Riverfront Times, August 18, 2021 by Riverfront Times

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MARCH 6-12, 2019

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THE LEDE

PHOTO BY THEO WELLING

“I’m here today to show support for Mike Brown [Sr.] ... and Chosen For Change. ... They have given a lot. They gave to me this necklace. And this is my daughter that’s been missing for twelve years. They did a mother, mother luncheon, and I was supported.” PAULA HILL, WHOSE DAUGHTER SHEMIKA COSEY HAS BEEN MISSING SINCE 2008, AT THE GATHERING FOR MIKE BROWN JR. IN FERGUSON ON MONDAY SEPTEMBER 9 riverfronttimes.com

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Mystery Week

f you’re a fan of true crime, this is your week. We’ve got a pair of tragic, compelling mysteries that are still playing out as we go to press. Longtime RFT contributor and first-class rock kicker Ryan Krull has a hand in both. First, there’s his cover story on a nightmarish situation that took place along the edges of Lake Adelle in Jefferson County. Ryan reveals previously unreported details of not only a fatal confrontation, but the lives broken by a violence relatives tried desperately to prevent. Ryan has also been digging into the bizarre and confusing tale of Elizabeth Cooke and Bobby Phillips. It’s too complex to summarize here, but Ryan and Daniel Hill’s complementary stories will get you up to speed. Stay tuned for more on that front. —Doyle Murphy, editor in chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

E D I T O R I A L Digital Editor Jaime Lees Interim Managing Editor Daniel Hill Staff Writer Danny Wicentowski Contributors Cheryl Baehr, Eric Berger, Jeannette Cooperman, Mike Fitzgerald, Ryan Krull, Andy Paulissen, Justin Poole, Theo Welling, Ymani Wince Columnists Thomas Chimchards, Ray Hartmann Editorial Interns Zoë Butler, Holden Hindes, Erin McAfee, Jack Probst, Victor Stefanescu A R T

& P R O D U C T I O N Art Director Evan Sult Production Manager Haimanti Germain M U L T I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Associate Publisher Colin Bell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Chuck Healy Director of Public Relations Brittany Forrest

COVER Murder at Lake Adelle

C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers

A fatal showdown in Jefferson County revealed an unexpected victim — and a series of tragedies that are still unfolding

E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein www.euclidmediagroup.com

Cover photo by RYAN KRULL

N A T I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com

Cover design by EVAN SULT

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INSIDE The Lede Hartmann News Big Mad Feature Cafe Short Orders Reeferfront Times Culture Savage Love 6

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Mystery Week

TABLE OF CONTENTS Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy

COVER Murder at Lake Adelle

C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers

A fatal showdown in Jefferson County revealed an unexpected victim — and a series of tragedies that are still unfolding

E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein www.euclidmediagroup.com

Cover photo by RYAN KRULL

N A T I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com

Cover design by EVAN SULT

INSIDE The Lede Hartmann News Big Mad Feature Cafe Short Orders Reeferfront Times Culture Savage Love 6

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HARTMANN Fighting for Attention Insurrectionist Josh Hawley builds his brand at Missouri’s expense BY RAY HARTMANN

he noted political website FiveThirtyEight published a ranking last week to address the question, “Does your member of Congress vote with or against Biden?” Guess what? Missouri Senator Josh Hawley occupied 100th place among 100 senators in support of President Joe Biden. Hawley can proudly proclaim that he has voted against the president more than any other senator thus far in 2021. This is fitting: Hawley also ranks second to none as an insurrectionist. History will never forget Hawley’s treasonous decision to challenge Biden’s legitimate election before January 6 at a time no other senator seemed so inclined. No one did more to abet Donald Trump’s effort to overthrow American democracy than Josh Hawley. He lit the fire, so why not continue to oppose the president whose small-D democratic election he tried to reject? By contrast, Senator Roy Blunt ranked far toward the other end of the spectrum. Blunt voted with the president 63.6 percent of the time — eighth highest among the 50 GOP senators — as opposed to Hawley’s last-place ranking of 11.4 percent support of Biden’s positions. It is a sign of the times that you won’t be hearing Blunt promote that distinction publicly. In fact, it’s a bit surprising that Hawley has not already made a major fundraising splash out of his singular intransigence. The FiveThirtyEight ranking for senators provides a snapshot of bipartisanship, not an ideological barometer. The 60 votes it measured included 21 presidential nominations; this wasn’t focused upon legislative policy, where party lines mostly hold. Hawley took glee early on in

carving out his own lane of senatorial spite in slandering many Biden appointees. Hawley was one of just two Republican senators to oppose the nomination of Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin. Yes, that would be two as in 93-to-2 for one of the most critical selections on the list. Nice message to the military. Hawley stood out among fractional minorities of Republican senators in opposing Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (approved 86-13), Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack (92-7), Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (84-15), SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman (81-17), Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (84-15), Veteran Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough (87-7), Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (78-22) and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines (84-10). Blunt, on the other hand, voted in favor of every single one of those nominees as part of a substantial majority of Republican senators. Respecting the President’s prerogative to name his governing team in most (albeit not all) instances seems one of the few vestiges of bipartisanship remaining in the Senate. That, of course, does not apply to the likes of Hawley. He hadn’t had this much fun since he was ripping the wings off butterflies as a child. And let’s not forget Hawley’s singular achievement, his fitting stature as the only senator — as in a 94-1 vote — to oppose the antiAsian hate crimes bill in April. Rather than at least have the decency to admit that he opposed the measure because he didn’t like the optics of standing against hatred of Asian Americans in connection with COVID-19, Hawley offered some outlandish lie not worth repeating. Remember, 43 fellow Republicans voted to support this bill and the six others who couldn’t bring themselves to become associated with the toxic phrase “anti-hate” at least managed to sit the thing out. Not Hawley, that proud antiChina warrior who has raised his voice against the noxious regime every time except those fifteen instances when Trump praised its response to the COVID-19 epidemic or that special moment

Try as he might, Hawley cannot pretend to match Trump’s worldclass supremacy as a con artist. Maybe someday Hawley can get there, but for now he is most noteworthy as the senatorial equivalent of nails scratching down the chalkboard. when the wannabe orange tyrant praised Xi Jinping for anointing himself dictator for life. Nastiness to foes is a cornerstone of Hawley’s brand. Hawley craves the mantle of heir apparent to Trump’s faux populism and much of that is driven by stoking divisiveness, especially by personally attacking political enemies. Like the master, Hawley is 100 percent inauthentic. As noted in this space, Hawley represents the quintessential phony: the son of a well-to-do rural banker who loves to leave followers with the false impression that he grew up as some hardscrabble farm kid. Educated in elite private schools, Hawley’s political invention of himself as a man of the people has relied on an unending stream of deception, except maybe for that time his maiden speech in the Senate warned of “cosmopolitan elites” — an unmistakable anti-Semitic trope that got the attention of Semites. But try as he might, Hawley cannot pretend to match Trump’s world-class supremacy as a con artist. Maybe someday Hawley can get there, but for now he is most noteworthy as the senatorial equivalent of nails scratching down the chalkboard.

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Hawley can brandish his bona fides as an enemy of bipartisanship. No matter how one regards Biden politically, there is little debate that he is a traditionalist, a man obsessed with returning America to a time when politics and governance could coexist with some semblance of civility. That hasn’t worked out so well — the bipartisan infrastructure bill a heady exception — in no small part thanks to lean-andhungry, unprincipled men like Hawley. Bottom line: The President will need to find a way to part with some Senate traditions unless he wants to allow Republicans to cheat their way into control of Congress in 2022. To that end, Democrats might try embracing Hawley’s iconic raised fist of January 6 as much as he has. Hawley embodies the soullessness of his hijacked political party — in all of its abandonment of any semblance of principle — and the fact that he stands last in FiveThirtyEight’s measure of bipartisanship is not insignificant. Hawley ranked a full 5.7 percent lower than fellow insurrectionist and human species embarrassment Ted Cruz of Texas, who was tied for the title “second least bipartisan senator” with Senator Rick Scott of Florida. That’s something worth noting, and not just by Hawley. “But for him it never would have happened,” former Senator Jack Danforth — Hawley’s self-described Dr. Frankenstein — said of him shortly after the January 6 riot. In fairness, that might not be certain now, based upon what since has been revealed about Trump’s furious and concerted efforts to overthrow the legitimately elected American government before it could take office. But it’s still fitting for Hawley to garner recognition as an enemy of bipartisanship. He’s not just anyone whom history will remember in the same sentence with Benedict Arnold. n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhar tmann1952@gmail.com or catch him on Donnybrook at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on Nine PBS and St. Louis In the Know with Ray Hartmann from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

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NEWS

Elizabeth Cooke Saga Grips St. Louis, Beyond

In the days that followed, the car’s owner, whom we’re going to call “Jeff” because he asked that we not use his name, tells the RFT that he also found a trove of messages in Facebook’s Messenger app in which Cooke appears to be

openly discussing various crimes with a group of accomplices, most of them related to theft and drugs. Naturally, those were soon posted to Cooke’s Facebook page as well, attracting a deluge of attention from internet sleuths and other onlookers as the page has increasingly gone viral. Jeff says he has since turned the phone over to police — but not before saving as many details as he could about the alleged crimes. Since the initial incident, Jeff says he has heard from a couple of people in Cooke’s orbit. “Her fiance gave me access to the phone — he gave me permission to enter the phone,” Jeff tells the RFT. “And what I did is I took as much information as I could out of it. And then, when her sister said that the phone was reported stolen, I went ahead and I made sure I had access to everything, and handed it over to the police, because I didn’t want to be in possession of stolen property.” And so, still able to access Cooke’s accounts, Jeff kept digging — and posting — in an attempt to help other people who may have

he used to gain access to her Facebook account. Before the account was shut down on Friday afternoon, he posted volumes of photos, videos and text messages he says showed evidence of a variety of crimes. Thousands of people are now following the saga. But in early December 2020, Cooke was just another guest, booking the Airbnb at 5155 Kensington for three weeks, Jazz says. Even so, Jazz says she soon regretted it. “We’re a victim of Elizabeth’s shit also, and that really sucks because we’re a community organization that feeds people and helps people in times of need,” Jazz says. “We’re really not connected to her.” At first, Cooke seemed OK, although some of her behavior seemed odd, Jazz says. She hoarded boxes full of makeup along with headphones and other electronics, according to Jazz. Cooke told Jazz that she was a dumpster diver and her business was to find thrown-out items and resell them. “She would say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna clean them up and sell them online. But I was like, ‘Dude, this is trash.”’ Around Christmas, Cooke was still in the Airbnb when Bobby Phillips and another man Jazz knew only as JR showed up to Eco Village. Like a lot of unhoused people

in the area, Bobby and JR made use of the nonprofit’s food share and shower. “The two older men pulled our heartstrings,” Jazz says. “They’d just gotten out of jail. It’s middle of winter. ‘Yeah, you guys can crash on the couch,’ I said. Not realizing what all of this would later fall into.” The Airbnb was upstairs in the house, and Eco Village allowed people in need to use first floor. Jazz isn’t exactly sure how Cooke and Phillips connected to each other, but Phillips was known to hang out on the first floor. On January 1, Jazz says, she saw flashing lights outside the house on Kensington and went to see what had happened. In the Airbnb, Phillips was dead on his back in the middle of the room. Jazz says that Cooke claimed Phillips had knocked on her door and then fell dead upon entering the room. Cooke’s behavior struck Jazz as strange. She didn’t seem all that concerned for Phillips; she didn’t seem that worried at all. According to Jazz, the woman now known to followers of the Facebook saga as Gypsy Jen was also on the premises, hiding in a bedroom as the police asked questions. As the police and EMS began to leave, Jazz asked them why they weren’t taking Phillips’ body with them. They blamed COVID protocols, according to Jazz.

A commandeered Facebook account sparked international interest in the Missouri woman — and the mysterious circumstances of a north St. Louis death Written by

DANIEL HILL

Elizabeth Cooke in a recent booking photo. | MACOUPIN COUNTY ( ILLINOIS) SHERIFF

hat’s been billed as an attempted car theft gone wrong in south St. Louis rapidly spiraled into a viral story of crime and intrigue last week — one centered around drugs, stolen vehicles, looted storage lockers and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a 62-year-old man. A Facebook account under the name Elizabeth Cooke posted two videos on August 6, showing a woman believed to be Cooke as she’s confronted by a man whose car she was allegedly attempting to steal. “What the fuck?” the man says at the video’s outset, which was recorded on August 4. “My friend sent me over here and told me that I could use his car because my car broke down,” Cooke replies. “I’m so sorry, is this not my car?” After a tense exchange in which the man accuses Cooke of attempting to crack his steering column, he sends her away from the area, but not before asking her to pull down her mask so that he could get a clear shot of her face, which she reluctantly does. But it wasn’t Cooke who uploaded the videos, says the man. She simply left her phone behind at the scene, which the owner of the car subsequently gained access to — and with it, Cooke’s social media accounts. That kicked off a whirlwind of changes to Cooke’s Facebook

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page. Soon, her bio was altered to indicate that she “works at stealing;” a parenthetical was added to the end of her name that reads “(Car Thief);” and her cover image was changed to a stock image of a generic female burglar.

Airbnb Operator Was Suspicious of Elizabeth Cooke After Man’s Death Written by

RYAN KRULL

n his final days, Bobby Phillips was being helped by same nonprofit where Elizabeth Cooke rented an Airbnb. Eco Village STL is a community resource center in the Academy neighborhood of north St. Louis that provides the local unhoused population with access to showers, meals and other essentials. Every Friday, it hosts food giveaways. According to Mama Jazz, a community organizer at Eco Village, the nonprofit had also run an Airbnb to help fund their work but recently stopped. The reason, Jazz says, is Cooke. In recent days, Cooke’s life has become the focus of a bizarre whirlwind of an internet crime story. A man who claims he interrupted the 35-year-old as she tried to steal his vehicle tells the RFT she left her phone behind, which

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been victimized reclaim their lost items. In addition to the phone, a bunch of credit cards under various names had been left behind in Jeff’s car, as well as someone’s ID. Jeff says he has since reunited some of those people with their belongings. He says he was also able to find information about various other possible crimes, and as of last week, claimed that he’d helped solve about five thefts. But then, Jeff says, he found something that made him sick to his stomach. In a bizarre video that Cooke shot on January 1, she can be heard discussing a 62-yearold man named Bobby Phillips, whom she claims she had met only a few days prior, after he spent 43 years in prison for a murder he committed when he was seventeen. The RFT searched public court records, finding arrests for burglaries and traffic crimes in Phillips’ past but no evidence he ever faced murder charges. Meanwhile, uploaded from her phone to the cloud just the day before were photos of Phillips’ social security card, birth certificate and ID, as well as documents sign“Well regardless of COVID,” she says she told them. “This is suspicious.” At that point, Jazz says, “Elizabeth popped up and said, ‘I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of it because I’m his power of attorney.’” Given that Cooke and Phillips had met just days before, Jazz says she was suspicious when she heard Phillips had supposedly signed over power of attorney to a new acquaintance. She looked at Cooke, then to the police. “This doesn’t seem weird to you all?” she asked. Apparently it didn’t. The authorities left Phillips’ body in the Airbnb, leaving it to Jazz to make arrangements for the body to be taken away by a funeral home. A St. Louis police spokeswoman confirms that officers responded to the Kensington address but says she can’t say more because there is an open investigation. Asked about theft allegations tied to Cooke, the spokeswoman tells the RFT that police are looking into them but declines to provide additional details, again citing an open investigation. Eventually, Jazz says, the police retrieved Phillips body from that funeral home and brought it to the city morgue. According to KMOV, “The St. Louis City Medical Examiner’s office confirmed Phillips’s body was there from January until March, and said his death was ruled an

ing over his power of attorney to Cooke and naming her as the sole beneficiary in his will. According to the power of attorney paperwork, Phillips was residing at the same address as Cooke at that time. A photo of a form, purportedly from Hoffen Funeral Home in Granite City, Illinois, which Jeff uploaded to Cooke’s Facebook, indicates that Bobby Phillips died on January 1, 2021 — two days after naming Cooke in his will and giving her power of attorney, and the very same day the video was shot. Jeff was shocked. Initially, he says that he’d just been shaming this person through their social media, while also trying to reconnect some people with their stolen items. But he feared he’d just uncovered something far more sinister. “I looked at the time stamp. It was taken the day he died,” Jeff writes in a caption on the video. “There are other videos from that day. I’m sick to my stomach.” The RFT has been able to confirm that Phillips died at an Airbnb in north St. Louis (see the corresponding story in this issue) where Cooke was staying. A St. Louis po-

lice spokeswoman told the RFT that officers had responded to a call at that location but declined to say more, citing an open investigation. The spokeswoman said police are also looking into the theft allegations but again declined to provide any additional details. After the revelation that there had been a mysterious death in Cooke’s orbit, things kicked into overdrive online, with hundreds of internet sleuths digging into the matter, many comparing the whole affair to the Netflix docuseries Don’t F**k With Cats. The story has since gone fully viral as the online communities seeking to find more answers about Phillips’ death grew larger and larger. Cooke’s Facebook account, with a friends’ list that had swelled to thousands of people, was eventually shut down on Friday. Cooke, meanwhile, was behind bars in jail in Illinois as the saga played out online. Macoupin County Assistant State’s Attorney Jordan Garrison tells the RFT she was arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle and meth. She’s being held on $25,000 bond. Dur-

Elizabeth Cooke was staying at an Airbnb where Bobby Phillips died. | RYAN KRULL accident, with underlying heart conditions being ‘exacerbated by methamphetamines.’” After Phillip’s death, Jazz attempted to

evict Cooke from the Airbnb but she refused, at first trying to claim “squatter’s rights,” then relying on the city’s eviction moratorium.

