title: Almost Famous

text: Sapphire, one of the protégée "Band Aids", chastises Russell for betraying William. He then calls Penny, wanting to meet with her, but she gives him William's address. He arrives and finds himself face-to-face with William's mother who, during the tour, scolded him over the phone for his behavior. He apologizes to William and finally gives him an interview. Russell has verified the article to "Rolling Stone", which runs it as a cover feature. Penny fulfills her long-standing fantasy to go to Morocco while Stillwater tours again by bus.


title: Almost Famous

text: Crowe used a composite of the bands he had known to create Stillwater, the emerging group that welcomes the young journalist into its sphere, then becomes wary of his intentions. "Stillwater" was the name of a real band signed to Macon, Georgia's Capricorn Records label, which required the film's producers to obtain permission to use the name. In an interview, real Stillwater guitarist Bobby Golden said, "They could have probably done it without permission but they probably would have had a bunch of different lawsuits. Our lawyer got in touch with them. They wanted us to do it for free and I said, 'No we're not doing it for free.' So we got a little bit of change out of it." Seventies rocker Peter Frampton served as a technical consultant on the film. Crowe and his then-wife, musician Nancy Wilson of Heart, co-wrote three of the five Stillwater songs in the film, and Frampton wrote the other two, with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam playing lead guitar on all of the Stillwater songs.


title: Almost Famous

text: The character of Russell Hammond was originally set to be played by Brad Pitt. But during rehearsal prior to filming, Crowe and Pitt mutually decided that it was “not the right fit”, and Pitt dropped out of the project. The line “I am a Golden God!” in the pool-jumping sequence, as well as numerous references to Russell Hammond being unusually good looking, were written for Pitt, but remained in the script after Billy Crudup was cast.


title: Almost Famous

text: Crowe based the character of Penny Lane on the real-life Pennie Lane Trumbull and her group of female promoters who called themselves the "Flying Garter Girls Group". Though they were not in the Flying Garter Girls group, various other women have been described as Crowe's inspiration, for instance Pamela Des Barres and Bebe Buell. Sarah Polley was originally cast as Penny Lane, but, when Brad Pitt dropped out, she dropped out as well and was replaced with Kate Hudson.


title: Almost Famous

text: The character of William Miller's mother (played by Frances McDormand) was based on Crowe's own mother, who even showed up on the set to keep an eye on him while he worked. Although he asked his mother not to bother McDormand, the two women ended up getting along well.


title: Almost Famous

text: Alice in Chains' guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell was Crowe's first choice for the role of Stillwater bass player Larry Fellows. Cantrell is friends with Crowe and had previously appeared in two films directed by him, "Singles" (1992) and "Jerry Maguire" (1996). Cantrell was busy writing the songs for his solo album "Degradation Trip" and had to turn the role down. Mark Kozelek was cast instead.


title: Almost Famous

text: Crowe took a copy of the film to London for a special screening with Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. After the screening, Led Zeppelin granted Crowe the right to use one of their songs on the soundtrack—the first time they had ever consented to this since allowing Crowe to use "Kashmir" in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"—and also gave him rights to four of their other songs in the movie itself, although they did not grant him the rights to "Stairway to Heaven" for an intended scene (on the special "Bootleg" edition DVD, the scene is included as an extra, sans the song, where the viewer is instructed by a watermark to begin playing it).


title: Almost Famous

text: In his 2012 memoir "My Cross to Bear", Gregg Allman writes that several aspects of the movie are based on Crowe's time spent with the Allman Brothers Band. The scene in which Russell jumps from the top of the Topeka party house into a pool was based on something Duane Allman did: "the jumping off the roof into the pool, that was Duane—from the third floor of a place called the Travelodge in San Francisco. My brother wanted to do it again, but the cat who owned the place came out shaking his fist, yelling at him. We told that story all the time, and I have no doubt that Cameron was around for it." He also confirms that he and Dickey Betts played a joke on Crowe by claiming clauses in their contract did not allow his story to be published—just before he was to deliver it to "Rolling Stone".


title: Almost Famous

text: The airplane malfunction "near Tupelo, Mississippi" that occurred in the film is a thinly veiled reference to the Lynyrd Skynyrd airplane crash on October 20, 1977.


title: Almost Famous

text: The "Almost Famous" soundtrack album was awarded the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.


title: Almost Famous

text: "Almost Famous" had its premiere at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. It was subsequently given a limited release on September 15, 2000, in 131 theaters where it grossed $2.3 million on its first weekend. It was given a wider release on September 22, 2000, in 1,193 theaters where it grossed $6.9 million on its opening weekend. The film went on to make $31.7 million in North America and $14.8 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $47.4 million against a $60 million budget.


