade [Gawker]
Megan McAllister & Philip Markoff - Our Guestbook [The Knot]

She asked Ben to do someone else: Morgan Freeman. Clip at left.

• Eight overweight Texan women reported a dismissive attitude from medical workers, small gowns and small blood pressure cuffs as reasons they are ambivalent to going to the doctor's office. • A 73-year-old British man who previously held the world record for most tattoos (he has full-body leopard spots) has moved away from his remote hut on the Scottish coastline because he's getting too old to canoe to the nearest town. • The FBI announced today that a three-day, nationwide operation that began on Thursday freed 47 U.S. teens from forced prostitution and led to the arrests of hundreds of other people. • A Court of Appeals ruling in the UK that allows trial judges to tell jurors that a rape victim delayed reporting a rape because they felt "shame and guilt" may increase the number of rape convictions. • An all-female Dalit community radio station in India has been steadily gaining listeners and praise since the station first opened nearly two weeks ago. • Wanderlust and The Girls' Guide to India are two travel books that are geared towards the female tourist traveling in India. • A female robber has hit three Columbus-area banks in Ohio in the past week, a rare feat particularly for a female thief. •

MEGAN: Is it just me, or is your mind blown that David Letterman managed to beat journalists and political strategists to the whole McCain pals around with a dude that liked to bomb crap, too thing?

SPENCER: Remember, it's not the ASSOCIATION, it's the LYING.

MEGAN: Oh, you mean like how McCain did initially when asked about it?

SPENCER: And when McCain pauses for a moment, apparently unable to remember whether he attended any fundraisers thrown by G Gordon Liddy.

MEGAN: Actually, we can just go to the tape, where it's 3 minutes in. After that, he cops to more than just "knowing" the guy.

SPENCER: Well, let's give credit to the ChicTrib's Steve Chapman, who did write "McCain Has His Own Ayers" on Oct. 7

Liddy has contributed thousands of dollars to his campaigns, held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and hosted the senator on his radio show, where McCain said, "I'm proud of you." Exactly which part of Liddy's record is McCain proud of?

MEGAN: Maybe this part?

After the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, he endorsed the shooting of federal agents: "Kill the sons of bitches."

SPENCER: But this is the interesting part. You've seen exactly one liberal, Tom Frank, defend Ayers, in the WSJ, and that was on the grounds of pure friendship. Meanwhile, Liddy emerged unrepentant from Watergate, which Chapman reminds us was "-part of a broader plot to steal the 1972 election through sabotage, illegal spying and other dirty tricks," to become a widely beloved right-wing talk radio host. To answer Chapman's rhetorical question, that's the part McCain is "proud of," or at least has to display fealty toward.

MEGAN: Also, by the way, let's not forget how Liddy plotted a fucking POLITICAL ASSASSINATION. Or the bombing he wanted to do at the Brookings Institute. The guy is a fucking psycho, that's probably why he and McCain are all BFF.

SPENCER: But they're not, really. It's a transactional relationship  McCain needs to kiss a ring to stay in the good graces of Fever Swamp America. That's why the whole thing is so tawdry and contempt-inducing.

MEGAN: But, back to stealing elections and voter intimidation. So, ACORN. Former Republican US attorney David Iglesias admits they were the target in 2004 and 2006 and they didn't do anything illegal but he was asked to gun for them.

SPENCER: Yes ABOUT that attempted election theft.

MEGAN: Oh, well, it's not really theft if they can keep voters from the polls in the first place!

SPENCER: Here's something that consumed my former TPM colleague Paul Kiel, the hardest working muckraker in the business, while we were there. Everyone remember that Alberto Gonzales fired nine US attorneys, most of them Republicans, because, among other things, they wouldn't accede to pressure to prosecute Democrats or bring bogus election-fraud cases ahead of the vote, a longstanding tradition of countries that aren't, say, Venezuela.

MEGAN: I mean, if you can't bring political prosecutions to solidify your grip on power, what's the point of packing the Justice Department with underqualified political hacks? Duh.

SPENCER: And Gonzo, thanks to the intrepid work of Paul and Justin Rood and Josh Marshall (with some help from Pat Leahy and John Conyers), resigned in disgrace last year. But before he left, Gonzo changed the rules in the DOJ voter manual precisely so his legacy would live on. F'rinstance:

The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions  no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election.

This is what's behind this apparent federal investigation of ACORN. Now, ACORN says that despite a leak from the FBI (!) it's not under investigation.

MEGAN: It's so tawdry, even the FBI feels used by Republicans. Their assholes haven't hurt this bad since J. Edgar died. Plus, yeah, what happened to conducting an investigation in secret and not leaking stupid shit? Did they learn nothing from having to pay out the ass to Stephen Hatfill?