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ing a video court appearance last week, she requested a public defender. She was still in jail as of press time. A jail staffer tells the RFT that Cooke was aware of what’s been happening with her social media accounts, but “not to the extent” that it has gone viral. For Jeff’s part, he says he’s just hopeful that the revelations that he found on her phone can lead to some clarity regarding Phillips’ death and the strange circumstances surrounding it. What he says started as an attempt to reunite some victims of theft with their lost belongings has since snowballed into something much larger, and potentially with far more sinister connotations. If there was wrongdoing, Jeff believes it needs to be brought to light. “I did not expect any of this. I wasn’t looking for any of this,” Jeff explains. “But now there’s a dead guy. And we need to figure out if somebody’s got to be held accountable.” n Ryan Krull contributed to this story.

As January turned to February, “random dudes who clearly looked like drug addicts” became a constant presence at the Airbnb, Jazz says. “It was always me having to go down there every day telling people to get out of my house.” One night, she corralled as many of Eco Village’s volunteers as she could to go to the Airbnb and kick out a large number of people. Another time, Jazz says, she walked into the Airbnb and saw blatant hard drug use going on. The only two rules of the Airbnb, Jazz says, were no violence and no hard drugs. She says Cooke also kept three cats in the Airbnb. Cooke had so much stuff with her, stacked so high, that the cats knocked a pile of headphones and other small electronics into a window, breaking it. As Jazz continued to try to evict Cooke, she says, she told the St. Louis Sheriff’s Department, “I’m pretty sure they killed this dude at the house.” Still, nothing happened. Eventually, enough calls had been made to the police about Cooke that they were able to remove Cooke on the grounds of her being a nuisance, Jazz says. Additionally, Jazz says she turned the power off to the house. Cooke finally departed in March, four months after booking her original threeweek stay on the property. n

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Warrant Forgiveness and Vaccines Written by

JENNA JONES

t. Louis is rolling out a new incentive program that combines warrant forgiveness and COVID-19 vaccines. Thanks to a partnership between the city, the Circuit Attorney’s Office and the courts, the city’s upcoming Warrant Forgiveness Days on August 27 and 28 will feature on-site vaccinations — and, for those vaccinated, credit toward their court fees. The upcoming event marks the fourth time St. Louis Circuit Court will be available to help those with warrants. Residents who have a warrant with the circuit court are advised to call 314-641-8214 to make sure they are eligible for warrant forgiveness before they show up at the event, which will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The circuit court will only host the event

The city is offering a new vaccine perk with its warrant forgiveness program. | DOYLE MURPHY on August 27, while the municipal court will operate both days. Currently, there are approximately 138,000 warrants on the municipal court docket, and 2,000 up for consideration on the circuit court’s. Warrant Forgiveness Days allow those with warrants to set up a different court date or handle their charges on the spot without fear of arrest. The offer is extended only to those with non-

violent offenses. Vaccinations will also be available on site for those who choose to get the shot. “These events will help participants get right with the law and get right with their health,” Mayor Tishaura Jones said in a press release. “We have to work together to protect public health and public safety, and I’m grateful to the courts for their leadership on this issue.”

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The municipal court even takes Warrant Forgiveness Days a step further with an incentive for those who are vaccinated. With valid proof of vaccination, the municipal court offers “favorable consideration for up to $100 off any existing fines and court costs,” according to a press release from the mayor’s office. Administrative city court Judge Newton McCoy said the courts are happy to offer this program. McCoy added the court is “also pleased” to encourage vaccination with the incentive to reduce fines and court costs. “In the midst of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, City Court is pleased to support our public safety mission and Mayor Jones’ initiatives to promote vaccination by offering our Warrant Forgiveness Days program, along with the opportunity for residents to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at the same time,” McCoy said in a statement. Participants should bring a valid photo ID and phone, and provide a valid email address if they have one. Along with the warrant service and vaccine stations, the event will feature family-friendly activities, including food trucks and city departments offering onsite rental assistance. n

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THE BIG MAD IN THE HEADLIGHTS Grass-mowing goats, a governor targeted by his own monster and St. Louis intersection hell Compiled by

DANIEL HILL

elcome back to the Big Mad, the RFT’s weekly roundup of righteous rage! Because we know your time is short and your anger is hot: AT A CROSSROADS: St. Louis is rich in sadistically designed intersections. We once made an (incomplete) list of 25 terrible ones. That spaghetti-plate nightmare at Brentwood Boulevard and highways 40 and 170 is particularly insane. Then there’s the inexplicable X-shaped interchange within a V at Chippewa Street, Jefferson Avenue and South Broadway. And the impenetrable Memorial Drive at Lumiere Place/Dr. Martin Luther King Bridge that will reroute you to Illinois. But one we keep returning to, literally, is the bizarre wedge at South Kingshighway and Christy boulevards. The genius of its evil is the way it sneaks up on you. One minute, you’re southbound and keeping an eye on the standard racetrack wildness of Kingshighway, and then cars are coming from all directions and you’re heading toward a fork, creating a complex hierarchy of right-of-way issues for you to unravel. In less than 950 feet from the nearby McDonald’s, there are more than a dozen places to enter the road: side streets, alleys, commercial drives. The fork itself falls behind not one, but two triangular islands. And if you think you’ve got a handle on those, wait until a truck rolls out of the St. Louis Fire Department Engine House No. 36, which sits at the dull point of the wedge. The whole setup was clearly designed for maximum distraction, and well, we’re honestly impressed by the sheer disaster of it all. NO MO MOWING: If someone would’ve told us we could’ve just had goats do our landscaping for us, we could have traded in our lawn mowers eons ago. A cuter, natural solution to a growing problem in Webster Groves took form in 39 goats. For the past couple of weeks, goats have been eating away at a problematic landscape in Webster Groves. Parks and Recreation employee Scott Davis told KSDK the pilot project is paying off — and we would like a piece of this solution, please. Surely, Webster can spare one or two

goats for us to manage our lawn. We’re tired of being out in the heat pushing a lawn mower when we could have a situation that makes everyone happy. Let’s let the goats prove they are the greatest of all time by letting them out of their pens and into our lawns. WRONG DIVISION: The pretzel logic of Governor Mike Parson’s COVID-19 response has twisted around to bite him on the ankles — and while he has only himself to blame, the GOP blowback from Parson’s August 11 press conference, where he simply implied that health risks differ between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, is a prime example of what happens when Republican brain worms are running the show. During the press conference, a reporter asked the governor’s view on mask mandates in light of rising infection cases in children. Parson reiterated his opposition, saying, “I think at some point the people that have had the vaccine, that have had COVID, that have been tested for antibodies, and they’ve got in their system, I think there needs to be a division between those people and the people that are unvaccinated.” The reply sparked headlines and instant attack-ad material for disgraced ex-governor Eric Greitens, who is running for U.S. Senate. He blasted Parson’s statement as an example of “woke RINOs who bow down to the tyranny of the left.” Parson then took to Facebook to play rhetorical contortionist, explaining that he had been arguing against mask mandates in schools because, um, asking kids to mask up “undermines faith in the vaccine” — a remarkable spin as health experts warn that the delta variant is filling ICUs with unvaccinated kids. The governor may have slid out of a political jam, but his bad faith is keeping Missouri sick — and further divided. SLOW NATION: Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre will require proof of vaccines at its shows — starting October 4. You may note that October 4 is a month and half away. You may also note that the delta variant is running rampant right now. That’s why a growing list of St. Louis-area venues are acting right now, making the hard decisions to require vaccines or negative COVID-19 tests ASAP. But Hollywood’s owner, Live Nation, is slow rolling its policy, putting it on the backs of performers to make the call. So Maroon 5 will require vaccinations on Wednesday, but Luke Bryan won’t on Thursday. The rest of the schedule is a similarly inconsistent mess of protocols. But here’s the question: If the currently rising threat is serious enough to require a new vaccination policy (it is), why is Live Nation waiting until October? n

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MURDER On May 28, a Jefferson County woman whom we’ll call Sarah pulled her car into the driveway of her house on Lake Drive in Cedar Hill. Her house looks out over Lake Adelle, a fishing spot with a few dozen homes built around it. Some of the lawns in the neighborhood are littered with old barrels and rusted car parts, but the place is not without its charm. In addition to fishing, the water is good for floating on an inner tube or paddling a raft around. That Friday, as Sarah got out of her car, her 36-year-old neighbor Anthony Legens came out of his house and rushed toward her. “Come on over to my place. I want you to be my girlfriend and buy you things,” Legens said, according to Sarah’s father. “I’ll take care of you. Nobody will ever hurt you. Come on over.” Continued on pg 16

A fatal showdown in Jefferson County revealed an unexpected victim — and a series of tragedies that are still unfolding

AT LAKE

ADELLE B Y

R Y A N

K R U L L

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MURDER

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Legens cut an intimidating figure. A thicket of tattoos covered his hulking chest and arms. The words “white power” were inked in block letters across his stomach. Sarah had reason to be wary beyond the bizarre nature of the manic appeal. Detectives had been up and down Lake Drive over the past several weeks inquiring as to the whereabouts of a missing man, 36-year-old Jerry Crew, reportedly last seen at Legens’ home. The police had even asked to look at the footage from the security cameras mounted on the house where Sarah lived in the hopes that it might prove their suspicion that Crew had entered Legens’ place but never exited. According to one neighbor, Legens had kept the “routine of a vampire” since returning from jail in 2020, sleeping all day and running loud power tools in his house all night. Thoroughly freaked out, Sarah ran to a neighbor’s house and hid there as the night unfolded in dramatic fashion. Before sunset, deputies from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office were on the scene. An armored SWAT team vehicle parked outside Legens’ house. The sheriff’s office later said that “once the deputies arrived” Legens opened fire, shooting at police vehicles and deputies, striking one below his tactical vest. (The deputy was rushed to the hospital and has recovered.) The deputies pulled the front door off Legens’ house and, according to neighbors, threw flash bangs and tear gas inside. Several hours after opening fire, Legens attempted to escape out of a side window. A deputy shot him before he could get away, and Legens died just over the property line on Sarah’s skinny side yard. Inside the house, deputies found a dead body, but it didn’t belong to Jerry Crew. Crew’s mother, Dana Crew, watched coverage of the shootout on the news that night. Her son and Legens were cousins; Dana Crew is Legens’ aunt. Since reporting her son missing on April 22, Crew had been going to Lake Drive “two or three times a day,” begging the sheriff’s office to arrest her nephew and search his house, she says. After the Friday night shootout, a sheriff’s spokesman reported the body belonged to a woman. She had apparently been dead long before Legens’ final showdown with SWAT officers. Con-

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Anthony Legens was an erratic presence at Lake Adelle. | COURTESY JEFFERSON COUNTY SHERIFF firming her identity took several days, but investigators were eventually able to use dental records to officially identify her as Tanya Gould, a 31-year-old who had grown up just on the other side of Lake Adelle. Crew, watching this all unfold from home, was now even angrier at the sheriff’s office. In her opinion, they’d bungled the search for her son. Now she felt like they let this 31-year-old woman die because of their inaction. “For weeks, I kept trying to tell them that Anthony has weapons in there, he’s selling drugs, and he’s a convicted felon. So why couldn’t they get a warrant to go in there?” Crew says. “But they waited until the guy killed the girl in there, and then they go in.” Crew is correct that sheriff’s deputies didn’t go into Legens’ house until after Gould was killed, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Detectives had been surveilling the house for weeks. Sheriff David Marshak said they’d gotten “search warrants for some technology” but couldn’t get a warrant to enter the house. According to Marshak, investigators had “numerous conversations with the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office about the evidence they had

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obtained,” but time and again it was deemed insufficient to enter Legens’ house. (Prosecutors didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.) “Well, it’s too late now,” Dana says. “Because the two people that knew where my son was are both deceased.”

“What the hell have you done?” Dana Crew says that, growing up, her son was “a great kid, a wonderful kid. He would give you the shirt off his back. He would do without to give to somebody else.” In 2005, twenty years old at the time, Jerry Crew had a child with a woman named Tiffany, and though they separated, the two remained friends. While living in south St. Louis in the mid-aughts, Crew committed a series of minor crimes. Then, in 2009, robbery and armed criminal action convictions landed him in prison for a little more than decade. While incarcerated, he developed diabetes and was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which eventually caused him to require a colostomy bag. Crew was released from prison in October 2020, and two days later he overdosed, according to a post

he made on Facebook. Then in December he had to be hospitalized for issues related to his diabetes. Crew’s mother said her son seemed lost. “So much had changed in the years he’d been locked up,” she says. “I kept telling him it’s not like it used to be, it’s not like it used to be.” She took him to get a driver’s license and showed him how to use a smartphone. She helped him set up a Facebook account so he could reach out to old friends. In 2021, he moved in with his cousin at Lake Adelle. While living at Legens’, he messaged Ashley Pound, a woman whom Facebook suggested he might know. In retrospect, Pound says, Crew was probably hitting on her. She told him that she was related to his baby’s mother, so that sort of relationship probably wasn’t in the cards. But the two kept chatting and quickly became friends. “He was always fun,” Pound says. “He was carefree. He brought everybody’s spirits up wherever he was. He always tried to make you feel better if you were upset.” Crew was nothing if not social. Even while locked up he called his mother at least every other day. If he didn’t have anything in particular to say, he still wanted to know what she was up to. While living with Legens he messaged Pound daily. The messages were always lighthearted. He sent her a video of a large pizza delivery that had come to the house. “Come eat some pizza!” he exclaimed. In another message he tried to hook Pound up with Legens. “I’m glad I didn’t go through with that,” Pound says. Then, on April 22, both she and his mother stopped hearing from him. A few days later, Dana Crew had grown increasingly worried and went to the house on Lake Drive where she says she found Legens and a woman outside on the front lawn. “Where’s my son?” Crew asked. “Oh, at some chick’s house,” Legens replied. Crew asked, “What chick?” Legens said he didn’t know. “Why’s his car here?” Crew said. “That doesn’t even make sense.” She noticed that the woman with Legens looked withdrawn and wore a long-sleeve hoodie even though the temperature was hot. “I know she was covering up bruises,” Crew says now. The following day, April 27, Crew reported her son missing. A few hours later, she got a text from Legens. “I guess you’re the fuck-

ing one who called the police,” he wrote. “You know I don’t like cops.” Multiple residents of Lake Drive told the RFT that during the six weeks leading up to the shootout, detectives worked the neighborhood trying to find information about Jerry Crew. Andie Strange, who lived across the street from Legens, says deputies knocked on her door in late April asking her if she’d seen Crew. Around this same time, deputies spoke to Sarah’s landlord about the house’s security camera footage. Another neighbor says there are two ways in and out of Lake Drive, and he often saw deputies posted at both of them. Dana Crew also staked out Legens’ house, going to Lake Drive multiple times most days. “I would sit in my car down the road and call the police and tell them Anthony was outside working on this car,” she says. “‘This is the perfect time to question him,’ I’d say. Every time they went there, he would run in the house and wouldn’t answer the door.” Before long, Crew says, she was calling investigators daily to give them updates. If she saw Legens leave the property, she called sheriff’s deputies to tell them what kind of car he was driving and implore them to pull him over. (Multiple people, including a relative of Legens, say he had no driver’s license.) During one of Crew’s frequent trips to Legens’ house, she says, she made her way to the backyard and sifted through the fire pit, fearing that Legens might have burned some of her son’s clothes or other evidence. She peered into the back windows but couldn’t see anything inside. Detectives did find a video of Jerry Crew at a Cedar Hill gas station on April 21, the day before Dana Crew and Ashley Pound last heard from him. Sheriff’s investigators were able to identify multiple people in the video with him. However, when they tracked the people down and interviewed them, they “were reluctant to speak about Anthony for fear of repercussions,” according to Marshak. In general, the sheriff says, potential witnesses didn’t want to cooperate with them because they feared Legens. In an interview, Marshak says even though investigators “felt like something may have happened inside [Legens’ house], they lacked the proof and probable cause necessary to lawfully enter the residence. Law enforcement must establish probable cause based on facts, not hunches, and that’s a good thing for pro-

Tanya Gould grew up at Lake Adelle. | COURTESY DAISHA LIPP

tecting citizen rights.” About a week before Legens’ shootout with sheriff’s deputies, Dana Crew was doing her usual drive-through of Lake Drive when she saw a neighbor standing outside the house across the street from her nephew’s home. Crew parked and got out to ask the woman if she knew anything. The next thing Crew knew, Legens was there and in her face. “Get the fuck out of here!” he screamed, according to Dana. “Get the fuck out of here!” “No, I won’t,” she replied. “You did something to my kid. You know your mom and dad are looking down on you. They’re thinking, ‘What the hell have you done?’” “Just get out of here.” He waved his hands. “Get out of here.” Crew says she called 911 and several officers arrived, but nothing came of it. On the evening of May 28, she returned to Lake Adelle but found the neighborhood blocked off. Police redirected her to a nearby shopping center, the large parking lot of which was being used by the sheriff’s office as a staging area. Officers said she couldn’t be there either but that there would be a press conference when the situation on Lake Drive was resolved. News trickled out of Lake Adelle over the weekend. Marshak, the Jefferson County sheriff, told KMOV (Channel 4) that night that a deputy had been shot while serving a search warrant related to a missing person. The shooter, who would soon be identified as Legens, was dead. Then came word of another body found, but it wasn’t Jerry Crew. Dana Crew didn’t know the woman who had been killed, but she soon saw the photos of Tanya Gould that circulated online after the shootout. She realized she had seen her before on Lake Drive. Gould was the woman who was wearing a hoodie in the heat.