title: Almost Famous

text: "Almost Famous" received widespread critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 89% approval rating, based on 175 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Almost Famous", with its great ensemble performances and story, is a well-crafted, warm-hearted movie that successfully draws you into its era." On Metacritic it has a score of 90 out of 100, based on 38 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Almost Famous

text: Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, naming it the best film of 2000, and described it as "funny and touching in so many different ways." In his review for "The New York Times", A.O. Scott wrote, "The movie's real pleasures are to be found not in its story but in its profusion of funny, offbeat scenes. It's the kind of picture that invites you to go back and savor your favorite moments like choice album cuts." Richard Corliss of "Time" praised the film's screenplay for "giving each character his reasons, making everyone in the emotional debate charming and compelling, creating fictional people who breathe in a story with an organic life." In her review for the "L.A. Weekly", Manohla Dargis wrote that "the film shimmers with the irresistible pleasures that define Hollywood at its best—it's polished like glass, funny, knowing and bright, and filled with characters whose lives are invariably sexier and more purposeful than our own." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" wrote, "Not since "A Hard Day's Night" has a movie caught the thrumming exuberance of going where the music takes you." In his review for "Newsweek", David Ansen wrote, "Character-driven, it relies on chemistry, camaraderie, a sharp eye for detail and good casting." "Entertainment Weekly" put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Every Cameron Crowe film is, in one way or another, about romance, rock & roll, and his romance with rock & roll. This power ballad of a movie, from 2000, also happens to be Crowe's greatest (and most personal) film thanks to the golden gods of Stillwater and their biggest fan, Kate Hudson's incomparable Penny Lane."


title: Almost Famous

text: "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film an "A−" rating and Owen Gleiberman praised Crowe for depicting the 1970s as "an era that found its purpose in having no purpose. Crowe, staying close to his memories, has gotten it, for perhaps the first time, onto the screen." In his review for the "Los Angeles Times", Kenneth Turan praised Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Lester Bangs: "Superbly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, more and more the most gifted and inspired character actor working in film, what could have been the clichéd portrait of an older mentor who speaks the straight truth blossoms into a marvelous personality." However, in his review for "The New York Observer", Andrew Sarris felt that "none of the non-musical components on the screen matched the excitement of the music. For whatever reason, too much of the dark side has been left out." Desson Howe, in his review for "The Washington Post", found it "very hard to see these long-haired kids as products of the 1970s instead of dressed up actors from the Seattle-Starbucks era. I couldn't help wondering how many of these performers had to buy a CD copy of the song and study it for the first time."


title: Almost Famous

text: In 2018, Crowe said he was working on a stage musical adaptation of the film, in which he would pen the stage libretto and write the musical numbers with Tom Kitt. It premiered in San Diego at The Old Globe in 2019 and creative work continued during the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2022, the musical announced that it will transfer to Broadway, with previews beginning September 13 and opening night scheduled for October 11, 2022. The cast of the production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, will include newcomer Casey Likes (in his Broadway acting debut) as William Miller, Chris Wood as Russell Hammond, Anika Larsen as Elaine Miller, Solea Pfeiffer as Penny Lane, Drew Gehling as Jeff Bebe, Emily Schultheis as Anita Miller, Jana Djenne Jackson as Polexia Aphrodisia, Katie Ladner as Sapphire, Gerard Canonico as Dick Roswell and Rob Colletti as Lester Bangs. Jimmy Fallon reprised his film role of Dennis Hope for the musical.


title: Craigslist

text: Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.


title: Craigslist

text: Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U.S. and Canadian cities in 2000, and now covers 70 countries.


title: Craigslist

text: Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL, MindVox and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events. In early 1995, he began an email distribution list to friends. Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area.


title: Craigslist

text: The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly via manual advertising. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings. People trying to get technical positions filled found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for. This led to the addition of a jobs category. User demand for more categories caused the list of categories to grow. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by Majordomo had been installed and the mailing list "Craigslist" resumed operations. Community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark registered "craigslist.org", and the website went live in 1996.


title: Craigslist

text: In the fall of 1998, the name "List Foundation" was introduced and Craigslist started transitioning to the use of this name. In , when Newmark learned of other organizations called "List Foundation", the use of this name was dropped. Craigslist was incorporated as a private for-profit company in 1999. Around the time of these events, Newmark realized the site was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and devote his full attention to running Craigslist. By , there were nine employees working out of Newmark's San Francisco apartment.


title: Craigslist

text: In January 2000, current CEO Jim Buckmaster joined the company as lead programmer and CTO. Buckmaster contributed the site's multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-Craigslist feature. He was promoted to CEO in .


title: Craigslist

text: The website expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four in 2001 and 2002 each, and 14 in 2003. On August 1, 2004, Craigslist began charging $25 to post job openings on the New York and Los Angeles pages. On the same day, a new section called "Gigs" was added, where low-cost and unpaid jobs can be posted free.


title: Craigslist

text: In March 2008, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese became the first non-English languages Craigslist supported. As of August 9, 2012, over 700 cities and areas in 70 countries had Craigslist sites. Some Craigslist sites cover large regions instead of individual metropolitan areas—for example, the U.S. states of Delaware and Wyoming, the Colorado Western Slope, the California Gold Country, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Craigslist sites for some large cities, such as Los Angeles, also include the ability for the user to focus on a specific area of a city (such as central Los Angeles).


title: Craigslist

text: The site serves more than 20 billion page views per month, putting it in 72nd place overall among websites worldwide and 11th place overall among websites in the United States (per Alexa.com on , 2016), with more than unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per Compete.com on , 2010). With more than new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium.