SPENCER: But whoever leaked this shit  Lara Jakes Jordan of the AP (she got the Santorum "man on dog" interview, fun fact) says it's two "senior law enforcement officials" - is obviously trying to spread the smear that there is a widespread voter-fraud effort underway on the left. FBI best practices are not the point. This is what Nixon's operatives  like Liddy!  called a "ratfuck": you politicize and smear and introduce toxins into the news bloodstream, all in the interest of creating a Big Lie

MEGAN: Or an alternate truth. A truthiness.

SPENCER: The vote-fraud manual changes are designed to build corruption into the system. And I wonder I wonder I wonder how the right will appreciate a vigorous Feingold Justice Department effort at disenfranchising conservative voters in September or October of 2012.

MEGAN: I do have to say, I actually think Republican efforts to keep people from voting are a little ironic, because I really think everyone should vote, but I'm actually concerned what would happen in they did. I like that Republicans think the country would move left, and I'm scared it would head far, far to the right. Does that mean Republicans are actually less misanthropic than me? Or just that I've spent more time talking to Real Americans(TM) than them?

SPENCER: It strikes me that that's a bit besides the point of the effort. Winning elections through designed-in fraud is only one part of it. The larger part  if I can use a Nixonland term  is to persecute, confuse and weaken the left and its constituent parts. Everything else is academic. They recognize that you could probably build a center-right coalition that could win honest elections  with some hiccups or interregnum periods of Democratic revival  but you can't build a far-right governing coalition of any durability. The last time that was attempted... why, we're living through it, and it ends in multiple quagmire-y wars and global financial catastrophe and a 90-percent wrong-track poll rating. So you get shit like this:

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, after the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9-6 on Tuesday that Ms. Brunner must notify election boards of all voter records containing information that doesn't match driver's license or Social Security databases.

Ms. Brunner's appeal said many mismatches will appear for trivial reasons, such as typographical errors. She said Wednesday that as many as 200,000 of Ohio's 660,000 new registrants this year could be affected. The order  stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Republican Party  gave her until Friday to either provide lists of mismatches to election officials or give them an easy way to search a state database. In her court filing, she said early efforts to reprogram state computers have turned up glitches in the matching process.

I don't want to be hysterical about this, but liberal circles are starting to wonder whether Ohio could be stolen for real this time, with 2004 as a warm-up act.

MEGAN: And what's worse is most of those 200,000 disenfranchised people might never vote again. Fuck "might," they won't.

SPENCER: Explain that please

MEGAN: I mean, most people in this country don't vote. And if your first voting experience is to show up at the polls only to be told to fuck off, why would you? It takes at least two and usually 3 elections to solidify the voter participation habit among people that aren't fucked out of voting by a corrupt system.

SPENCER: ... and this indeed would be three.

MEGAN: So, in theory, the Republicans aren't just stealing this election, they're insuring Democratic voters don't show up for years to come.

SPENCER: And here's where I'm tied in knots: on the one hand, you have the good-government, pro-democracy position that retaliation by a liberal administration would be an unalloyed evil, a net loss for the country. But on the other. If the Republican Party is going to act like a criminal cartel, then persecution  and I'm not going to whitewash this through euphemism; let's be clear about this  makes sense. What's to stop them from doing this if they don't pay a price? And I don't mean just an electoral price, because in January 2009 they'll just start preparing for the next round of fraud. What do you think?

MEGAN: I mean, do you have to persecute when/if you can prosecute? In addition, they continue to justify these voter-fraud "initiatives" (a.k.a., voter disenfranchisement efforts) by raising the specter of fucking 1960 and the then-Mayor Daley and dead people voting. that's almost 50 years ago, but that's what they'll argue every single fucking time In fact, I had that argument with a Republican friend of mine this weekend, that they're just doing it to "make sure" things are fair because Democrats "have a history" of this. That's my concern with persecution, that it'll just become this century-long tit-for-tat game that makes the electoral process even more fucked up than it has to be and discourages even more people from participating. That said, yes, I would love to see some asses kicked and some heads fucking roll.

SPENCER: OH SHIT CNN is saying that ACORN's Boston offices were broken into. Does G Gordon Liddy have an alibi?

MEGAN: Fuck Gordon Libby, check the Romneys. And Kevin Madden, who I think I should really be forced to strip search. Those are, like, the only Republicans in the area.