“ She brought happiness and joy and didn’t even realize it”

Jerry Crew was reported missing in April. | COURTESY JEFFERSON COUNTY SHERIFF

Tanya Gould grew up with her mom, dad and older brother on Lake Adelle. She’s remembered as having had a knack for fitting in with just about any crowd. She got along well with the “down home” country folks of Jefferson County as well as the people a bit rougher around the edges. She flourished for several years in the upper middle class St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, too. Curtis Bollinger, who has lived off and on at Lake Drive for a Continued on pg 19

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decade, says Gould mocked the local tweakers to their faces, but did so in a way so sly that they laughed along and didn’t know they were being made fun of. One time, outside Bollinger’s house, a shirtless Lake Adelle man who was high on meth climbed the utility pole carrying a screwdriver, intent on restarting his cable service. Gould happened to be driving by. She slowed and rolled down the window. “Hey, Charter guy,” she yelled. “The company can’t spring for a ladder?” Daisha Lipp, who now lives in St. Louis, met Gould fifteen years ago when Lipp transferred to Grandview High School in tiny Ware, Missouri. Lipp described the school as “real country” and “a total culture shock” compared to where she’d gone before. She felt like an outcast. But Gould went out of her way to welcome Lipp to the school, and the two quickly became best friends. Lipp describes Gould as a “total hippie” who loved painting and music. “She was one of those people that just anywhere she went, she brought happiness and joy,” Lipp says. “And she didn’t even realize it.” Gould’s joy was often in stark contrast to her family life, which was defined by adversity and loss. Lipp recalls a day in high school when she and Gould were driving down a country road and Gould stopped to pick up a homeless woman. The two girls gave her a ride and then the woman stole everything from the back of Gould’s car. It was only later that Lipp realized the woman was Gould’s mom, Cindy, who was dealing with drug addiction and had been kicked out of the family house. Later in high school, Lipp spent the night at Gould’s house, and when they woke up, Cindy made the family pancakes. She had gotten sober and rejoined the family. Tragedy first struck Gould’s family in 2007 when she, age seventeen at the time, and her parents went on a cruise. They came back to find her older brother Daniel dead of an overdose. It was Gould who discovered his body. Around 2010, when Gould was in her early twenties, she met Bob Wiggins, who was seven years older and whom Gould quickly identified as her kindred spirit. “I have never seen two people who are so happy and so in love,” Lipp says. About a year into their relationship, Gould and Wiggins moved to Kirkwood, where Gould

found work as an administrative assistant at a printing company. They got engaged. But in 2016, Wiggins died unexpectedly from a heart attack. Grief stricken, Gould moved back in with her mom and dad at Lake Adelle. Gould had always had a habit of belting out Janis Joplin songs, Lipp says, but after her fiancé’s death, “Me and Bobby McGee,” a tune Gould sang often, held a special importance to her. “She stayed positive still. She always tried to stay positive,” Lipp says. “But she just couldn’t find happiness. I think that Anthony saw that in her and used that.” In Lipp’s assessment, Legens took advantage of the fact that Gould wanted so badly to find the type of love she’d had with her former fiancé. Legens had been a friend of Gould’s brother and grew up across the lake from Gould, her backyard facing his on opposite shores. The lake is not particularly large, less than a tenth of a mile across, and on a quiet day, two people speaking loudly can have a conversation across the water. Gould and Legens hadn’t grown up friends, exactly, but they grew up knowing each other. At some point in 2019, the two started dating. Legens’ family had also endured a series of tragedies. In 2013, his father passed away in his early 50s from COPD. His mother, Donna, died in 2017 when an armored car struck a car she was riding in. Legens was in prison for assault and felonious restraint when his mother died, and by the time he was released, he had inherited the family’s house on Lake Adelle as well as a chunk of life insurance and settlement money from the accident. Lipp says she visited Legens’ house once when Gould first began dating him. “It was just scary,” she says. “He was a very scary person. Just passing him in the yard didn’t feel good.” After Gould moved in with Legens, she’d typically call Lipp on Facetime even though Gould knew Lipp hated video chat. Soon Lipp realized Legens was paranoid about Gould texting with other men, and using Facetime was her way to appease him. At some point in 2019, Legens went back to jail for about eight months. His criminal history is lengthy, and it’s hard to know for sure if, during this specific stretch, he was in jail on a pending DWI case or because he violated probation for the assault conviction. Either way, Gould took care of Legens’ house during that time. In December 2020, after Legens

was released, Gould sent messages to one of his relatives whom she knew from her time taking care of the house. The text messages included graphic photos of her beaten face. In the messages, she referred to Legens as “a woman beater, a liar, a thief.” She described his house as “scarier than anywhere else.” “I look like an alien,” she said in a text message, referring to the bruises. The relative encouraged Gould to go to the police, stay away from Legens and only go back to get her things from his house if she was accompanied by a police officer. Legens’ relative took Gould’s photos to the sheriff’s office. “The sheriff’s department knew exactly who [Legens] was. They knew everything about him,” the relative says. “I showed them the pictures of Tanya and I said, ‘I’m scared for her life. He held her hostage for three days. He beat her.’” She says deputies told her they couldn’t do anything unless Gould pressed charges. Then, four months later, in April, this same relative of Legens contacted Dana Crew after her son was reported missing. “I contacted [Crew] and I told her, ‘Listen, I got tons of text messages from this woman. I’m scared. I think something bad is gonna happen.’” In the early days of the investigation into Jerry Crew’s disappearance, the detectives began speaking with Cindy Gould, who told them her daughter had suffered a long history of domestic abuse at the hands of Legens. At some point in the weeks after Crew went missing, Gould briefly left Legens and stayed at her mother’s house on the other side of the lake. Deputies went to ask Gould about Crew. Gould said she wanted a lawyer. Crew’s family members are adamant they have no animosity toward Gould and understand she herself was a captive of Legens. Daisha Lipp, Gould’s friend of fifteen years, sums up the dynamic between Legens and Gould this way: “It’s just as a matter of survival when you’re in that situation. You’re not thinking about the big picture. You’re always just thinking, ‘What can I do right now to stay safe to keep him happy?’ You can’t think that far ahead, to actually get a plan to get away. It’s so difficult to even make that plan. You’re always thinking only about your very next move.” Lipp points out that the place Gould would have fled to, her mother’s, was just across the lake,

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easily within range of Legens’ terror. In fact, multiple neighbors told the RFT that Legens had at one point taken Cindy Gould hostage, destroyed her phone so she couldn’t call police and tried to cut the propane line to blow up the tank on her property. This April, Michael Gould, Tanya’s dad, died of cancer, leaving Cindy alone in the family’s house on Lake Adelle, increasingly concerned for her daughter’s wellbeing at Legens’ house across the water. Two and a half weeks after Jerry Crew went missing, Cindy stopped hearing from Tanya. On May 9, Cindy reported her daughter missing.

A foul odor and a body After six weeks of failing to get a warrant to enter Legens’ house, on May 28 the Jefferson County sheriff’s detectives finally got their probable cause. Legens had asked a man to come over to his house and help him with something. Once inside, the man noticed a foul smell permeating the residence. According to Marshak, Legens asked this man to help move a large plastic storage container and Legens said that inside the container was the body of Tanya Gould. The container was bulging, and Legens “was acting erratic and snorted a controlled substance in the witness’s presence.” The man fled the house, called police, and a search warrant was granted. After the man fled but before police arrived, neighbors say, Legens must have had an idea of what was to come. When he approached his neighbor Sarah and frantically asked her to come over to his house, neighbors say what he was really trying to do was procure “a hostage he could use as leverage.” A few hours later, as the shootout ensued, Legens called an attorney who had represented him in a number of cases previously. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for me,” Legens said. “You’re the best attorney I ever had.” “Thank you, I’ll talk to you next week,” the nonplussed attorney replied, only realizing later his client was calling to say goodbye. It is perhaps fitting that in his final hours Legens reached out to a criminal defense attorney. There of course was a time in his life before he became a criminal, but it seems no one in Cedar Hill can remember when. His criminal record over the past fifteen years is a mix of drug crimes, DWI busts, resisting arrest

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convictions and assaults. In 2015, Legens took hostage a Herculaneum man whose house Legens had been crashing at. He beat the man up, repeatedly threatened to kill him, forced him to shoot up heroin and accused him of posting videos online of the man having sex with Legens’ wife. Pound tells me Legens’ nickname around Jefferson County was “Evil.” For neighbors around Lake Drive, he was an erratic presence, the source of endless anecdotes. Cori Puryear, who grew up on Lake Adelle, says that years ago he saw police knock on Legens’ front door. Seconds later, Legens ran out the back, “naked except a ball cap covering his privates.” Julio, a landlord on Lake Drive, says Legens and his friends would be high on meth in the middle of the night, take a boat out onto the lake and “talk to the fish.” Andie Strange, the neighbor across the street from Legens, told me that things have been calmer on Lake Drive since Legens’ death, that she sees more kids riding their bicycles and running around on the street. Julio says he’s noticed things have been markedly quieter as well.

Where is Jerry Crew? Since the shootout on May 28, Legens’ house on Lake Drive has sat boarded up and empty, but he still casts a shadow on the neighborhood. Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents have seized much of Legens’ property, including cars and cellphones. “There’s a lot of nervous people around here, I guarantee you that,” says Julio, noting that whatever information was on Legens’ phone is now in federal law enforcement hands. Depending on who you talk to on Lake Drive, Legens was either a run-of-themill meth dealer who talked like he was some sort of kingpin or he was actually the biggest meth dealer around. Either way, neighbors say, a lot of people used to come by his house at all hours and didn’t stay long. The Crew family could care less about the information on Legens’ cellphones, unless of course it somehow helps them find Jerry, who is still a missing person. In addition to the gas station video of Crew taken on April 21, electronic records show that he last used his phone and EBT card on that day, too. “Investigators could

not find anyone that had seen Jerry after that date,” Marshak says. Even if Crew wasn’t murdered, his poor health would have demanded constant attention. He required two insulin shots a day. “One way or the other, Anthony killed him and he did something with him,” Paula Backof, Crew’s aunt, tells me. “But now it’s time to find him. Little Jerry couldn’t go anywhere because he needed medicine and he had a colostomy bag. When I went through Anthony’s house, I found his insulin, and I found his colostomy bags there.” Marshak says his department has an “incredible amount of data to search,” including a month’s worth of CCTV footage from the security system Legens had installed in his house. “We believe Jerry is deceased,” the sheriff says, “but currently have no actual proof he was murdered.” When the rest of the Legens family was allowed back inside the house they found two guns in a bucket on the kitchen table and, according to Legens’ relative, a bloody jersey that had belonged to Legens in the washer along with some dirty rags and a mophead. The washer was broken and the items inside hadn’t been cleaned. An unusual mixture of sand and dirt covered the rags (the family would later find a similar mixture of earth on the head of a shovel). One of Legens’ relatives carefully put the rags in a trash bag and tried to give the material to authorities. “Maybe this could help you figure out where Jerry is,” he said. “You watch too much TV,” they were told. Dana Crew feels the sheriff’s office has not done enough to find her son. Several other residents of Lake Adelle say they wish investigators had acted sooner. “There are good days and bad days,” Crew says. “Today I’m doing OK. But two days ago I could not hold it together, could not stop crying.” August 6 was Jerry’s 37th birthday, what would have been his first birthday out of prison with family in more than a decade. One member of the Legens-Crew family did stress that detectives “were extremely nice,” though it often seemed like “their hands were tied because of the system.” Marshak was adamant his department wanted to get into Legens’ house sooner, but they weren’t going to violate anyone’s constitutional rights in order to do so.

Hearts of gold There is now a second empty

Cindy and Tanya Gould. | COURTESY DAISHA LIPP house on Lake Adelle. In early July, a little more than a month after her daughter was killed, Cindy Gould — the final member of the Gould nuclear family — died in her home. She was found on the back porch, which looks out across the lake onto the house where Tanya was killed. According to the sheriff’s department, toxicology tests have not come back yet, but “narcotics involvement is suspected.” Throughout June, in the weeks after the shootout, Cindy Gould and Legens’ relative had exchanged a long series of text messages. Gould began, “I am receiving condolences & I wonder and think, ‘Is anyone holding [Anthony’s family] up?’ I pray for you, your family, Jerry’s Mom & rest of family. I have lost both my children. I understand the pain.” Legens’ relative replied, “I again can’t express how sorry I am for the pain [Legens] has caused to you and so many others. Please know I’m praying for you every day.” “The pain caused was never your fault, praying you don’t hang on to baggage of guilt or shame,” Gould wrote.