title: Craigslist

text: The site receives more than new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world. The 23 largest U.S. cities listed on the Craigslist home page collectively receive more than 300,000 postings per day just in the "for sale" and "housing" sections as of October 2011. The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements to personal ads.


title: Craigslist

text: In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist had little interest in maximizing profit, and instead preferred to help users find cars, apartments, jobs and dates.


title: Craigslist

text: Craigslist's main source of revenue is paid job ads in select American cities. The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and in 2006 to possibly in 2007. "Fortune" has described their revenue model as "quasi-socialist", citing their focus on features for users regardless of profitability. Eric Baker of StubHub has described the site as a "potential gold mine of revenue, if only it would abandon its communist manifesto."


title: Craigslist

text: On August 13, 2004, Newmark announced on his blog that auction giant eBay had purchased a 25% stake in the company from a former employee. Some fans of Craigslist expressed concern that this development would affect the site's longtime non-commercial nature. , there have been no substantive changes to the usefulness, or the non-advertising nature of the site; neither banner ads, nor charges for a few services provided to businesses.


title: Craigslist

text: The company was believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster and eBay (the three board members). eBay owned approximately 25%, and Newmark is believed to own the largest stake.


title: Craigslist

text: In April 2008, eBay announced it was suing Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment". eBay claimed that in , Craigslist executives took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%". Craigslist filed a counter-suit in to "remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition" that Craigslist claimed was constituted by eBay's actions as Craigslist shareholders; the company claimed that it had used its minority stake to gain access to confidential information, which it then used as part of its competing service Kijiji.


title: Craigslist

text: On June 19, 2015, eBay Inc. announced that it would divest its stake back to Craigslist for an undisclosed amount, and settle its litigation with the company. The move came shortly before eBay's planned spin-off of PayPal, and an effort to divest other units to focus on its core business.


title: Craigslist

text: The Swedish luxury marketplace website Jameslist.com received a lawsuit filed on July 11, 2012 which among unspecified damages also asked for a complete shutdown of Jameslist.com As a consequence, the young company was forced to rename to JamesEdition.


title: Craigslist

text: As of 2012, mashup sites such as padmapper.com and housingmaps.com were overlaying Craigslist data with Google Maps and adding their own search filters to improve usability. In June 2012, Craigslist changed its terms of service to disallow the practice. In July 2012, Craigslist filed a lawsuit against padmapper.com. Following the shutdown of Padmapper.com, some users complained that the service was useful to them and therefore should have remained intact.


title: Craigslist

text: Over the years Craigslist had become a very popular online destination for arranging for dates and sex. The personals section allows for postings that are for "strictly platonic", "dating/romance", and "casual encounters".


title: Craigslist

text: The site was considered particularly useful by lesbians and gay men seeking to make connections, because of the service's free and open nature and because of the difficulty of otherwise finding each other in more conservative areas.


title: Craigslist

text: In 2005, San Francisco Craigslist's men seeking men section was attributed to facilitating sexual encounters and was the second most common correlation to syphilis infections. The company has been pressured by San Francisco Department of Public Health officials, prompting Jim Buckmaster to state that the site has a very small staff and that the public "must police themselves". The site has, however, added links to San Francisco City Clinic and STD forums.


title: Craigslist

text: On March 22, 2018, Craigslist discontinued its "Personals" section in the United States in response to the passing of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which removes Section 230 safe harbours for interactive services knowingly involved in illegal sex trafficking. The service stated that


title: Craigslist

text: US Congress just passed HR 1865, 'FOSTA', seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully. Any tool or service can be misused. We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!


title: Craigslist

text: Advertisements for "adult" (previously "erotic") services were initially given special treatment, then closed entirely on , 2010, following a controversy over claims by state attorneys general that the advertisements promoted prostitution.


title: Craigslist

text: In 2002, a disclaimer was put on the "men seeking men", "casual encounters", "erotic services", and "rants and raves" boards to ensure that those who clicked on these sections were over the age of 18, but no disclaimer was put on the "men seeking women", "women seeking men" or "women seeking women" boards. As a response to charges of sex discrimination and negative stereotyping, Buckmaster explained that the company's policy is a response to user feedback requesting the warning on the more sexually explicit sections, including "men seeking men".


title: Craigslist

text: On May 13, 2009, Craigslist announced that it would close the "erotic services" section, replacing it with an "adult services" section to be reviewed by Craigslist employees. This decision came after allegations by several U.S. states that the erotic services ads were being used for prostitution.


title: Craigslist

text: On September 4, 2010, Craigslist closed the adult services section of its website in the United States. The site initially replaced the adult services page link with the word "censored" in white-on-black text. The site received criticism and complaints from attorneys general that the section's ads were facilitating prostitution and child sex trafficking.


title: Craigslist

text: The adult services section link was still active in countries outside of the U.S. Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "Craigslist isn't legally culpable for these posts, but the public pressure has increased and Craigslist is a small company." Brian Carver, attorney and assistant professor at UC Berkeley, said that legal threats could have a chilling effect on online expression. "If you impose liability on Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook for anything their users do, then they're not going to take chances. It would likely result in the takedown of what might otherwise be perfectly legitimate free expression."