• Despite attempts by residents in Austin, Texas to get billboards depicting aborted fetuses taken down, the city government says they can't do anything about them because they aren't breaking any laws. • The manager of Image Hotel on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey claims to have fired all of his male staff after he caught them having affairs with foreign female tourists. • According to collected tax data, women "out-gave" men in gifts by $5 billion in 2005. • A Pakistani newspaper claims that there are 100 rapes occurring in Karachi per day, but, of course, that number may be higher that due to rape victims' fear and silence. • A study of hospital discharge records in California revealed a decreased number of complications as a result of a hysterectomy over the past 15 years. • A study of Lipitor, a drug prescribed to men and women to reduce the risk of a heart attack and lower cholesterol, has revealed that the drug is mismarketed towards women and makes unfounded claims about the effectiveness of the drug for them. •

• UPDATE: The Northern Illinois University shooter killed five people, including himself. [WSJ]
  
• "I will be haunted to the end of my days by what my child has done." That's the mother of Latina Williams, who killed herself and two classmates Louisiana Technical College last week.
  
• And in other senseless death news: 82 middle school-aged kids have died playing a "choking game" whereby, uh...[CBS]
  
• Aaaaaaaah! CALLING THE FEMINAZI BONERKILLER SQUAD: A woman referee was walked off a Kansas high school basketball game and barred from officiating. Because she was a woman. Fun irony: The school is named St. Mary's. [Kansas City Star]
  
• New Mexico finally finished counting its caucus votes: Hillary Clinton won by 1,700. [Wonkette]
  
• But her campaign is fucked: Mark Penn is to blame! [Time]

• Or maybe it's Patti Solis Doyle. Her chief advantages were "loyalty and discipline" (and "little else"); and the fact that Hillary supporters expected a few phone calls from Bill to quell all influential black peoples' interest in Obama; or that Solis Doyle fibbed brazenly about the sorry state of campaign coffers; or that Obama's team knew better how to raise money from non-gazillionaires; or something about Doritos... [Atlantic]
• Britney Spears has a 30-year-old brother, and he's been named a trustee to her trust. [TMZ]
• "More Than A Feeling" writer Tom Scholz says Mike Huckabee's persistent covering of the songs at political events has caused him "damage." [Rolling Stone]
• Mitt Romney is endorsing McCain! Yeah who cares. Mitt Romney's Catholic spiritual adviser is telling our whole fucked up guilty flock of sinful sinners to vote Obama. [Slate]
• Tonight is going to be fucking depressing if I end up watching Lipstick Jungle.

Painfully well-reported  and seemingly corroborated by numerous anonymous comments on the magazine website  the story nevertheless tries to muster a bit of empathy for Luciano, a "broken man", who claims the allegations were part of a conspiracy by New York & Company  which had acquired his company and wanted to get rid of him  to undermine his authority. Other female employees defend Manganella, claiming generalized pervyness was just sort of part of his "avuncular" style and that New York & Company ran the boutique into the ground.

None of this, of course, is shocking. This shit happens throughout the world of retail, and I will tell you why: bad behavior runs rampant in the world of fashion, and a lot of people in the retail business see themselves as being in the fashion business  since, you know, they sell clothes. But the money in retail is even shittier than it is in fashion, and the chances of fame or glory or glamour are immeasurably lower. Meanwhile, the talent required to run a good chain store is more of a tangible "hustle" type talent, whereas in fashion it is more amorphous "creative" talent. I am not going to stereotype here, but one of these talents tends to be more gay and the other tends to be more straight. Meanwhile, the people doing the selling  whether models or cute sales clerks  are basically paid to be pretty. So anyway, like I said: problems. It's a vicious cycle. And to that end, here's the last line of the story:

Through it, he's seeking to void a noncompete agreement he'd signed with New York & Company. Because if all else fails, Luciano Manganella has a vision for a new business.
He says he would like to open a lingerie store.

Luciano Manganella's Final Sale [Boston Magazine]

Boston Globe:

Lohan's performance, by contrast, is so superficial that you hate Rachel more at the end of the movie than you did at the start, and that can't be right....It takes real time and effort to trivialize incest. "Georgia Rule" does it in just 113 minutes.

Village Voice:

Georgia Rule might profitably be retitled The Lindsay Lohan Story, but peeking out from all the strutting and preening is a strong, decent person in the making. With luck that same person may yet rise up to deliver Lohanwhose well-documented freak-out occurred on the set of Georgia Rulefrom her off-screen antics.

Salon:

[T]here's something unsavory about the way it uses a character's emotional and psychological scars as a gimmick, a way for us both to enjoy the vision of Lohan in a series of skimpy baby-doll mini-dresses even as we're ultimately supposed to murmur, "Poor little thing, no wonder she's so sexually precocious!..."Georgia Rule" made me, a full-fledged, life-in-the-slow-lane grown-up, feel like acting out; maybe it had the same effect on Lohan.

Washington Post:

Lohan..[is] 20 and looks about 35. With her fully developed woman's body, her potty mouth, her makeup-slathered eyes and a wardrobe of frilly, feathery things that just keep slipping off, she looks like she's just in from a night of drunken clubbing. You wonder: What is this adult doing in this child's role? She should be running a brothel in Nevada, not working in a vet's office.

God, we love Fridays.