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“You truly are an amazing person,” Legens’ relative responded. “Thank you for being so loving and caring. I see where Tanya got her heart of gold.” Cindy Gould, 63 years old, once stole from her own daughter. Later, she got up early to make her daughter and her daughter’s friend pancakes. She had lost her son and husband before losing Tanya. Gould had less than a month to live when she wrote back to the relative of her daughter’s killer: “You are pretty amazing yourself hon! Any tiny bit of wisdom I may have comes only from making lots of my own mistakes lol. I wish you all the best, in everything. How proud your mom must be...To see what a wonderful person you are despite all the challenges you’ve had. Sweet dreams.” Gould punctuated the final text with three emoji: a star, a crescent moon and a tiny box dotted with light which is meant to represent the Milky Way. n Ryan Krull is a freelance journalist and assistant teaching professor in the department of communication and media at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

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CAFE

[REVIEW]

Putting on the Ritz Casa Don Alfonso brings the Amalfi Coast to St. Louis with stunning Italian cuisine Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Casa Don Alfonso 100 Carondelet Plaza (inside the RitzCarlton), Clayton; 314-719-1496. A la carte breakfast Tues.-Sat. 6:30-10 a.m.; breakfast buffet Sat. 6:30-10 a.m. and Sun. 6:30 a.m.-1 p.m.; lunch Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner Tues.-Thurs. 5-9 p.m. and Fri.-Sat. 5-10 p.m. (Closed Mondays.)

itting at a gleaming, multicolored-marble-topped table underneath blown-glass wisteria leaves while you gaze into the stunning copperand-hand-painted-tile kitchen, it’s hard to imagine that anything at Casa Don Alfonso could equal the splendor of the space itself. The restaurant is a masterpiece, so glorious it seems less like it was appointed by an interior design firm than cast down from above — at times, you almost think you hear the heavenly hosts singing over the soft Italian music that gently wafts through the air. But then, just when you think nothing could be any more beautiful than the environs, your server walks up to the table with a small copper pot and a twinkle in her eye. “Are you ready for this?” she asks as she places her hand on the lid and gently lifts it to reveal the contents. There, a layer of stillbubbling white cheese, cooked to the point that it’s punctuated with golden brown speckles, beckons you to pierce it to get to what’s below. Handmade maccheroni noodles and hunks of ham bob in rich bechamel; as you scoop up a bite, your fork pulls up through the cheesy topping, which then clings to the noodle and adds an extra bit of decadence. It’s the sort of dish you know is going to be excellent before it even reaches your mouth, but once it does, you receive confirmation beyond your

Casa Don Alfonso impresses with quality ingredients expertly prepared, such as the classical cod and potato veloute. | MABEL SUEN wildest imagination. Much like the gorgeous room, it takes your breath away. You’d expect nothing less from Casa Don Alfonso, the highlybuzzed-about restaurant that opened inside of the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton this March. To call this a hotel restaurant is to call the Hope Diamond a piece of rock. Casa Don Alfonso is a monumental culinary moment for St. Louis, thanks to its impressive pedigree that goes back several generations to the village of Sant’Agata on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. There, Don Alfonso 1890 has sat for more than 100 years under the ownership of the Iaccarino family, operating as both a boutique hotel and restaurant that holds two Michelin stars. Over the years, the Don Alfonso 1890 brand has expanded its reach to include a few different iterations around the globe, with St. Louis serving as the first U.S. outpost of the storied restaurant. The Don Alfonso majesty has not been diluted by its trip across the Atlantic. Short only of importing the Tyrrhenian Sea itself to St. Louis, the design team behind Casa Don Alfonso has impeccably translated the coastal, southern Italian experience to its digs in-

side the Ritz-Carlton. Though impossibly elegant, the restaurant is not at all stuffy; with the light, airy feel of a seaside villa, Casa Don Alfonso has a way of making you feel comfortable even in the midst of such luxurious beauty. Lemon trees, hand-painted Italian-style tilework on the kitchen walls and pastel-hued paintings of fruits and flowers evoke the sort of ease you’d feel sipping aperitivo on an outdoor terrace in Sant’Agata. Though you’d have an excuse to get dressed up if you wanted to do so, you would still feel comfortable walking into Casa Don Alfonso in a more relaxed ensemble. This welcoming feel comes as much from the hospitality as it does from the airy design. This is the Ritz-Carlton, of course, so you will feel well-tended-to from the moment you walk in the front door until the second you depart. Service is informative but not formal, kind but not obsequious. You’ll get your water glasses filled after you take two sips, but you don’t feel the pressure of your waiter standing along a wall staring at you to do so. The food also captures this mix of elegance and comfort. Like the maccheroni — which is an old

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Iaccarino family recipe — dishes are simple and unfussy, and shine because of the quality of ingredients and care taken in preparing them. Beef carpaccio, for instance, is ruby red and sliced so paperthin you can almost see through it. Simply garnished with arugula and a grain mustard aioli, it’s perfection of the form. Burrata, too, is outstanding and not at all overdone. The baseball-sized sphere of cream-filled mozzarella oozes over its bed of arugula, cherry tomatoes and oregano. Verdant pesto pairs with the peppery greens to break up the burrata’s richness. Though billed as a first course, the eggplant parmesan is a worthy main attraction. Slices of the vegetable serve as sponges for mouthwatering tomato sauce and olive oil, while gooey cheese binds the entire concoction together. It’s matched in splendor by Grandma’s Ziti, a rustic pasta made with blistered cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced cloves of garlic, chili peppers and parsley. Anchovies from the Amalfi Coast add a subtle ocean backbeat to this bright dish. Casa Don Alfonso’s pizzas are as quintessentially Neapolitan as what you’d find in a Campanian

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pizzeria. The sourdough crust is so soft it’s like a leopard-spotted pillow, while the flat interior serves as a base for ultra-fresh toppings. The classic margherita pairs fior di latte cheese with vibrant tomato sauce and fresh basil; a Parma ham version is an excellent sauce-less pie that features prosciutto, arugula and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Main courses are also thrilling. A rack of Colorado lamb, flawlessly cooked to the requested mediumrare, sits atop fresh herbs; when the lamb is pressed into them, it is infused with their flavor, which is a refreshing counter to the little bit of fat along the side of the meat. The star of the dish is the potatoes, however; the golden slivers, paired with baked onions, are roasted so beautifully, their crisp, olive-oilsoaked exterior and creamy inside bring a tear to the eye. It’s like the Ferrari version of a French fry. Cod, too, dazzles from flawless execution — the fish skin is crisped up like a chip, while the flesh remains succulent — and the beautifully complementary flavors of olives, tomatoes and fennel. If you close your eyes, you can almost

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The copper-and-hand-painted-tile kitchen of Casa Don Alfonso is just one aspect of a space that is gorgeous yet comforting. | MABEL SUEN hear the sea lapping against the cliffs in the distance. To cap off the meal, Casa Don Alfonso offers several traditional Italian desserts, including its wonderful interpretation of tiramisu, a custard-like espresso and mascarpone concoction crowned with a thin chocolate ring with the words “Casa Don Alfonso” on it. Its riff on an ice cream cone

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is both whimsical and delicious. Here, a cone made from phyllo dough is filled with silken cinnamon pastry cream and garnished with an amarena cherry. As delicious as they are, the only real thing you need to cap off your experience at Casa Don Alfonso is a chilled glass of limoncello. As you sip in the lemony nectar, you can’t help but drift off to visions of

the sun setting over an azure sea framed by vines of magenta-hued bougainvillea. Casa Don Alfonso may not be able to physically bring you to that magical Amalfi escape, but it certainly brings it to you.

Casa Don Alfonso Margherita pizza ....................................... $16 Maccheroni gratin .................................... $18 Classical cod and potato veloute............. $34

SHORT ORDERS

[ S T. L O U I S S TA N D A R D S ]

Sweet Spot For nearly 70 years, Donut DriveIn has been making St. Louis history, one sweet treat at a time Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

hen Kevin McKernan thinks back on his happiest childhood memories, the ones involving Donut Drive-In stand out the most vividly. On certain weekdays, he and his mom would head to the south-city doughnut shop — him rolling up on his big wheel — grab a couple of vanilla long johns and head to the nearby Francis Park for some quality time. It was such a simple outing, but it felt so special. “I remember going up there with my mom and my dog after kindergarten,” McKernan recalls. “I had other siblings, but they were older and in school all day, so this was the time I had my mom all to myself. It’s one of my happiest memories. Everyone who grew up in St. Louis has their own little doughnut shop, and that was mine.” A few decades later, McKernan can’t believe he is now the one in charge of keeping those memories alive at such a beloved institution. Since last year, he’s been the owner of the St. Louis Hills mainstay, where he sees himself as more of a steward than a proprietor of the 68-year-old shop. It’s a role he never thought he’d assume. A teacher by trade, McKernan got interested in business around the time he opened the Improv Shop in the Grove in 2009. That dip into entrepreneurship piqued his interest in other opportunities, and he would regularly check business brokerage sites to see what was out there. One day, he came across a posting that he assumed was for Donut Drive-In, and he knew he had to act. “I thought, ‘Oh my god, that’s Donut Drive-In; I can’t let anything happen to Donut Drive-In.’ It’s just too big of an institution,” McKernan says. “I started talking to my wife to see if we could swing

The Donut Drive-In sign has been a beacon for St. Louis for decades. | ANDY PAULISSEN

The staff keeps traditions of nearly seven decades going. | ANDY PAULISSEN

The coffee is on. | ANDY PAULISSEN

lost over the years. What McKernan does know — and what he stresses is passed down by oral tradition and not confirmed by any records he’s come across — is that the shop was built in 1953 by Wachter, Inc., a construction company that built several of the little white doughnut shops scattered around the city. From what McKernan has gathered, the owner of Wachter left the shop to his daughter, who was married to a man named John Harter; to the best of

his knowledge, the two of them ran it for a while before selling it at some point to Thomas Charleville, then-owner of Thomas Coffee Company. Charleville was at the helm until 1996, when he sold it to the Schwartz family, who ran several St. Louis-area Dunkin’ Donuts and operated Donut Drive-In until selling it to McKernan last year. “To me, swooping something up a year ago is less cool than the people who have dedicated years

it to make sure it keeps going. We met the owner, who was selling it because he was retiring, and told him that we wouldn’t change it.” McKernan has stayed true to his word, keeping everything exactly as it’s always been at the nearly seven-decades-old shop and staying out of the way of the longtime employees who serve as a living history of the place. At this point, that’s the best window into its past he has, since much of Donut Drive-In’s origin story has gotten

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Continued on pg 26

RIVERFRONT TIMES

DONUT DRIVE-IN Continued from pg 25

of their lives to that place that know what they are doing,” McKernan says. “My piece is so much smaller than the people who run the place and work hard. It’s a 600-square-foot building; everything is done in-house, and it’s tough. It’s a lot of work, and the people who’ve worked there for decades are happy and still going along for the ride with me. I’m so thankful for that, because they are the rock stars.” McKernan is clear that the longtime employees who’ve stuck with Donut Drive-In through the years are the key to its success. However, he also believes that the place wouldn’t be what it is without its outstanding namesake product, which, to his knowledge, hasn’t changed at all since the shop opened nearly seven decades ago. The recipes remain the same, and the bakers still hand-cut all of the doughnuts — a necessary technique because the tiny workspace precludes mechanical equipment. Those two factors, combined with

[OPENINGS]

City Foodery The highly anticipated food hall at City Foundry is now open Written by

HOLDEN HINDES

ollowing much anticipation, the Food Hall at City Foundry is now open. Situated in Midtown between Cortex and Saint Louis University — where much of the patronage is expected to come from — it’s one of several projects inside the expansive, mixed-use development. Currently, eleven restaurants are open for business, with more set to open soon. The space itself is high-ceilinged and industrial, but far from sterile. Plantwrapped columns rise from the centers of tables, and patches of glass reveal spots of colorful brickwork along the concrete floor. Plus, each restaurant brings its own character. Clean, artsy and minimalist; brassy and industrial; a sign full of lightbulbs that says “WAFFLES”; an eight-foot-tall painting in comic-book style of a bright red dragon holding several tacos — it’s all there. That individual character does not just

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All your favorites — and probably your grandparents’ favorites — are still here. | ANDY PAULISSEN the impressive skill of the bakers, mean the doughnuts are consistent, so that customers can count on the same quality time and again. But for McKernan, the unquantifiable things make Donut DriveIn so special. Whether it’s putting smiley faces on the long johns for kids on the weekends or watching parents walk away hand in hand with their little ones, he and his

apply to the decor. Assorted cuisines are represented in the restaurants, some for the first time and some that St. Louisians will be familiar with. Amy Guo and Dan Jensen, known for their food truck Sando Shack, finally have the restaurant they came to St. Louis to open — Hello Poke — which serves poke bowls. Another established brand, Turmeric, follows the success of its Delmar Loop location with a “Street Style” spinoff at the Food Hall, serving more casual fare inspired by Indian street food. Another well-known spot is the beloved Kalbi Taco Shack, formerly of Cherokee Street, which has relocated to the Food Hall. Owner Sue Wong Shackelford is excited about moving into the new space. “It’s better late than never,” she says with a smile, nodding to the delays the project has faced, including those caused by COVID-19. Now, though, she is focused on being part of building such an exciting piece of the city’s food scene. She appreciates the new community as well. “I love being a part of the whole group of kitchens, and knowing the other chefs,” Wong Shackelford says. “Everybody gets along, we’re all friendly, helping each other — that’s what it’s all about.” Other food options include Buenos Aires Cafe, Chez Ali and Subdivision, a former pandemic-inspired sandwich pop-up from the owners of the Bellwether and Polite Society. For breakfast (or any time one wants breakfast food), Press Waffle Co. provides Belgian waffles with ex-

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team see their place at the shop as more than a job; they feel that they are preserving a little piece of St. Louis history — one apple fritter at a time. “We can never make enough of those apple fritters, and it’s cool to have a thing that people are excited about,” says McKernan. “This may sound ridiculous, but when people get an apple

Some tools of the trade. | ANDY PAULISSEN fritter, they are so authentically happy. It’s just a random thing in someone’s day, but you can tell it means something. It’s just a little thing and a treat, but when they get it, you can tell what it means to them. It’s pretty cool to be part of that.” n

The massive project in Midtown was worth the wait. | HOLDEN HINDES travagant toppings from s’mores to fried chicken, while Good Day — another project by the Bellwether and Polite Society crew — brings sweet and savory crepes to the table. Dessert can be found at Patty’s Cheesecakes or Poptimism, which serves unique flavors of frozen treats, including coffee custard and pomegranate goat cheese popsicles. Drawing the whole space together is the central Kitchen Bar, operated by Gerard Craft’s prolific Niche Food Group, known for Pastaria, Brasserie and more. Craft is also the culinary director of the

Food Hall, curating the restaurants that are present and deciding on future possibilities. Craft has suggested in the past that his vision for the Food Hall goes beyond serving food — farmers, butchers, and potters who make plates and bowls may have a place in the Food Hall one day. The Food Hall aims to offer a great dining option for indecisive groups or those with differing tastes. With its intriguing green-industrial space and so many options, there will surely be something for everyone. n

[FOOD NEWS]

Botanica Coming Soon to Former Llywelyn’s Space Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

n the heels of Six Mile Bridge’s announcement last week that chef Ben Welch would be joining its team, the brewery has delivered even bigger news: Owners Ryan and Lindsay Sherring are opening a new restaurant in Wildwood called Botanica (2490 Taylor Road, Wildwood), and they have tapped Welch as its executive chef. Described as a lively, inviting space consisting of a 13,000-square-foot dining room, lush patio and outdoor bar, Botanica will occupy the former Llywelyn’s Pub location in Wildwood Town Center. Though no firm date has been set, the restaurant is slated to open sometime this fall. According to Ryan Sherring, he and Lindsay have dreamed of opening a restaurant like Botanica for quite some time, but those plans gradually heated up over the past five years. During that time, the husband-and-wife team had been doing

[OPENINGS]

DD Mau Opens Second Location in Webster Groves Written by

HOLDEN HINDES

fter over a year of searching for a space to expand her popular fastcasual Vietnamese restaurant, DD Mau (20 Allen Avenue, Webster Groves; 314-926-0900), owner Julie Truong has found a home in Webster Groves. The new location opened on July 14 in Old Webster and features a menu that matches that of the original Maryland Heights shop, with the addition of expanded dessert options and a forthcoming line of ice creams made in-house. “I walked around Webster just to eat, and I fell in love with the neighborhood,” Truong says. She found the space which would become the second location of DD Mau not long after that initial experience with the area. Its outdoor patio, ample parking, large windows and separate section from which Truong plans to sell her ice cream made the choice easy. “You couldn’t say no,” she says.