title: Craigslist

text: Craigslist announced on September 15, 2010, that it had closed its adult services in the United States; however, it defended its right to carry such ads. Free speech and some sex crime victim advocates criticized the removal of the section, saying that it threatened free speech and that it diminished law enforcement's ability to track criminals. However, the removal was applauded by many state attorneys general and some other groups fighting sex crimes. Craigslist said that there is some indication that those who posted ads in the adult services section are posting elsewhere. Sex ads had cost $10 initially and it was estimated they would have brought in $44 million in 2010 had they continued. In the four months following the closure, monthly revenue from sex ads on six other sites (primarily Backpage) increased from $2.1 to $3.1 million, partly due to price increases.


title: Craigslist

text: The company has made efforts to fight prostitution and sex trafficking, and in 2015, Craig Newmark received an award from the FBI for cooperation with law enforcement to fight human trafficking.


title: Craigslist

text: On , 2010, after pressure from Ottawa and several provinces, Craigslist closed 'Erotic Services' and 'Adult Gigs' from its Canadian website, even though prostitution was not itself illegal in Canada at the time.


title: Craigslist

text: When the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act was signed into law on April 11, 2018, Craigslist chose to close its "Personals" section within all US domains to avoid civil lawsuits. About their decision, Craigslist stated "Any tool or service can be misused. We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services."


title: Craigslist

text: Flagging does not require account login or registration, and can be done anonymously by anyone. Postings are subject to automated removal when a certain number of users flag them. The number of flags required for a posting's removal is dynamically variable and remains unknown to all but Craigslist staff. Some users allege that flagging may also occur as acts of vandalism by groups of individuals at different ISPs, but no evidence of this has ever been shown. Flagging can also alert Craigslist staff to blocks of ads requiring manual oversight or removal.


title: Craigslist

text: Flagging is also done by Craigslist itself (Craigslist's automated systems) and the posts will never appear on the search results.


title: Craigslist

text: Craigslist includes a barter option in its "for sale" section. This growing trade economy has been documented on the television program "Barter Kings" and the blog one red paperclip.


title: Craigslist

text: In July 2005, the "San Francisco Chronicle" criticized Craigslist for allowing ads from dog breeders, stating that this could encourage the over-breeding and irresponsible selling of pitbulls in the Bay Area. According to Craigslist's terms of service, the sale of pets is prohibited, though re-homing with small adoption fees is acceptable.


title: Craigslist

text: In January 2006, the "San Francisco Bay Guardian" published an editorial claiming that Craigslist could threaten the business of local alternative newspapers.


title: Craigslist

text: L. Gordon Crovitz, writing for "The Wall Street Journal", criticized the company for using lawsuits "to prevent anyone from doing to it what it did to newspapers", contrary to the spirit of the website, which bills itself in a "noncommercial nature, public service mission, and noncorporate culture".


title: Craigslist

text: This article was a reaction to lawsuits from Craigslist which Crovitz says were intended to prevent competition. Craigslist filed a trademark lawsuit against the Swedish luxury marketplace website Jameslist.com on July 11, 2012, forcing the company to rename to JamesEdition.


title: Craigslist

text: In 2012, Craigslist sued PadMapper, a site that hoped to improve the user interface for browsing housing ads, and 3Taps, a company that helped PadMapper obtain data from Craigslist, in "Craigslist v. 3Taps". This led users to criticize Craigslist for trying to shut down a service that was useful to them.


title: Craigslist

text: In 2001, the company started the Craigslist Foundation, a § 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that offered free and low-cost events and online resources to promote community building at all levels. It accepts charitable donations, and rather than directly funding organizations, it produces "face-to-face events and offers online resources to help grassroots organizations get off the ground and contribute real value to the community".


title: Liv Morgan

text: Gionna Jene Daddio (born June 8, 1994) is an American professional wrestler and actress. She is currently signed to WWE, where she performs on the SmackDown brand under the ring name Liv Morgan. She is a former SmackDown Women's Champion.


title: Liv Morgan

text: In 2014, Daddio signed a contract with WWE and was assigned to the WWE Performance Center, later appearing in NXT under the Liv Morgan name. She was promoted to the main roster in 2017 and was paired with Ruby Riott and Sarah Logan to form the stable The Riott Squad. After the stable disbanded in 2019, Morgan became a singles competitor. After a few months of her singles run, she reunited with the returning Riott, who had been out of action for months with a shoulder injury, to reform the Riott Squad, now as a duo rather than a trio due to the release of Logan. Morgan and Riott performed together until Riott's release in 2021. In 2022, Morgan won the Women's Money in the Bank ladder match and would cash in the same night, defeating Ronda Rousey to win the SmackDown Women's Championship, the first title in her wrestling career.