Chef Ben Welch’s menu of dishes fuses Italian and Southern U.S. cuisine. | COURTESY BOTANICA Six Mile Bridge special events at Llywelyn’s and realized that the area was in need of the sort of community gathering place they had always wanted to create. Because Lindsay grew up in Wildwood and her parents still live there, the Sherrings spend a good amount of time in the area and felt that they were well positioned to contribute to the community as hospitality professionals. When the Llywelyn’s space became available, they knew they had their opportunity to do that. “As we started building up [Six Mile

The new DD Mau is Truong’s latest “yes” to the restaurant business. A former fashion industry professional, Truong left a successful job in Chicago to return to her hometown of St. Louis to pursue her dreams of owning her own eatery. She succeeded in that vision, opening the Maryland Heights storefront three years ago. The response exceeded her expectations and made her realize she should think about opening a second outlet. Fans of the original location will be pleased to see their familiar favorites at the new DD Mau. The menu hosts a wide variety of customizable options, including banh mi, bao, rice bowls, salad bowls, tacos and more. Each comes with a choice of nearly a dozen different meat and plant-based proteins, such as steak, pork, duck or vegan shrimp. Guests can also choose from a variety of sauces and condiments to top their dishes, including spicy peanut, sweet chili, hoisin or vegan Vietnamese vinegar. Truong’s personal recommendations are the vermicelli bowl — rice noodles, veggies and a choice of protein — and the pho with the combo protein option that consists of a mix of steak, brisket and meatballs. Of the vegan and vegetarian options, Truong highlights the tofu. “People are in love with the tofu; it’s very crispy and it complements every single dish,” Truong says, also noting that the shrimp spring rolls are not to be overlooked either thanks to their

Bridge], we realized there were parts missing,” Ryan Sherring says. “We talked about expanding into neighborhoods where we don’t have a strong presence, and Wildwood has been on that radar for a few years. We could’ve done a Six Mile Bridge out there, but we wanted to be creative and create new beers, new food and new spaces.” Botanica takes its aesthetic inspiration from Wildwood’s natural beauty; the owners cite the nearby Rockwood Reservation and Babler State Park as

jumping-off points for the design, fusing natural and modern elements to create the space. Sherring describes Botanica as modern and chic, with white walls and pop art — filled with contrasting colors. As for the menu, Welch has created dishes that blend Italian cuisine and the American South, drawing upon his love for those two food traditions and adding in a touch of the barbecue prowess that he’s become known for. “My goal for Botanica is to explore the marriage of traditional ingredients and recipes from two of the world’s best food cultures: Italian and the Southern United States,” Welch says in a press release. “You’ll find little touches of Southern cooking on the menu with the ingredients featured on pizzas, pastas, and more. The dishes will change seasonally, but my signature gnocchi will always be on the menu.” Though he will not give specifics, Sherring teases that Botanica is just Phase Two in a sequence of plans he, his wife and Welch have in the works, and they are excited to bring them to life together over the next few years. “For us, this is about bringing people together,” Sherring says. “That’s been our philosophy since Day One, and this is another way for us to be a part of the community. There’s no better way to build that than grabbing a beer together or breaking bread together.” n

Julie Truong fell in love with Old Webster and soon found a spot for a second DD Mau. | MABEL SUEN rice paper wraps, veggie and vermicelli noodles, and cooking technique that makes the shrimp shine. “Our shrimp is not blanched; it’s marinated and then grilled, so the flavor really comes out.” Truong is grateful to the residents of Webster Groves, nearby Kirkwood and even some regulars who frequented the Maryland Heights location for a successful opening. Customers knew what to expect from DD Mau, and Truong set high expectations for herself. She notes that opening the first one was a little different, because she didn’t know what to expect, but launching the second spot had the pressure of her guests’ expectations. That she’s been able to meet them so far has been energizing.

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Happy to invest that energy into her two existing locations, what Truong can say no to, at least for now, is the prospect of a third DD Mau. With an upcoming wedding and plans to have kids, she thinks it’s best to focus on what she already has. “There’ll just be a lot on my plate,” she says. “As of now, no. A firm no. Maybe after kids.” For now, though, fans of the original DD Mau can find their favorites in Webster Groves and the original Maryland Heights spot — and for anyone who has not been, Truong is excited to make new regulars. “Just come on over,” Truong says. “We’re always there!” n

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REEFERFRONT TIMES

New Cannabis Vape Lets You ‘Ratio’ Yourself Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

hen Missouri’s first cannabis dispensaries opened in October, marijuana patients had few options — mostly, it involved buying grams of actual cannabis flower, grinding up the nugs, and then rolling the odorific plant matter into joints or packing it into pipes. But this year, cannabis vapes have increasingly begun to show up on dispensary menus. These products, which use battery-powered systems to heat THC oil and produce vapor, comprise their own ecosystem of accessories, flavors and models — and for Matt LaBrier, co-founder and COO of Proper Cannabis, the promise of his company’s new single-use vape product, the Ratio, comes down to one thing: consistency. “We wanted people to experience a heightened level of control,” he explains. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen hit a vape pen for ten seconds, wondering if they’re getting anything, and then blow out a huge cloud of vapor and be like, ‘Oh, I was hitting it the whole time.’” Indeed, using a vape pen, especially for the first time, can be a tricky business for new patients and even experienced cannabis users. The high potency of the cartridges means that a user who’s just looking for a moderate mood lift can find themselves out of their depth and possibly glued to the couch. The Ratio line of vapes addresses this challenge with a “dose controlled” system that triggers a brief physical vibration through the mouthpiece to signal that you’ve taken a single “dose.” (A light on the bottom of the battery also activates when the device is “hitting.”) In a test, the Ratio’s vibration works exactly as advertised. The

The “Active” model of Ratio cannabis vapes features a 20:1 ratio of THC and CBD. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI mouth-buzz is powerful enough to feel through the lips, but not so overpowered as to rattle your face while you’re trying to smoke. The feedback provides a moment to gauge the effect without the trial-and-error guesswork that can leave one stranded in the dreaded Too High Zone. The technology behind the hardware is “custom designed,” says LaBrier, who adds that the vape itself will automatically turn off after ten seconds — a further safeguard for a product designed with medical patients in mind. That’s also where the “ratios” of the Ratio come in: The product line features five combinations of THC and CBD, uniting the psychoactive and non-psychoactive parts of the plant into a blend to yield a particular result. The most THC-heavy blend, called “Active,” rolls with a THCto-CBD ratio of 20:1, or, by quantity, 100mg THC to 5mg CBD. From there, patients can try a 5:1 ratio (“Focus”) or go for an even split with 1:1 (“Balance”). On the other side of the spectrum, users looking for CBDheavier products can opt for a THC-to-CBD ratio of 1:5 (“Relax”), or one with a very low level of THC, a 5:100 Ratio model called

“Soothe.” The ratios themselves were inspired by clinical research done in Israel, where LaBrier says doctors have sought to connect specific ailments to treatments based on ratios of THC and CBD. When it comes to the actual weed used in the Ratio line, LaBrier says the process involves a sixto-eight-week process, from harvesting and treating the cannabis, “breaking the plant down” into its constituent parts, and then combining those parts to reach the targeted ratio. The goal, he adds, isn’t a matter of producing a particular strain, but a specific effect. It means, “If you bought that red pen, and in three months you bought another in Kansas City, it would treat you the same.” The absence of specific strains may irk some cannabis aficionados, though for those with more refined taste, Proper Cannabis has also rolled out an “Alien Rock Candy” live resin cartridge compatible with vape batteries designed for the widely used “510 thread” cartridges. (As a general note, if you’re buying a cartridge but not sure if you have the correct battery, figure that out before the purchase, lest you find yourself with a

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$60-$80 product you can’t use.) The Ratio removes some of that complexity by being entirely selfcontained, with the only hardware feature a micro-USB charging port on the bottom. Ratio’s cartridge holds 0.3 grams of the THC/CBD oil mix that cannot be removed or replaced. For some customers, LaBrier adds, the lack of exotic strain names and accessory options is actually a boon to their cannabis use. “An average consumer doesn’t know what ‘Bubba Kush’ or ‘Alien Rock Candy’ will do for them,” he points out. “We just want to give people control over their experience, whether that means you’re treating a specific medical issue, or if it just means you don’t want to smoke something that’s going to make you hyper before you go to bed or that’s going to make you tired before you go start your day. It’s all about giving somebody a consistent experience.” The Ratio line of vapes is currently priced at $45 (not including tax) and available at Proper Cannabis locations in south St. Louis County (7417 South Lindbergh Boulevard, 314-328-0446) and Warrenton (711 North State Highway 47, 636-255-8943). n

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CULTURE [ VA C C I N E S ]

Hit Me With Your Best Shot A growing list of St. Louis-area music venues will require proof of vaccination, fueled by demand from artists and fans alike Written by

DANIEL HILL

s the delta variant of COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the state, more and more St. Louis-area music venues are requiring proof of vaccination or a recent negative test in order to attend their shows. The Factory, the newly opened 3,000-capacity venue in Chesterfield, is just the latest to announce the policy. According to a press release Monday afternoon, the venue will require either proof of vaccination in the form of a physical copy of the vaccine card or a photo on a mobile phone, or a negative COVID-19 PCR test from within 48 hours of showtime. “Live music is back,” reads a portion of the statement. “Let’s keep it that way.” That puts the Factory on a growing list of local music venues who will enforce similar rules. The Pageant, Delmar Hall, Off Broadway, the Sinkhole, Red Flag, Blue Strawberry, Joe’s Cafe and Heavy Anchor have all announced similar policies in recent days. According to Robert McClimans, talent buyer for the Pageant, Delmar Hall and Off Broadway, the decision to require vaccinations for the venues under his purview came about as a direct result of demand from the artists and bands themselves. “We were starting to get overwhelmed by artists asking us to come up with a policy of some sort,” he explains. “And then once we hit a point where we’re like, ‘Well, we’re already going to go down this path for X number of

Planning to see the Roots at the Factory in September? Then you better be planning on getting the vaccine. | VIA PRESS HERE PRODUCTIONS shows — we should just go all in.’ And once we got to that point, it was just figuring out what the best path forward was.” When asked which artists were asking about such a policy, McClimans says simply, “Almost everybody.” That tracks with recent developments regarding several nationally touring acts. Limp Bizkit canceled its August tour just last week, and Stevie Nicks canceled all of the rest of her shows for the year, both acts citing COVID concerns. Counting Crows recently postponed a string of shows when one of the members of its touring party contracted the virus, and Lynyrd

Skynyrd canceled its tour outright after guitarist Rickey Medlocke tested positive. Jason Isbell recently nixed a Houston date, stating that the venue where the show was scheduled “was not willing to comply with the band’s updated health and safety standards.” During an appearance on MSNBC, Isbell laid the blame at the feet of politicians pandering to their bases. “The problem is they’re just getting so much pushback from some of the governors of certain states who want to kowtow to their political base, and try to make people think their freedom is being encroached upon,” Isbell says of

[ WAT E R ]

In the Drink Under the Deep Brew Sea brings alcohol and aquatic life to Union Station on Thursday Written by

JENNA JONES

omeone get the Little Mermaid on the shell phone, St. Louis Union Station is headed under the sea. This Thursday, August 19, Union Station is hosting another edition of its Under The Deep Brew Sea after-hours event at the St. Louis Aquarium (201 South 18th

The St. Louis Aquarium is hosting Under the Deep Brew Sea this week. | COURTESY ST. LOUIS UNION STATION Street). From 6 to 9 p.m., attendees over the age of 21 can enjoy different Anheus-

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the venues. “I’m all for freedom but I think if you’re dead, you don’t have any freedoms at all. So it’s probably important to stay alive before you start questioning your liberty.” Asked if he’s been seeing many cancellations on his end, McClimans says it hasn’t really been an issue so far — perhaps thanks directly to the mandate the venue has put in place. “No we haven’t. We haven’t really gotten that yet,” he says. “And hopefully we don’t.” Considering the hyper-politicized nature of the pandemic in this country, many businesses who’ve announced similar measures have experienced considerable fallout online from anti-vaxers decrying the alleged “tyranny” of it all. But for McClimans’ venues, the solution to that problem was simple: They simply disabled commenting for the post announcing the policy. “Nobody’s going to convince each other, and we don’t need people just calling everybody every terrible name in the world just because we want people to take the most basic precautions,” McClimans says. And for the most part, he says, fans and artists alike have greeted the development with gratitude. “By and large, the vast, vast majority have been like, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’” he says. “And, you know, if us doing this gets anybody to get shots, then we’ve done our part.” n er-Busch beverages. Eight different beers ranging from Shock Top Zest to the classic Bud Light are available to sample. The touch pools will be open in order to offer attendees a hands-on experience. Along with the touch pools, other fish will be available to gaze at with wonder. Shark Canyon will also be available for viewing, just in case Shark Week wasn’t enough to tide you over last month. Tickets are $35 with discounts offered for aquarium passholders. Guests can add a spin on the St. Louis Wheel for an extra $10. A hotel package beginning at $105 is also up for grabs, which includes two tickets to the event and a one night stay at St. Louis Union Station Hotel. Masks will be required when not drinking and social distancing is also in practice. The event is operating at reduced capacity. General admission tickets can be purchased at stlouisaquarium.com. n

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AUGUST 18-24, 2021

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SAVAGE LOVE GAME OVER BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: Is it ever ok to stop being GGG? I’ve been with my husband for 26 years. Shortly after we got together, my husband disclosed a major kink: MFM threesomes. I was young and a virgin and up for anything then, but we didn’t start hooking up with other men until around year six of our relationship. Over the last twenty years we’ve been on-and-off with this. We had children, we took a break, and we found the time to go wild now and then. My husband’s interests expanded into dominance play — owning me and sharing me — but I’m in my late forties now and my husband is in his fifties. I’m approaching menopause and my sex drive has decreased. There were also instances where I was basically sexually assaulted — or at the very least, my boundaries were not respected on more than one occasion. Long story short, I want to be done being kinky. I want my body to be mine. My husband and I have been having other marital problems, and he thinks my rejection of his kinkiness is a rejection of him. I’ve told him I’m still interested in sex, I’m just tired of being GGG. He says he isn’t interested in vanilla sex with me because he is “disappointed.” When I told him to outsource his kink, he said, “Good luck finding that as a married man.” Am I ever allowed to retire from his kink? Am I the asshole here? My Years Being Obedient Done First and most importantly, if your husband stood by and did nothing while your boundaries were violated in front of him — or if he violated your boundaries himself — then there’s an asshole in this marriage, MYBOD, and it ain’t you. But seeing as you’re still with your husband and still interested in having vanilla sex with him, I’m gonna assume your husband recognized how he failed you on those occasions when you were violated and that he’s shown remorse, apologized specifically and profusely, and made whatever changes he needed to make for you to feel safe with him. If

he hasn’t done all of those things, you should leave him. Zooming out for new readers: GGG stands for “good, giving, game.” As in, “good in bed, giving of pleasure, and game for anything — within reason.” I believe we should be GGG for our partners and that our partners should be GGG for us. Being GGG, however, does not mean doing whatever your partner wants. That’s why the final G has always come with that italicized-for-emphasis qualifier: “game for anything — within reason.” Being game means recognizing your partner will have sexual interests that you don’t share and being up for giving those things a try — so long as they’re reasonable. We all get to decide for ourselves what may or may not be reasonable. Back to you, MYBOD. A kink for MMF threesomes is not a thing for feet or light spanking. It’s a big ask. And if your husband knew he needed MMF threesomes to feel sexually fulfilled, sharing that when he did — early in the relationship — was the right thing for him to do. He laid his kink cards on the table before you got married, before you had kids, and when you could easily walk away. You didn’t walk away. You told him you were open to the idea — you told him you were one of those rare “up for anything” virgins — and he didn’t rush you into anything. Six years went by before you had your first threesome. And while MMF threesomes probably aren’t something you would’ve sought out on your own, MYBOD, I’m hoping you enjoyed some of them — you know, the ones that didn’t involve boundary violations so egregious that you experienced them not as sexual adventures you were having with your husband, but as sexual assaults your husband participated in and Jesus Fucking Christ on the Cross. In all honesty, MYBOD, I’m having a hard time getting past those boundary violations. But seeing as you got past them — seeing as you’re still interested in being with your husband — I’m going to continue to assume he somehow made things right and advise you accordingly. If he didn’t make things right, disregard my advice and divorce the motherfucker already. Alright, you asked me if you can stop being GGG, MYBOD, and my

answer is no. I think you should continue being GGG. That doesn’t mean you have to continue having MMF threesomes with your husband. You can decide you’re done with that while still being GGG in other ways. You’re also allowed to be done with Dom/sub play. (Your husband never owned you and your body was never his to share. That was naughty dirty talk you indulged in, not a deed of sale you have to honor.) And giving your partner permission to get a specific sexual need met elsewhere is one way a person can be GGG. There’s this need, this kink of his, that’s important to him and you met that need for a long time but can’t meet it anymore. But you’re good enough, giving enough and game enough to give him your blessing to get his kink on with other people. So you’re being GGG in a different way now. And just as you’re not obligated to have kinky sex with your husband, AITA, your husband is not obligated to have vanilla sex with you. If you think he’s withholding sex right now because he’d disappointed, well, maybe you can see how it might be disappointing and give him a little time to get over it. But if you think he’s withholding sex to manipulate you into having threesomes again, AITA, that’s a deeply shitty thing to do and you should leave him. P.S. Please show this to your husband, MYBOD: Dude. GET OVER YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT ALREADY. You had good run. I hope you’re grateful and found some way to make up for boundary violations. Assuming you did: The sooner you stop fucking sulking and start fucking looking, the sooner you’ll find couples seeking male thirds. You know those couples are out there because you and your wife used to be one of those couples. Far from being a stumbling block, being married is a selling point for many couples seeking thirds. (A married or partnered man is seen as less threatening for obvious reasons.) And I don’t know if you’ve been online recently, but hot daddies are very much in demand these days, and dominant daddies get a lot of play. Your wife isn’t taking your kink from you. She’s telling you to get this need met elsewhere. Stop being a baby and an ingrate. Jesus!