title: Liv Morgan

text: Gionna Jene Daddio was born in Morristown, New Jersey, on June 8, 1994. She was raised in nearby Elmwood Park, New Jersey. She has four older brothers and a sister; following the death of Daddio's father, her mother raised all six children as a single mother. Daddio is a longtime fan of professional wrestling, and would participate in backyard wrestling with her siblings. She has described the matches as core to start her foray into wrestling:


title: Liv Morgan

text: Daddio was a former competitive cheerleader, and worked and modelled for the restaurant chain Hooters.


title: Liv Morgan

text: In 2014, after being discovered at Joe DeFranco's gym in Wyckoff, New Jersey, Daddio signed a contract with WWE, assigning her to their developmental territory, NXT in October 2014. She made her first televised appearance at the pay-per-view on February 11, 2015, as a planted fan who jumped on Tyler Breeze during his entrance. She appeared at on May 20, again as part of Breeze's entrance. In October 2015, she briefly worked under the ring name Marley, debuting on the November 4 episode of "NXT", where she worked as a jobber and lost to Eva Marie.


title: Liv Morgan

text: On the December 2 episode of "NXT", Daddio made her return under the new ring name Liv Morgan, losing to Emma. On the January 13, 2016, episode of "NXT", Morgan competed in a battle royal to determine the number one contender to Bayley's NXT Women's Championship, which was won by Carmella. On the August 31 episode of "NXT", Morgan picked up her first televised singles win, defeating Aliyah. She later began a rivalry with The Iconic Duo (Billie Kay and Peyton Royce), with both women confronting her following her match, leading to a match between Morgan and Kay two weeks later, which Kay won after interference by Royce. She then competed against Royce on the November 16 episode of "NXT", which ended in a disqualification after Kay interfered in the match, attacking Morgan and Aliyah until Ember Moon made the save. The three faced off in a six-person tag team match against Kay, Royce, and Daria Berenato on the November 23 episode of "NXT", with Morgan's team coming out victorious.


title: Liv Morgan

text: On the November 21, 2017 episode of "SmackDown Live", Morgan made her main roster debut alongside Ruby Riott and Sarah Logan, attacking both Becky Lynch and Naomi, establishing themselves as heels in the process. On the same night, they interrupted a match between SmackDown Women's Champion Charlotte Flair and Natalya, then proceeded to attack both of them. The following week on "SmackDown Live", the trio, now called "The Riott Squad", made their in-ring debuts for the brand, defeating Flair, Naomi, and Natalya in a six-woman tag team match. On January 28, 2018, Morgan participated in the first women's Royal Rumble match at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view as the eleventh entrant, but was eliminated by Michelle McCool. Morgan made her WrestleMania debut at WrestleMania 34 on April 8 by participating in the 20-woman WrestleMania Women's Battle Royal, but failed to win the match.


title: Liv Morgan

text: On April 16, The Riott Squad were drafted to Raw brand as part of the 2018 Superstar Shake-Up, and caused the match between Bayley and Sasha Banks to end in a no contest. At the inaugural all women's pay-per-view Evolution on October 28, The Riott Squad lost to Natalya, Bayley and Sasha Banks. On January 27, 2019, at Royal Rumble, Morgan participated in the women's Royal Rumble match, only to be the first to be eliminated after lasting 8 seconds, setting the record for the shortest time in the women's Royal Rumble match. Morgan and Logan competed in a six-team Elimination Chamber match for the inaugural WWE Women's Tag Team Championship at the namesake pay-per-view on February 17, where they were the third team eliminated by Nia Jax and Tamina. Morgan competed at WrestleMania 35 on April 7 in a women's battle royal match that was eventually won by Carmella.


title: Liv Morgan

text: On April 16, Morgan was moved to the SmackDown brand as part of the Superstar Shake-up, effectively dissolving The Riott Squad in the process. On the July 16 episode of "SmackDown Live", Morgan turned face when she confronted Charlotte Flair and faced her in a match, in which Morgan lost by submission.


title: Liv Morgan

text: On the October 14 episode of "Raw", Morgan was the final overall pick of the year's draft, being drafted back to the Raw brand. Throughout the month of December, vignettes aired promoting Morgan's return. Morgan returned to television on the December 30 episode of "Raw", during Bobby Lashley and Lana's storyline wedding, interrupting the proceedings and professing her love for Lana. After Lana subsequently attacked her, she aligned herself with Rusev, who had been feuding with Lana and Lashley, thus cementing her face turn. Morgan defeated Lana on the January 27, 2020, episode of "Raw", doing so once again the following week. After her feud with Lana ended, Morgan entered a feud with her former Riott Squad teammate Ruby Riott who turned on her upon returning. On the March 2 episode of Raw, Morgan defeated Riott with Sarah Logan as the special guest referee. At Elimination Chamber on March 8, Morgan entered her second Elimination chamber match, during which she was eliminated by eventual winner Shayna Baszler. On the WrestleMania 36 pre-show on April 5, Morgan defeated Natalya. After WrestleMania, Morgan continued her feud with Riott and defeated her on the April 20 and 27 episodes of Raw respectively.


title: Liv Morgan

text: After Morgan lost to Natalya on the June 22 episode of "Raw", Ruby Riott attempted to console Morgan backstage after her loss, which she rebuffed. On the August 3 episode of "Raw", Riott asked Morgan to join her in reforming the Riott Squad, only to be interrupted by The IIconics, who mocked the two; this led to a tag team match where Morgan and Riott defeated The IIconics. At Payback on August 30, Morgan and Riott (now officially known as The Riott Squad again) defeated The IIconics and once more the following night on Raw, forcing The IIconics to disband, per stipulation.


title: Liv Morgan

text: As part of the 2020 Draft in October, Morgan and Riott were drafted to the SmackDown brand. She won a fatal four-way match during her first night on SmackDown after the Draft to qualify for the women's team at Survivor Series on November 22, in which she and her brand partners lost. They challenged for a shot at the Women's Tag Team Championship on the first night of WrestleMania 37 on April 10, but failed to win the match. Riott was released by WWE on June 2, 2021, effectively disbanding The Riott Squad for the second time.


title: Liv Morgan

text: Morgan competed in the Money in the Bank ladder match at the eponymous event on July 18, but failed to win the match. At Extreme Rules on September 26, Morgan defeated Carmella in the pre-show.


title: Liv Morgan

text: As part of the 2021 Draft, Morgan was drafted to the Raw brand. In October, Morgan entered the Queen's Crown tournament, where she lost to Carmella in the first round. On the November 8 episode of "Raw", Morgan won a fatal 5-way match to earn a shot at the Raw Women's Championship, which was held by Becky Lynch. Morgan received her title match against Lynch on the December 6 episode of "Raw", but lost. Morgan failed to win the title in a rematch at Day 1 on January 1, 2022. She participated in the Royal Rumble match at the namesake event on January 19, entering at #6 but was eliminated by Brie Bella. At Elimination Chamber on February 19, Morgan entered the Elimination Chamber match for a Raw Women's Championship match at WrestleMania 38, eliminating Doudrop but was eliminated by Alexa Bliss. In March, Morgan began teaming with Rhea Ripley, challenging for the Women's Tag Team Championship in a fatal four-way tag team match on the second night of WrestleMania 38 on April 3 in a losing effort. On the April 18 episode of "Raw", they faced new champions Sasha Banks and Naomi for the titles, but lost, and after the match, Ripley would attack Morgan, ending their partnership. At Hell in a Cell on June 5, Morgan, AJ Styles and Finn Bálor lost to The Judgment Day (Edge, Damian Priest and Rhea Ripley) in a six-person mixed tag team match.


title: Liv Morgan

text: On the June 13 episode of "Raw", Morgan and Alexa Bliss defeated Doudrop and Nikki A.S.H. to qualify for the women's Money in the Bank ladder match. At the event on July 2, Morgan won the Money in the Bank contract, granting her a women's championship match at any time of her choosing. Later that night, following the SmackDown Women's Championship match between Natalya and Ronda Rousey, Morgan cashed in her contract on the latter to win the title, making her the third woman and fifth superstar to successfully cash-in the Money in the Bank contract the same night after winning it. A rematch between Morgan and Rousey was set for SummerSlam on July 30, where Morgan controversially retained the title; Morgan tapped out to Rousey's armbar, but the referee had counted Rousey's shoulders down, giving the pinfall win to Morgan. After the match, both Morgan and the referee were attacked by Rousey. At Clash at the Castle on September 3, Morgan retained the title against Shayna Baszler. Rousey won a fatal five-way elimination match on the September 9 episode of "SmackDown", earning a rematch against Morgan at Extreme Rules. The following week, Morgan challenged Rousey to an Extreme Rules match for the title, which Rousey accepted. At the event on October 8, Morgan lost the SmackDown Women's Championship back to Rousey, ending her reign at 98 days. While passing out in her match with Rousey, Liv smiled. Following the match she was found backstage in, what WWE described as, a dark place teasing a possible darker edge to her character moving forward.


title: Liv Morgan

text: Morgan made her video game debut as a playable character in "WWE 2K19", and later appeared in "WWE 2K20", "WWE 2K Battlegrounds", and "WWE 2K22".


title: Liv Morgan

text: On June 2022, it was announced that Morgan will make her first movie appeance in "The Kill Room", starring alongside Maya Hawke, Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman. In October, it was confirmed that Morgan would make a guest appearance on the second season of "Chucky".


title: Liv Morgan

text: In November 2020, Daddio confirmed in a screenshot on Twitter that she had taken up a course to become a real estate agent at the Bob Hogue School of Real Estate.