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Hey, Dan: I’m freshly out of a relationship and new to Grindr and I’m realizing that for me to get hard, I need slow kissing, I need to vibe to music and especially need a soft touch on my dick. Too many guys pull on it with no lube and that makes me go soft. Slowly kissing to a chill song is my jam. Also, my dick is sensitive near the bottom of the shaft and I need wet fingers to go all the way down to the base of my dick in order to come. Is there a quicker way to describe this? Is low-on-the-shaft stimulation called something? Is there a term for this or a name for me? Or do I need to send a paragraph to all the tricks I message? Very Into Being Erect That’s called the way you like it, VIBE. Alternately, it’s called what works for you, what makes your dick hard and what gets you off. The precise way you like it — the kissing that works for you, the music that puts you in the mood, the spot on your dick that puts you over the edge — doesn’t have a name, VIBE, and it doesn’t need one. But who knows? By this time next week, the way you like it could have a name and a pride flag and a bunch of online cis het allies ready to shout down anyone who isn’t convinced the slow-kissme-vibe-to-chill-music-touch-thebase-of-my-lubed-up-cock community needed a name and its own float in the pride parade. But just as you don’t really need a pride flag, VIBE, you don’t need to send a FAQ and an NDA to each potential trick you message. All you gotta do is tell the guy who shows up that you’re into soft kissing — the music you like can already be playing — and then show him how you like your dick stroked. The guys yanking your dick without lube are making their best guess about what might work you, a guess most likely informed by what works for them and other guys. I promise you, VIBE, the guys from Grindr are pulling on your dick with the best of intentions. Offer those gentlemen some cheerful, constructive feedback in the moment, VIBE, and most will start stroking your dick just the way you like it. mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

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HARTMANN Fighting for Attention Insurrectionist Josh Hawley builds his brand at Missouri’s expense BY RAY HARTMANN

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AUGUST 18-24, 2021

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NEWS

Elizabeth Cooke Saga Grips St. Louis, Beyond

openly discussing various crimes with a group of accomplices, most of them related to theft and drugs. Naturally, those were soon posted to Cooke’s Facebook page as well, attracting a deluge of attention from internet sleuths and other onlookers as the page has increasingly gone viral. Jeff says he has since turned the phone over to police — but not before saving as many details as he could about the alleged crimes. Since the initial incident, Jeff says he has heard from a couple of people in Cooke’s orbit. Her fiance gave me access to the phone — he gave me permission to enter the phone,” Jeff tells the RFT. nd what did is took as much information as I could out of it. nd then, when her sister said that the phone was reported stolen, I went ahead and I made sure I had access to everything, and handed it over to the police, because I didn’t want to be in possession of stolen property.” nd so, still able to access Cooke’s accounts, Jeff kept digging — and posting — in an attempt to help other people who may have

A commandeered Facebook account sparked international interest in the Missouri woman — and the mysterious circumstances of a north St. Louis death Written by

DANIEL HILL

Elizabeth Cooke in a recent booking photo. | MACOUPIN COUNTY ( ILLINOIS) SHERIFF

hat’s been billed as an attempted car theft gone wrong in south St. Louis rapidly spiraled into a viral story of crime and intrigue last week — one centered around drugs, stolen vehicles, looted storage lockers and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a 62-year-old man. acebook account under the name Elizabeth Cooke posted two videos on ugust 6, showing a woman believed to be Cooke as she’s confronted by a man whose car she was allegedly attempting to steal. “What the fuck?” the man says at the video’s outset, which was recorded on ugust . “My friend sent me over here and told me that I could use his car because my car broke down,” Cooke replies. “I’m so sorry, is this not my car?” fter a tense exchange in which the man accuses Cooke of attempting to crack his steering column, he sends her away from the area, but not before asking her to pull down her mask so that he could get a clear shot of her face, which she reluctantly does. But it wasn’t Cooke who uploaded the videos, says the man. She simply left her phone behind at the scene, which the owner of the car subsequently gained access to — and with it, Cooke’s social media accounts. That kicked off a whirlwind of changes to Cooke’s Facebook

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Airbnb Operator Was Suspicious of Elizabeth Cooke After Man’s Death Written by

RYAN KRULL

AUGUST 18-24, 2021

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ing over his power of attorney to Cooke and naming her as the sole beneficiary in his will. ccording to the power of attorney paperwork, Phillips was residing at the same address as Cooke at that time. photo of a form, purportedly from Hoffen Funeral Home in Granite City, Illinois, which Jeff uploaded to Cooke’s Facebook, indicates that Bobby Phillips died on January 1, 2021 — two days after naming Cooke in his will and giving her power of attorney, and the very same day the video was shot. Jeff was shocked. Initially, he says that he’d just been shaming this person through their social media, while also trying to reconnect some people with their stolen items. But he feared he’d just uncovered something far more sinister. “I looked at the time stamp. It was taken the day he died,” Jeff writes in a caption on the video. “There are other videos from that day. I’m sick to my stomach.” The RFT has been able to confirm that Phillips died at an irbnb in north St. Louis (see the corresponding story in this issue) where ooke was staying. t. ouis po-

lice spokeswoman told the RFT that officers had responded to a call at that location but declined to say more, citing an open investigation. The spokeswoman said police are also looking into the theft allegations but again declined to provide any additional details. fter the revelation that there had been a mysterious death in Cooke’s orbit, things kicked into overdrive online, with hundreds of internet sleuths digging into the matter, many comparing the whole affair to the etflix docu series Don’t F**k With Cats. The story has since gone fully viral as the online communities seeking to find more answers about Phillips’ death grew larger and larger. Cooke’s Facebook account, with a friends’ list that had swelled to thousands of people, was eventually shut down on Friday. Cooke, meanwhile, was behind bars in jail in Illinois as the saga played out online. Macoupin ounty ssistant tate’s ttorney Jordan Garrison tells the RFT she was arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle and meth. She’s being held on $25,000 bond. Dur-

evict Cooke from the Airbnb but she refused, at first trying to claim “squatter’s rights,” then relying on the city’s eviction moratorium.

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ing a video court appearance last week, she requested a public defender. She was still in jail as of press time. ail staffer tells the RFT that Cooke was aware of what’s been happening with her social media accounts, but not to the extent that it has gone viral. For Jeff’s part, he says he’s just hopeful that the revelations that he found on her phone can lead to some clarity regarding Phillips’ death and the strange circumstances surrounding it. What he says started as an attempt to reunite some victims of theft with their lost belongings has since snowballed into something much larger, and potentially with far more sinister connotations. If there was wrongdoing, Jeff believes it needs to be brought to light. did not expect any of this. wasn’t looking for any of this,” Jeff explains. But now there’s a dead guy. nd we need to figure out if somebody’s got to be held accountable.” n Ryan Krull contributed to this story.

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Warrant Forgiveness and Vaccines Written by

JENNA JONES

t. Louis is rolling out a new incentive program that combines warrant forgiveness and COVID-19 vaccines. Thanks to a partnership between the city, the Circuit Attorney’s ffice and the courts, the city’s upcoming Warrant Forgiveness Days on August 27 and 28 will feature on-site vaccinations — and, for those vaccinated, credit toward their court fees. The upcoming event marks the fourth time St. Louis Circuit Court will be available to help those with warrants. Residents who have a warrant with the circuit court are advised to call 314-641-8214 to make sure they are eligible for warrant forgiveness before they show up at the event, which will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The circuit court will only host the event

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The municipal court even takes Warrant Forgiveness Days a step further with an incentive for those who are vaccinated. With valid proof of vaccination, the municipal court offers “favorable consideration for up to $100 off any existing fines and court costs, according to a press release from the mayor’s office. Administrative city court Judge Newton McCoy said the courts are happy to offer this program. McCoy added the court is “also pleased” to encourage vaccination with the incentive to reduce fines and court costs. “In the midst of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, City Court is pleased to support our public safety mission and Mayor Jones’ initiatives to promote vaccination by offering our Warrant Forgiveness Days program, along with the opportunity for residents to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at the same time,” McCoy said in a statement. Participants should bring a valid photo ID and phone, and provide a valid email address if they have one. Along with the warrant service and vaccine stations, the event will feature family-friendly activities, including food trucks and city departments offering onsite rental assistance. n

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THE BIG MAD IN THE HEADLIGHTS Grass-mowing goats, a governor targeted by his own monster and St. Louis intersection hell Compiled by

DANIEL HILL

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MURDER On May 28, a Jefferson County woman whom we’ll call Sarah pulled her car into the driveway of her house on Lake Drive in Cedar Hill. Her house looks out over Lake Adelle, a fishing spot with a few do en homes built around it. ome of the lawns in the neighborhood are littered with old barrels and rusted car parts, but the place is not without its charm. n addition to fishing, the water is good for floating on an inner tube or paddling a raft around. That riday, as arah got out of her car, her 6 year old neighbor nthony egens came out of his house and rushed toward her. ome on over to my place. want you to be my girlfriend and buy you things, egens said, according to arah’s father. ’ll take care of you. obody will ever hurt you. ome on over. Continued on pg 16

A fatal showdown in Jefferson County revealed an unexpected victim — and a series of tragedies that are still unfolding

AT LAKE

ADELLE B Y

R Y A N

K R U L L

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MURDER

Continued from pg 15

egens cut an intimidating figure. A thicket of tattoos covered his hulking chest and arms. The words “white power” were inked in block letters across his stomach. Sarah had reason to be wary beyond the bizarre nature of the manic appeal. etectives had been up and down Lake Drive over the past several weeks inquiring as to the whereabouts of a missing man, 6 year old Jerry Crew, reportedly last seen at Legens’ home. The police had even asked to look at the footage from the security cameras mounted on the house where Sarah lived in the hopes that it might prove their suspicion that Crew had entered Legens’ place but never exited. According to one neighbor, Legens had kept the “routine of a vampire since returning from ail in 2020, sleeping all day and running loud power tools in his house all night. Thoroughly freaked out, Sarah ran to a neighbor’s house and hid there as the night unfolded in dramatic fashion. Before sunset, deputies from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s ffice were on the scene. n armored T team vehicle parked outside Legens’ house. The sheriff’s office later said that once the deputies arrived” Legens opened fire, shooting at police vehicles and deputies, striking one below his tactical vest. (The deputy was rushed to the hospital and has recovered.) The deputies pulled the front door off Legens’ house and, according to neighbors, threw flash bangs and tear gas inside. everal hours after opening fire, egens attempted to escape out of a side window. deputy shot him before he could get away, and Legens died just over the property line on Sarah’s skinny side yard. Inside the house, deputies found a dead body, but it didn’t belong to Jerry Crew. rew’s mother, ana rew, watched coverage of the shootout on the news that night. Her son and Legens were cousins; Dana Crew is Legens’ aunt. Since reporting her son missing on pril 22, Crew had been going to Lake rive two or three times a day, begging the sheriff’s office to arrest her nephew and search his house, she says. After the Friday night shootout, a sheriff’s spokesman reported the body belonged to a woman. She had apparently been dead long before egens’ final showdown with T officers. on-

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Anthony Legens was an erratic presence at Lake Adelle. | COURTESY JEFFERSON COUNTY SHERIFF firming her identity took several days, but investigators were eventually able to use dental records to officially identify her as Tanya ould, a year old who had grown up just on the other side of Lake Adelle. Crew, watching this all unfold from home, was now even angrier at the sheriff’s office. n her opinion, they’d bungled the search for her son. Now she felt like they let this year old woman die because of their inaction. “For weeks, kept trying to tell them that Anthony has weapons in there, he’s selling drugs, and he’s a convicted felon. So why couldn’t they get a warrant to go in there?” Crew says. “But they waited until the guy killed the girl in there, and then they go in.” Crew is correct that sheriff’s deputies didn’t go into Legens’ house until after Gould was killed, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Detectives had been surveilling the house for weeks. Sheriff David Marshak said they’d gotten search warrants for some technology” but couldn’t get a warrant to enter the house. According to Marshak, investigators had numerous conversations with the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office about the evidence they had

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obtained, but time and again it was deemed insufficient to enter Legens’ house. (Prosecutors didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.) “Well, it’s too late now,” Dana says. “Because the two people that knew where my son was are both deceased.”

“What the hell have you done?” Dana Crew says that, growing up, her son was “a great kid, a wonderful kid. He would give you the shirt off his back. He would do without to give to somebody else. In 2005, twenty years old at the time, Jerry rew had a child with a woman named Tiffany, and though they separated, the two remained friends. While living in south St. Louis in the mid aughts, rew committed a series of minor crimes. Then, in , robbery and armed criminal action convictions landed him in prison for a little more than decade. While incarcerated, he developed diabetes and was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which eventually caused him to require a colostomy bag. rew was released from prison in October 2020, and two days later he overdosed, according to a post

he made on acebook. Then in ecember he had to be hospitali ed for issues related to his diabetes. rew’s mother said her son seemed lost. o much had changed in the years he’d been locked up,” she says. “I kept telling him it’s not like it used to be, it’s not like it used to be.” She took him to get a driver’s license and showed him how to use a smartphone. he helped him set up a Facebook account so he could reach out to old friends. n , he moved in with his cousin at Lake Adelle. hile living at egens’, he messaged shley Pound, a woman whom acebook suggested he might know. n retrospect, Pound says, Crew was probably hitting on her. he told him that she was related to his baby’s mother, so that sort of relationship probably wasn’t in the cards. But the two kept chatting and quickly became friends. “He was always fun,” Pound says. “He was carefree. He brought everybody’s spirits up wherever he was. He always tried to make you feel better if you were upset.” Crew was nothing if not social. Even while locked up he called his mother at least every other day. If he didn’t have anything in particular to say, he still wanted to know what she was up to. While living with egens he messaged Pound daily. The messages were always lighthearted. He sent her a video of a large pizza delivery that had come to the house. ome eat some pi a he exclaimed. n another message he tried to hook Pound up with Legens. ’m glad didn’t go through with that,” Pound says. Then, on April 22, both she and his mother stopped hearing from him. A few days later, Dana Crew had grown increasingly worried and went to the house on Lake Drive where she says she found Legens and a woman outside on the front lawn. here’s my son rew asked. h, at some chick’s house, egens replied. Crew asked, “What chick?” Legens said he didn’t know. “Why’s his car here?” Crew said. That doesn’t even make sense. he noticed that the woman with Legens looked withdrawn and wore a long-sleeve hoodie even though the temperature was hot. “I know she was covering up bruises,” Crew says now. The following day, April 27, Crew reported her son missing. few hours later, she got a text from Legens. “I guess you’re the fuck-

ing one who called the police,” he wrote. “You know I don’t like cops.” Multiple residents of Lake Drive told the RFT that during the six weeks leading up to the shootout, detectives worked the neighborhood trying to find information about Jerry Crew. Andie Strange, who lived across the street from Legens, says deputies knocked on her door in late April asking her if she’d seen rew. round this same time, deputies spoke to arah’s landlord about the house’s security camera footage. nother neighbor says there are two ways in and out of Lake Drive, and he often saw deputies posted at both of them. Dana Crew also staked out Legens’ house, going to Lake Drive multiple times most days. would sit in my car down the road and call the police and tell them Anthony was outside working on this car,” she says. “‘This is the perfect time to question him,’ ’d say. very time they went there, he would run in the house and wouldn’t answer the door.” Before long, Crew says, she was calling investigators daily to give them updates. f she saw egens leave the property, she called sheriff’s deputies to tell them what kind of car he was driving and implore them to pull him over. (Multiple people, including a relative of Legens, say he had no driver’s license.) uring one of rew’s frequent trips to Legens’ house, she says, she made her way to the backyard and sifted through the fire pit, fearing that egens might have burned some of her son’s clothes or other evidence. She peered into the back windows but couldn’t see anything inside. etectives did find a video of Jerry Crew at a Cedar Hill gas station on April 21, the day before Dana Crew and Ashley Pound last heard from him. heriff’s investigators were able to identify multiple people in the video with him. However, when they tracked the people down and interviewed them, they were reluctant to speak about Anthony for fear of repercussions,” according to Marshak. In general, the sheriff says, potential witnesses didn’t want to cooperate with them because they feared Legens. In an interview, Marshak says even though investigators “felt like something may have happened inside [Legens’ house], they lacked the proof and probable cause necessary to lawfully enter the residence. aw enforcement must establish probable cause based on facts, not hunches, and that’s a good thing for pro-

Tanya Gould grew up at Lake Adelle. | COURTESY DAISHA LIPP

tecting citizen rights.” About a week before Legens’ shootout with sheriff’s deputies, Dana Crew was doing her usual drive-through of Lake Drive when she saw a neighbor standing outside the house across the street from her nephew’s home. rew parked and got out to ask the woman if she knew anything. The next thing Crew knew, Legens was there and in her face. “Get the fuck out of here!” he screamed, according to ana. “Get the fuck out of here!” “No, I won’t,” she replied. “You did something to my kid. ou know your mom and dad are looking down on you. They’re thinking, ‘What the hell have you done?’” “Just get out of here.” He waved his hands. “Get out of here.” Crew says she called 911 and several officers arrived, but nothing came of it. On the evening of May 28, she returned to Lake Adelle but found the neighborhood blocked off. Police redirected her to a nearby shopping center, the large parking lot of which was being used by the sheriff’s office as a staging area. fficers said she couldn’t be there either but that there would be a press conference when the situation on Lake Drive was resolved. News trickled out of Lake Adelle over the weekend. Marshak, the Jefferson County sheriff, told KMOV (Channel 4) that night that a deputy had been shot while serving a search warrant related to a missing person. The shooter, who would soon be identified as egens, was dead. Then came word of another body found, but it wasn’t Jerry Crew. Dana Crew didn’t know the woman who had been killed, but she soon saw the photos of Tanya Gould that circulated online after the shootout. She realized she had seen her before on Lake Drive. Gould was the woman who was wearing a hoodie in the heat.

“She brought happiness and joy and didn’t even realize it”

Jerry Crew was reported missing in April. | COURTESY JEFFERSON COUNTY SHERIFF

Tanya Gould grew up with her mom, dad and older brother on ake delle. he’s remembered as having had a knack for fitting in with just about any crowd. She got along well with the down home country folks of Jefferson County as well as the people a bit rougher around the edges. he flourished for several years in the upper middle class t. ouis suburb of Kirkwood, too. Curtis Bollinger, who has lived off and on at Lake Drive for a Continued on pg 19

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MURDER

Continued from pg 17

decade, says Gould mocked the local tweakers to their faces, but did so in a way so sly that they laughed along and didn’t know they were being made fun of. One time, outside Bollinger’s house, a shirtless Lake Adelle man who was high on meth climbed the utility pole carrying a screwdriver, intent on restarting his cable service. Gould happened to be driving by. She slowed and rolled down the window. “Hey, Charter guy,” she yelled. “The company can’t spring for a ladder?” Daisha Lipp, who now lives in t. ouis, met ould fifteen years ago when Lipp transferred to Grandview High School in tiny Ware, Missouri. Lipp described the school as “real country” and “a total culture shock” compared to where she’d gone before. She felt like an outcast. But Gould went out of her way to welcome Lipp to the school, and the two quickly became best friends. Lipp describes Gould as a “total hippie” who loved painting and music. “She was one of those people that just anywhere she went, she brought happiness and joy,” Lipp says. “And she didn’t even realize it.” Gould’s joy was often in stark contrast to her family life, which was defined by adversity and loss. Lipp recalls a day in high school when she and Gould were driving down a country road and Gould stopped to pick up a homeless woman. The two girls gave her a ride and then the woman stole everything from the back of Gould’s car. It was only later that Lipp realized the woman was Gould’s mom, Cindy, who was dealing with drug addiction and had been kicked out of the family house. Later in high school, Lipp spent the night at Gould’s house, and when they woke up, Cindy made the family pancakes. She had gotten sober and rejoined the family. Tragedy first struck ould’s family in 2007 when she, age seventeen at the time, and her parents went on a cruise. They came back to find her older brother aniel dead of an overdose. It was Gould who discovered his body. Around 2010, when Gould was in her early twenties, she met Bob Wiggins, who was seven years older and whom Gould quickly identified as her kindred spirit. “I have never seen two people who are so happy and so in love,” Lipp says. About a year into their relationship, Gould and Wiggins moved to Kirkwood, where Gould

found work as an administrative assistant at a printing company. They got engaged. But in 2016, Wiggins died unexpectedly from a heart attack. Grief stricken, Gould moved back in with her mom and dad at Lake Adelle. Gould had always had a habit of belting out Janis Joplin songs, Lipp says, but after her fianc ’s death, e and Bobby McGee,” a tune Gould sang often, held a special importance to her. “She stayed positive still. She always tried to stay positive,” Lipp says. But she ust couldn’t find happiness. I think that Anthony saw that in her and used that.” In Lipp’s assessment, Legens took advantage of the fact that ould wanted so badly to find the type of love she’d had with her former fianc . egens had been a friend of Gould’s brother and grew up across the lake from Gould, her backyard facing his on opposite shores. The lake is not particularly large, less than a tenth of a mile across, and on a quiet day, two people speaking loudly can have a conversation across the water. Gould and Legens hadn’t grown up friends, exactly, but they grew up knowing each other. At some point in 2019, the two started dating. Legens’ family had also endured a series of tragedies. In 2013, his father passed away in his early 50s from COPD. His mother, Donna, died in 2017 when an armored car struck a car she was riding in. Legens was in prison for assault and felonious restraint when his mother died, and by the time he was released, he had inherited the family’s house on Lake Adelle as well as a chunk of life insurance and settlement money from the accident. Lipp says she visited Legens’ house once when ould first began dating him. “It was just scary,” she says. “He was a very scary person. Just passing him in the yard didn’t feel good.” After Gould moved in with Legens, she’d typically call Lipp on Facetime even though Gould knew Lipp hated video chat. Soon Lipp realized Legens was paranoid about Gould texting with other men, and using Facetime was her way to appease him. At some point in 2019, Legens went back to jail for about eight months. His criminal history is lengthy, and it’s hard to know for sure if, during this specific stretch, he was in jail on a pending DWI case or because he violated probation for the assault conviction. Either way, Gould took care of Legens’ house during that time. In December 2020, after Legens

was released, Gould sent messages to one of his relatives whom she knew from her time taking care of the house. The text messages included graphic photos of her beaten face. In the messages, she referred to Legens as “a woman beater, a liar, a thief.” She described his house as “scarier than anywhere else.” “I look like an alien,” she said in a text message, referring to the bruises. The relative encouraged Gould to go to the police, stay away from Legens and only go back to get her things from his house if she was accompanied by a police officer. Legens’ relative took Gould’s photos to the sheriff’s office. “The sheriff’s department knew exactly who [Legens] was. They knew everything about him,” the relative says. “I showed them the pictures of Tanya and I said, ‘I’m scared for her life. He held her hostage for three days. He beat her.’” She says deputies told her they couldn’t do anything unless Gould pressed charges. Then, four months later, in April, this same relative of Legens contacted Dana Crew after her son was reported missing. “I contacted [Crew] and I told her, ‘Listen, I got tons of text messages from this woman. I’m scared. I think something bad is gonna happen.’” In the early days of the investigation into Jerry Crew’s disappearance, the detectives began speaking with Cindy Gould, who told them her daughter had suffered a long history of domestic abuse at the hands of Legens. At some point in the weeks after Crew went missing, Gould briefly left Legens and stayed at her mother’s house on the other side of the lake. Deputies went to ask Gould about Crew. Gould said she wanted a lawyer. Crew’s family members are adamant they have no animosity toward Gould and understand she herself was a captive of Legens. Daisha Lipp, Gould’s friend of fifteen years, sums up the dynamic between Legens and Gould this way: “It’s just as a matter of survival when you’re in that situation. You’re not thinking about the big picture. You’re always just thinking, ‘What can I do right now to stay safe to keep him happy?’ You can’t think that far ahead, to actually get a plan to get away. t’s so difficult to even make that plan. You’re always thinking only about your very next move.” Lipp points out that the place ould would have fled to, her mother’s, was just across the lake,

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A foul odor and a body After six weeks of failing to get a warrant to enter Legens’ house, on May 28 the Jefferson County sheriff’s detectives finally got their probable cause. Legens had asked a man to come over to his house and help him with something. Once inside, the man noticed a foul smell permeating the residence. According to Marshak, Legens asked this man to help move a large plastic storage container and Legens said that inside the container was the body of Tanya Gould. The container was bulging, and Legens “was acting erratic and snorted a controlled substance in the witness’s presence. The man fled the house, called police, and a search warrant was granted. fter the man fled but before police arrived, neighbors say, Legens must have had an idea of what was to come. When he approached his neighbor Sarah and frantically asked her to come over to his house, neighbors say what he was really trying to do was procure “a hostage he could use as leverage.” A few hours later, as the shootout ensued, Legens called an attorney who had represented him in a number of cases previously. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for me,” Legens said. “You’re the best attorney I ever had.” “Thank you, I’ll talk to you next week,” the nonplussed attorney replied, only realizing later his client was calling to say goodbye. t is perhaps fitting that in his final hours Legens reached out to a criminal defense attorney. There of course was a time in his life before he became a criminal, but it seems no one in Cedar Hill can remember when. His criminal record over the past fifteen years is a mix of drug crimes, DWI busts, resisting arrest

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HELP WANTED ST. LOUIS AND SURROUNDING AREAS

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convictions and assaults. In 2015, Legens took hostage a Herculaneum man whose house Legens had been crashing at. He beat the man up, repeatedly threatened to kill him, forced him to shoot up heroin and accused him of posting videos online of the man having sex with Legens’ wife. Pound tells me Legens’ nickname around Jefferson County was “Evil.” For neighbors around Lake Drive, he was an erratic presence, the source of endless anecdotes. Cori Puryear, who grew up on Lake Adelle, says that years ago he saw police knock on Legens’ front door. Seconds later, Legens ran out the back, “naked except a ball cap covering his privates.” Julio, a landlord on Lake Drive, says Legens and his friends would be high on meth in the middle of the night, take a boat out onto the lake and talk to the fish. Andie Strange, the neighbor across the street from Legens, told me that things have been calmer on Lake Drive since Legens’ death, that she sees more kids riding their bicycles and running around on the street. Julio says he’s noticed things have been markedly quieter as well.

not find anyone that had seen Jerry after that date,” Marshak says. Even if Crew wasn’t murdered, his poor health would have demanded constant attention. He required two insulin shots a day. “One way or the other, Anthony killed him and he did something with him,” Paula Backof, Crew’s aunt, tells me. “But now it’s time to find him. ittle Jerry couldn’t go anywhere because he needed medicine and he had a colostomy bag. When I went through Anthony’s house, I found his insulin, and I found his colostomy bags there.” Marshak says his department has an “incredible amount of data to search,” including a month’s worth of CCTV footage from the security system Legens had installed in his house. “We believe Jerry is deceased,” the sheriff says, “but currently have no actual proof he was murdered.” When the rest of the Legens family was allowed back inside the house they found two guns in a bucket on the kitchen table and, according to Legens’ relative, a bloody jersey that had belonged to Legens in the washer along with some dirty rags and a mophead. The washer was broken and the items inside hadn’t been cleaned. An unusual mixture of sand and dirt covered the rags (the family would later find a similar mixture of earth on the head of a shovel). One of Legens’ relatives carefully put the rags in a trash bag and tried to give the material to authorities. aybe this could help you figure out where Jerry is,” he said. “You watch too much TV,” they were told. Dana Crew feels the sheriff’s office has not done enough to find her son. Several other residents of Lake Adelle say they wish investigators had acted sooner. “There are good days and bad days,” Crew says. “Today I’m doing OK. But two days ago I could not hold it together, could not stop crying.” August 6 was Jerry’s 37th birthday, what would have been his first birthday out of prison with family in more than a decade. One member of the Legens-Crew family did stress that detectives “were extremely nice,” though it often seemed like “their hands were tied because of the system.” Marshak was adamant his department wanted to get into Legens’ house sooner, but they weren’t going to violate anyone’s constitutional rights in order to do so.

Hearts of gold There is now a second empty

Cindy and Tanya Gould. | COURTESY DAISHA LIPP house on Lake Adelle. In early July, a little more than a month after her daughter was killed, indy ould the final member of the Gould nuclear family — died in her home. She was found on the back porch, which looks out across the lake onto the house where Tanya was killed. According to the sheriff’s department, toxicology tests have not come back yet, but “narcotics involvement is suspected.” Throughout June, in the weeks after the shootout, Cindy Gould and Legens’ relative had exchanged a long series of text messages. Gould began, “I am receiving condolences & I wonder and think, ‘Is anyone holding [Anthony’s family] up?’ I pray for you, your family, Jerry’s Mom & rest of family. I have lost both my children. I understand the pain.” Legens’ relative replied, “I again can’t express how sorry I am for the pain [Legens] has caused to you and so many others. Please know I’m praying for you every day.” “The pain caused was never your fault, praying you don’t hang on to baggage of guilt or shame,” Gould wrote.

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“You truly are an amazing person,” Legens’ relative responded. “Thank you for being so loving and caring. I see where Tanya got her heart of gold.” Cindy Gould, 63 years old, once stole from her own daughter. Later, she got up early to make her daughter and her daughter’s friend pancakes. She had lost her son and husband before losing Tanya. Gould had less than a month to live when she wrote back to the relative of her daughter’s killer: “You are pretty amazing yourself hon! Any tiny bit of wisdom I may have comes only from making lots of my own mistakes lol. I wish you all the best, in everything. How proud your mom must be...To see what a wonderful person you are despite all the challenges you’ve had. Sweet dreams.” ould punctuated the final text with three emoji: a star, a crescent moon and a tiny box dotted with light which is meant to represent the Milky Way. n Ryan Krull is a freelance journalist and assistant teaching professor in the department of communication and media at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

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CAFE

[REVIEW]

Putting on the Ritz Casa Don Alfonso brings the Amalfi Coast to St. Louis with stunning Italian cuisine Written by

Casa Don Alfonso impresses with quality ingredients expertly prepared, such as the classical cod and potato veloute. | MABEL SUEN wildest imagination. Much like the gorgeous room, it takes your breath away. You’d expect nothing less from Casa Don Alfonso, the highlybuzzed-about restaurant that opened inside of the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton this March. To call this a hotel restaurant is to call the Hope Diamond a piece of rock. Casa Don Alfonso is a monumental culinary moment for St. Louis, thanks to its impressive pedigree that goes back several generations to the village of Sant’Agata on Italy’s malfi oast. There, on lfonso 1890 has sat for more than 100 years under the ownership of the Iaccarino family, operating as both a boutique hotel and restaurant that holds two Michelin stars. Over the years, the Don Alfonso 1890 brand has expanded its reach to include a few different iterations around the globe, with t. ouis serving as the first . . outpost of the storied restaurant. The Don Alfonso majesty has not been diluted by its trip across the Atlantic. Short only of importing the Tyrrhenian Sea itself to St. Louis, the design team behind Casa Don Alfonso has impeccably translated the coastal, southern Italian experience to its digs in-

side the Ritz-Carlton. Though impossibly elegant, the restaurant is not at all stuffy; with the light, airy feel of a seaside villa, Casa Don Alfonso has a way of making you feel comfortable even in the midst of such luxurious beauty. Lemon trees, hand-painted Italian-style tilework on the kitchen walls and pastel-hued paintings of fruits and flowers evoke the sort of ease you’d feel sipping aperitivo on an outdoor terrace in Sant’Agata. Though you’d have an excuse to get dressed up if you wanted to do so, you would still feel comfortable walking into Casa Don Alfonso in a more relaxed ensemble. This welcoming feel comes as much from the hospitality as it does from the airy design. This is the Ritz-Carlton, of course, so you will feel well-tended-to from the moment you walk in the front door until the second you depart. Service is informative but not formal, kind but not obsequious. ou’ll get your water glasses filled after you take two sips, but you don’t feel the pressure of your waiter standing along a wall staring at you to do so. The food also captures this mix of elegance and comfort. Like the maccheroni — which is an old

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Iaccarino family recipe — dishes are simple and unfussy, and shine because of the quality of ingredients and care taken in preparing them. Beef carpaccio, for instance, is ruby red and sliced so paperthin you can almost see through it. Simply garnished with arugula and a grain mustard aioli, it’s perfection of the form. Burrata, too, is outstanding and not at all overdone. The baseball-sized sphere of cream filled mo arella oo es over its bed of arugula, cherry tomatoes and oregano. Verdant pesto pairs with the peppery greens to break up the burrata’s richness. Though billed as a first course, the eggplant parmesan is a worthy main attraction. Slices of the vegetable serve as sponges for mouthwatering tomato sauce and olive oil, while gooey cheese binds the entire concoction together. It’s matched in splendor by Grandma’s Ziti, a rustic pasta made with blistered cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced cloves of garlic, chili peppers and parsley. Anchovies from the malfi oast add a subtle ocean backbeat to this bright dish. Casa Don Alfonso’s pizzas are as quintessentially Neapolitan as what you’d find in a ampanian

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CASA DON ALFONSO Continued from pg 23

pizzeria. The sourdough crust is so soft it’s like a leopard-spotted pillow, while the flat interior serves as a base for ultra fresh toppings. The classic margherita pairs fior di latte cheese with vibrant tomato sauce and fresh basil a Parma ham version is an excellent sauce less pie that features prosciutto, arugula and Parmigiano eggiano cheese. ain courses are also thrilling. rack of olorado lamb, flawlessly cooked to the requested mediumrare, sits atop fresh herbs when the lamb is pressed into them, it is infused with their flavor, which is a refreshing counter to the little bit of fat along the side of the meat. The star of the dish is the potatoes, however the golden slivers, paired with baked onions, are roasted so beautifully, their crisp, olive oil soaked exterior and creamy inside bring a tear to the eye. t’s like the errari version of a rench fry. od, too, da les from flawless execution the fish skin is crisped up like a chip, while the flesh remains succulent and the beautifully complementary flavors of olives, tomatoes and fennel. f you close your eyes, you can almost

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The copper-and-hand-painted-tile kitchen of Casa Don Alfonso is just one aspect of a space that is gorgeous yet comforting. | MABEL SUEN hear the sea lapping against the cliffs in the distance. To cap off the meal, asa on lfonso offers several traditional talian desserts, including its wonderful interpretation of tiramisu, a custard like espresso and mascarpone concoction crowned with a thin chocolate ring with the words asa on lfonso on it. ts riff on an ice cream cone

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is both whimsical and delicious. Here, a cone made from phyllo dough is filled with silken cinnamon pastry cream and garnished with an amarena cherry. s delicious as they are, the only real thing you need to cap off your experience at asa on lfonso is a chilled glass of limoncello. s you sip in the lemony nectar, you can’t help but drift off to visions of

the sun setting over an a ure sea framed by vines of magenta hued bougainvillea. asa on lfonso may not be able to physically bring you to that magical malfi escape, but it certainly brings it to you.

Casa Don Alfonso Margherita pizza ....................................... $16 Maccheroni gratin .................................... $18 Classical cod and potato veloute............. $34

SHORT ORDERS

[ S T. L O U I S S TA N D A R D S ]

Sweet Spot For nearly 70 years, Donut DriveIn has been making St. Louis history, one sweet treat at a time Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

The Donut Drive-In sign has been a beacon for St. Louis for decades. | ANDY PAULISSEN

The staff keeps traditions of nearly seven decades going. | ANDY PAULISSEN

The coffee is on. | ANDY PAULISSEN

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DONUT DRIVE-IN Continued from pg 25

[OPENINGS]

City Foodery The highly anticipated food hall at City Foundry is now open Written by

HOLDEN HINDES

RIVERFRONT TIMES

All your favorites — and probably your grandparents’ favorites — are still here. | ANDY PAULISSEN the impressive skill of the bakers, mean the doughnuts are consistent, so that customers can count on the same quality time and again. But for McKernan, the unquantifiable things make onut rive In so special. Whether it’s putting smiley faces on the long johns for kids on the weekends or watching parents walk away hand in hand with their little ones, he and his

AUGUST 18-24, 2021

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[FOOD NEWS]

Botanica Coming Soon to Former Llywelyn’s Space Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

[OPENINGS]

DD Mau Opens Second Location in Webster Groves Written by

HOLDEN HINDES

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REEFERFRONT TIMES

New Cannabis Vape Lets You ‘Ratio’ Yourself Written by

DANNY WICENTOWSKI

hen issouri’s first cannabis dispensaries opened in ctober, mari uana patients had few options mostly, it involved buying grams of actual cannabis flower, grinding up the nugs, and then rolling the odorific plant matter into oints or packing it into pipes. But this year, cannabis vapes have increasingly begun to show up on dispensary menus. These products, which use battery powered systems to heat TH oil and produce vapor, comprise their own ecosystem of accessories, flavors and models and for att aBrier, co founder and of Proper annabis, the promise of his company’s new single use vape product, the atio, comes down to one thing: consistency. e wanted people to experience a heightened level of control, he explains. can’t tell you how many people ’ve seen hit a vape pen for ten seconds, wondering if they’re getting anything, and then blow out a huge cloud of vapor and be like, h, was hitting it the whole time.’ ndeed, using a vape pen, especially for the first time, can be a tricky business for new patients and even experienced cannabis users. The high potency of the cartridges means that a user who’s ust looking for a moderate mood lift can find themselves out of their depth and possibly glued to the couch. The atio line of vapes addresses this challenge with a dose controlled system that triggers a brief physical vibration through the mouthpiece to signal that you’ve taken a single dose. light on the bottom of the battery also activates when the device is hitting. n a test, the atio’s vibration works exactly as advertised. The

The “Active” model of Ratio cannabis vapes features a 20:1 ratio of THC and CBD. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI mouth bu is powerful enough to feel through the lips, but not so overpowered as to rattle your face while you’re trying to smoke. The feedback provides a moment to gauge the effect without the trial and error guesswork that can leave one stranded in the dreaded Too High one. The technology behind the hardware is custom designed, says aBrier, who adds that the vape itself will automatically turn off after ten seconds a further safeguard for a product designed with medical patients in mind. That’s also where the ratios of the atio come in: The product line features five combinations of TH and B , uniting the psychoactive and non psychoactive parts of the plant into a blend to yield a particular result. The most TH heavy blend, called ctive, rolls with a TH to B ratio of : , or, by quantity, mg TH to mg B . rom there, patients can try a : ratio ocus or go for an even split with : Balance . n the other side of the spectrum, users looking for B heavier products can opt for a TH to B ratio of : elax , or one with a very low level of TH , a : atio model called

oothe. The ratios themselves were inspired by clinical research done in srael, where aBrier says doctors have sought to connect specific ailments to treatments based on ratios of TH and B . hen it comes to the actual weed used in the atio line, aBrier says the process involves a six to eight week process, from harvesting and treating the cannabis, breaking the plant down into its constituent parts, and then combining those parts to reach the targeted ratio. The goal, he adds, isn’t a matter of producing a particular strain, but a specific effect. t means, f you bought that red pen, and in three months you bought another in ansas ity, it would treat you the same. The absence of specific strains may irk some cannabis aficionados, though for those with more refined taste, Proper annabis has also rolled out an lien ock andy live resin cartridge compatible with vape batteries designed for the widely used thread cartridges. s a general note, if you’re buying a cartridge but not sure if you have the correct battery, figure that out before the purchase, lest you find yourself with a

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6 product you can’t use. The atio removes some of that complexity by being entirely self contained, with the only hardware feature a micro B charging port on the bottom. atio’s cartridge holds . grams of the TH B oil mix that cannot be removed or replaced. or some customers, aBrier adds, the lack of exotic strain names and accessory options is actually a boon to their cannabis use. n average consumer doesn’t know what Bubba ush’ or lien ock andy’ will do for them, he points out. e ust want to give people control over their experience, whether that means you’re treating a specific medical issue, or if it ust means you don’t want to smoke something that’s going to make you hyper before you go to bed or that’s going to make you tired before you go start your day. t’s all about giving somebody a consistent experience. The atio line of vapes is currently priced at not including tax and available at Proper Cannabis locations in south t. ouis ounty (7417 South Lindbergh Boulevard, 314-328-0446) and arrenton (711 North State Highway 47, 636-255-8943). n

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CULTURE [ VA C C I N E S ]

Hit Me With Your Best Shot A growing list of St. Louis-area music venues will require proof of vaccination, fueled by demand from artists and fans alike Written by

DANIEL HILL

s the delta variant of COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the state, more and more St. Louis-area music venues are requiring proof of vaccination or a recent negative test in order to attend their shows. The Factory, the newly opened 3,000-capacity venue in Chesterfield, is ust the latest to announce the policy. According to a press release Monday afternoon, the venue will require either proof of vaccination in the form of a physical copy of the vaccine card or a photo on a mobile phone, or a negative COVID-19 PCR test from within 48 hours of showtime. “Live music is back,” reads a portion of the statement. “Let’s keep it that way.” That puts the Factory on a growing list of local music venues who will enforce similar rules. The Pageant, Delmar Hall, Off Broadway, the Sinkhole, Red Flag, Blue Strawberry, Joe’s Cafe and Heavy Anchor have all announced similar policies in recent days. According to Robert McClimans, talent buyer for the Pageant, Delmar Hall and Off Broadway, the decision to require vaccinations for the venues under his purview came about as a direct result of demand from the artists and bands themselves. “We were starting to get overwhelmed by artists asking us to come up with a policy of some sort,” he explains. “And then once we hit a point where we’re like, ‘Well, we’re already going to go down this path for X number of

Planning to see the Roots at the Factory in September? Then you better be planning on getting the vaccine. | VIA PRESS HERE PRODUCTIONS shows we should ust go all in.’ And once we got to that point, it was ust figuring out what the best path forward was.” When asked which artists were asking about such a policy, McClimans says simply, “Almost everybody.” That tracks with recent developments regarding several nationally touring acts. Limp Bizkit canceled its ugust tour ust last week, and Stevie Nicks canceled all of the rest of her shows for the year, both acts citing COVID concerns. Counting Crows recently postponed a string of shows when one of the members of its touring party contracted the virus, and Lynyrd

Skynyrd canceled its tour outright after guitarist Rickey Medlocke tested positive. Jason Isbell recently nixed a Houston date, stating that the venue where the show was scheduled “was not willing to comply with the band’s updated health and safety standards.” During an appearance on MSNBC, Isbell laid the blame at the feet of politicians pandering to their bases. The problem is they’re ust getting so much pushback from some of the governors of certain states who want to kowtow to their political base, and try to make people think their freedom is being encroached upon,” Isbell says of

[ WAT E R ]

In the Drink Under the Deep Brew Sea brings alcohol and aquatic life to Union Station on Thursday Written by

JENNA JONES

The St. Louis Aquarium is hosting Under the Deep Brew Sea this week. | COURTESY ST. LOUIS UNION STATION Street). From 6 to 9 p.m., attendees over the age of 21 can enjoy different Anheus-

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the venues. “I’m all for freedom but I think if you’re dead, you don’t have any freedoms at all. So it’s probably important to stay alive before you start questioning your liberty.” Asked if he’s been seeing many cancellations on his end, McClimans says it hasn’t really been an issue so far — perhaps thanks directly to the mandate the venue has put in place. “No we haven’t. We haven’t really gotten that yet,” he says. “And hopefully we don’t.” Considering the hyper-politicized nature of the pandemic in this country, many businesses who’ve announced similar measures have experienced considerable fallout online from anti-vaxers decrying the alleged “tyranny” of it all. But for McClimans’ venues, the solution to that problem was simple: They simply disabled commenting for the post announcing the policy. “Nobody’s going to convince each other, and we don’t need people ust calling everybody every terrible name in the world ust because we want people to take the most basic precautions,” McClimans says. And for the most part, he says, fans and artists alike have greeted the development with gratitude. “By and large, the vast, vast maority have been like, Thank you, thank you, thank you,’” he says. “And, you know, if us doing this gets anybody to get shots, then we’ve done our part.” n er-Busch beverages. Eight different beers ranging from Shock Top Zest to the classic Bud Light are available to sample. The touch pools will be open in order to offer attendees a hands-on experience. Along with the touch pools, other fish will be available to gaze at with wonder. Shark Canyon will also be available for viewing, just in case Shark Week wasn’t enough to tide you over last month. Tickets are $35 with discounts offered for aquarium passholders. Guests can add a spin on the St. Louis Wheel for an extra $10. A hotel package beginning at $105 is also up for grabs, which includes two tickets to the event and a one night stay at St. Louis Union Station Hotel. Masks will be required when not drinking and social distancing is also in practice. The event is operating at reduced capacity. General admission tickets can be purchased at stlouisaquarium.com. n

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AUGUST 18-24, 2021

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SAVAGE LOVE GAME OVER BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: Is it ever ok to stop being GGG? I’ve been with my husband for 26 years. Shortly after we got together, my husband disclosed a major kink: MFM threesomes. I was young and a virgin and up for anything then, but we didn’t start hooking up with other men until around year six of our relationship. Over the last twenty years we’ve been on-and-off with this. We had children, we took a break, and we found the time to go wild now and then. My husband’s interests expanded into dominance play — owning me and sharing me — but I’m in my late forties now and my husband is in his fifties. I’m approaching menopause and my sex drive has decreased. There were also instances where I was basically sexually assaulted — or at the very least, my boundaries were not respected on more than one occasion. Long story short, I want to be done being kinky. I want my body to be mine. My husband and I have been having other marital problems, and he thinks my rejection of his kinkiness is a rejection of him. I’ve told him I’m still interested in sex, I’m just tired of being GGG. He says he isn’t interested in vanilla sex with me because he is “disappointed.” When I told him to outsource his kink, he said, “Good luck finding that as a married man.” Am I ever allowed to retire from his kink? Am I the asshole here? My Years Being Obedient Done First and most importantly, if your husband stood by and did nothing while your boundaries were violated in front of him — or if he violated your boundaries himself — then there’s an asshole in this marriage, MYBOD, and it ain’t you. But seeing as you’re still with your husband and still interested in having vanilla sex with him, I’m gonna assume your husband recognized how he failed you on those occasions when you were violated and that he’s shown remorse, apologi ed specifically and profusely, and made whatever changes he needed to make for you to feel safe with him. If

he hasn’t done all of those things, you should leave him. Zooming out for new readers: GGG stands for “good, giving, game.” As in, “good in bed, giving of pleasure, and game for anything — within reason.” I believe we should be GGG for our partners and that our partners should be GGG for us. Being GGG, however, does not mean doing whatever your partner wants. That’s why the final has always come with that italicized-for-emphasis qualifier: game for anything — within reason.” Being game means recognizing your partner will have sexual interests that you don’t share and being up for giving those things a try — so long as they’re reasonable. We all get to decide for ourselves what may or may not be reasonable. Back to you, MYBOD. A kink for MMF threesomes is not a thing for feet or light spanking. It’s a big ask. And if your husband knew he needed MMF threesomes to feel sexually fulfilled, sharing that when he did — early in the relationship — was the right thing for him to do. He laid his kink cards on the table before you got married, before you had kids, and when you could easily walk away. You didn’t walk away. You told him you were open to the idea — you told him you were one of those rare “up for anything” virgins — and he didn’t rush you into anything. Six years went by before you had your first threesome. nd while MMF threesomes probably aren’t something you would’ve sought out on your own, MYBOD, I’m hoping you enjoyed some of them — you know, the ones that didn’t involve boundary violations so egregious that you experienced them not as sexual adventures you were having with your husband, but as sexual assaults your husband participated in and Jesus Fucking Christ on the Cross. In all honesty, MYBOD, I’m having a hard time getting past those boundary violations. But seeing as you got past them — seeing as you’re still interested in being with your husband — I’m going to continue to assume he somehow made things right and advise you accordingly. If he didn’t make things right, disregard my advice and divorce the motherfucker already. Alright, you asked me if you can stop being GGG, MYBOD, and my

riverfronttimes.com

Hey, Dan: I’m freshly out of a relationship and new to Grindr and I’m realizing that for me to get hard, I need slow kissing, I need to vibe to music and especially need a soft touch on my dick. Too many guys pull on it with no lube and that makes me go soft. Slowly kissing to a chill song is my jam. Also, my dick is sensitive near the bottom of the shaft and I need wet fingers to go all the way down to the base of my dick in order to come. Is there a quicker way to describe this? Is low-on-the-shaft stimulation called something? Is there a term for this or a name for me? Or do I need to send a paragraph to all the tricks I message? Very Into Being Erect That’s called the way you like it, VIBE. Alternately, it’s called what works for you, what makes your dick hard and what gets you off. The precise way you like it — the kissing that works for you, the music that puts you in the mood, the spot on your dick that puts you over the edge — doesn’t have a name, VIBE, and it doesn’t need one. But who knows? By this time next week, the way you like it could have a name and a pride flag and a bunch of online cis het allies ready to shout down anyone who isn’t convinced the slow-kissme-vibe-to-chill-music-touch-thebase-of-my-lubed-up-cock community needed a name and its own float in the pride parade. But just as you don’t really need a pride flag, B , you don’t need to send a FAQ and an NDA to each potential trick you message. All you gotta do is tell the guy who shows up that you’re into soft kissing — the music you like can already be playing — and then show him how you like your dick stroked. The guys yanking your dick without lube are making their best guess about what might work you, a guess most likely informed by what works for them and other guys. I promise you, VIBE, the guys from Grindr are pulling on your dick with the best of intentions. Offer those gentlemen some cheerful, constructive feedback in the moment, VIBE, and most will start stroking your dick just the way you like it. mail@savagelove.net @FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com

AUGUST 18-24, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

AUGUST 18-24, 2021

riverfronttimes.com

AUGUST 18-24, 2021

RIVERFRONT TIMES

AUGUST 18-24, 2021

riverfronttimes.com

Riverfront Times, August 18, 2021

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