title: Liv Morgan

text: In February 2021, it was revealed that Daddio was in a relationship with fellow wrestler Bo Dallas, with the two living on a farm and starting a real estate business to prepare for life after professional wrestling.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish "conquistador" who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of what is now mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish explorers and conquistadors who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Born in Medellín, Spain, to a family of lesser nobility, Cortés chose to pursue adventure and riches in the New World. He went to Hispaniola and later to Cuba, where he received an "encomienda" (the right to the labor of certain subjects). For a short time, he served as "alcalde" (magistrate) of the second Spanish town founded on the island. In 1519, he was elected captain of the third expedition to the mainland, which he partly funded. His enmity with the Governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, resulted in the recall of the expedition at the last moment, an order which Cortés ignored.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Arriving on the continent, Cortés executed a successful strategy of allying with some indigenous people against others. He also used a native woman, Doña Marina, as an interpreter. She later bore his first son. When the Governor of Cuba sent emissaries to arrest Cortés, he fought them and won, using the extra troops as reinforcements. Cortés wrote letters directly to the king asking to be acknowledged for his successes instead of being punished for mutiny. After he overthrew the Aztec Empire, Cortés was awarded the title of "Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca", while the more prestigious title of Viceroy was given to a high-ranking nobleman, Antonio de Mendoza. In 1541 Cortés returned to Spain, where he died six years later of natural causes.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés himself used the form "Hernando" or "Fernando" for his first name, as seen in the contemporary archive documents, his signature and the title of an early portrait. William Hickling Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" (1843) also refers to him as Hernando Cortés. At some point writers began using the shortened form of "Hernán" more generally.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In addition to the illustration by the German artist Christoph Weiditz in his "Trachtenbuch", there are three known portraits of Hernán Cortés which were likely made during his lifetime, though only copies of them have survived. All of these portraits show Cortés in the later years of his life. The account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire written by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, gives a detailed description of Hernán Cortés's physical appearance:


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés was born in 1485 in the town of Medellín, then a village in the Kingdom of Castile, now a municipality of the modern-day province of Badajoz in Extremadura, Spain. His father, Martín Cortés de Monroy, born in 1449 to Rodrigo or Ruy Fernández de Monroy and his wife María Cortés, was an infantry captain of distinguished ancestry but slender means. Hernán's mother was Catalína Pizarro Altamirano.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Through his mother, Hernán was second cousin once removed of Francisco Pizarro, who later conquered the Inca Empire of modern-day Peru, and not to be confused with another Francisco Pizarro, who joined Cortés to conquer the Aztecs. (His maternal grandmother, Leonor Sánchez Pizarro Altamirano, was first cousin of Pizarro's father Gonzalo Pizarro y Rodriguez.) Through his father, Hernán was related to Nicolás de Ovando, the third Governor of Hispaniola. His paternal great-grandfather was Rodrigo de Monroy y Almaraz, 5th Lord of Monroy.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: According to his biographer and chaplain, Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés was pale and sickly as a child. At the age of 14, he was sent to study Latin under an uncle in Salamanca. Later historians have misconstrued this personal tutoring as time enrolled at the University of Salamanca.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: After two years, Cortés returned home to Medellín, much to the irritation of his parents, who had hoped to see him equipped for a profitable legal career. However, those two years in Salamanca, plus his long period of training and experience as a notary, first in Valladolid and later in Hispaniola, gave him knowledge of the legal codes of Castile that he applied to help justify his unauthorized conquest of Mexico.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: At this point in his life, Cortés was described by Gómara as ruthless, haughty, and mischievous. The 16-year-old youth had returned home to feel constrained life in his small provincial town. By this time, news of the exciting discoveries of Christopher Columbus in the New World was streaming back to Spain.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Plans were made for Cortés to sail to the Americas with a family acquaintance and distant relative, Nicolás de Ovando, the newly appointed Governor of Hispaniola. (This island is now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Cortés suffered an injury and was prevented from traveling. He spent the next year wandering the country, probably spending most of his time in Spain's southern ports of Cadiz, Palos, Sanlucar, and Seville. He finally left for Hispaniola in 1504 and became a colonist.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés reached Hispaniola in a ship commanded by Alonso Quintero, who tried to deceive his superiors and reach the New World before them in order to secure personal advantages. Quintero's mutinous conduct may have served as a model for Cortés in his subsequent career.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Upon his arrival in 1504 in Santo Domingo, the capital of Hispaniola, the 18-year-old Cortés registered as a citizen; this entitled him to a building plot and land to farm. Soon afterward, Governor Nicolás de Ovando granted him an "encomienda" and appointed him as a notary of the town of Azua de Compostela. His next five years seemed to help establish him in the colony; in 1506, Cortés took part in the conquests of Hispaniola and Cuba. The expedition leader awarded him a large estate of land and Taíno slaves for his efforts.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1511, Cortés accompanied Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, an aide of the Governor of Hispaniola, in his expedition to conquer Cuba. Velázquez was appointed Governor of New Spain. At the age of 26, Cortés was made clerk to the treasurer with the responsibility of ensuring that the Crown received the "quinto", or customary one fifth of the profits from the expedition.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Velázquez was so impressed with Cortés that he secured a high political position for him in the colony. He became secretary for Governor Velázquez. Cortés was twice appointed municipal magistrate ("alcalde") of Santiago. In Cuba, Cortés became a man of substance with an "encomienda" to provide Indian labor for his mines and cattle. This new position of power also made him the new source of leadership, which opposing forces in the colony could then turn to. In 1514, Cortés led a group which demanded that more Indians be assigned to the settlers.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: As time went on, relations between Cortés and Governor Velázquez became strained. Cortés found time to become romantically involved with Catalina Xuárez (or Juárez), the sister-in-law of Governor Velázquez. Part of Velázquez's displeasure seems to have been based on a belief that Cortés was trifling with Catalina's affections. Cortés was temporarily distracted by one of Catalina's sisters but finally married Catalina, reluctantly, under pressure from Governor Velázquez. However, by doing so, he hoped to secure the good will of both her family and that of Velázquez.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: It was not until he had been almost 15 years in the Indies that Cortés began to look beyond his substantial status as mayor of the capital of Cuba and as a man of affairs in the thriving colony. He missed the first two expeditions, under the orders of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba and then Juan de Grijalva, sent by Diego Velázquez to Mexico in 1518. News reached Velázquez that Juan de Grijalva had established a colony on the mainland where there was a bonanza of silver and gold, and Velázquez decided to send him help. Cortés was appointed Captain-General of this new expedition in October 1518, but was advised to move fast before Velázquez changed his mind.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: With Cortés's experience as an administrator, knowledge gained from many failed expeditions, and his impeccable rhetoric he was able to gather six ships and 300 men, within a month. Velázquez's jealousy exploded and he decided to put the expedition in other hands. However, Cortés quickly gathered more men and ships in other Cuban ports.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1518, Velázquez put Cortés in command of an expedition to explore and secure the interior of Mexico for colonization. At the last minute, due to the old argument between the two, Velázquez changed his mind and revoked Cortés's charter. Cortés ignored the orders and, in an act of open mutiny, went anyway in February 1519. He stopped in Trinidad, Cuba, to hire more soldiers and obtain more horses. Accompanied by about 11 ships, 500 men (including seasoned slaves), 13 horses, and a small number of cannons, Cortés landed on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mayan territory. There he encountered Geronimo de Aguilar, a Spanish Franciscan priest who had survived a shipwreck followed by a period in captivity with the Maya, before escaping. Aguilar had learned the Chontal Maya language and was able to translate for Cortés.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés's military experience was almost nonexistent, but he proved to be an effective leader of his small army and won early victories over the coastal Indians. In March 1519, Cortés formally claimed the land for the Spanish crown. Then he proceeded to Tabasco, where he met with resistance and won a battle against the natives. He received twenty young indigenous women from the vanquished natives, and he converted them all to Christianity.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Among these women was La Malinche, his future mistress and mother of his son Martín. Malinche knew both the Nahuatl language and Chontal Maya, thus enabling Cortés to communicate with the Aztecs through Aguilar. At San Juan de Ulúa on Easter Sunday 1519, Cortés met with Moctezuma II's Aztec Empire governors Tendile and Pitalpitoque.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In July 1519, his men took over Veracruz. By this act, Cortés dismissed the authority of the Governor of Cuba to place himself directly under the orders of King Charles. To eliminate any ideas of retreat, Cortés scuttled his ships.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In Veracruz, he met some of the tributaries of the Aztecs and asked them to arrange a meeting with Moctezuma II, the "tlatoani" (ruler) of the Aztec Empire. Moctezuma repeatedly turned down the meeting, but Cortés was determined. Leaving a hundred men in Veracruz, Cortés marched on Tenochtitlán in mid-August 1519, along with 600 soldiers, 15 horsemen, 15 cannons, and hundreds of indigenous carriers and warriors.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: On the way to Tenochtitlán, Cortés made alliances with indigenous peoples such as the Totonacs of Cempoala and the Nahuas of Tlaxcala. The Otomis initially, and then the Tlaxcalans fought with the Spanish in a series of three battles from 2 to 5 September 1519, and at one point, Diaz remarked, "they surrounded us on every side". After Cortés continued to release prisoners with messages of peace, and realizing the Spanish were enemies of Moctezuma, Xicotencatl the Elder and Maxixcatzin persuaded the Tlaxcalan warleader, Xicotencatl the Younger, that it would be better to ally with the newcomers than to kill them.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In October 1519, Cortés and his men, accompanied by about 1,000 Tlaxcalteca, marched to Cholula, the second-largest city in central Mexico. Cortés, either in a pre-meditated effort to instill fear upon the Aztecs waiting for him at Tenochtitlan or (as he later claimed, when he was being investigated) wishing to make an example when he feared native treachery, massacred thousands of unarmed members of the nobility gathered at the central plaza, then partially burned the city.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: By the time he arrived in Tenochtitlán, the Spaniards had a large army. On November 8, 1519, they were peacefully received by Moctezuma II. Moctezuma deliberately let Cortés enter the Aztec capital, the island city of Tenochtitlán, hoping to get to know their weaknesses better and to crush them later.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Moctezuma gave lavish gifts of gold to the Spaniards which, rather than placating them, excited their ambitions for plunder. In his letters to King Charles, Cortés claimed to have learned at this point that he was considered by the Aztecs to be either an emissary of the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl or Quetzalcoatl himself – a belief which has been contested by a few modern historians. But quickly Cortés learned that several Spaniards on the coast had been killed by Aztecs while supporting the Totonacs, and decided to take Moctezuma as a hostage in his palace, indirectly ruling Tenochtitlán through him.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Meanwhile, Velázquez sent another expedition, led by Pánfilo de Narváez, to oppose Cortés, arriving in Mexico in April 1520 with 1,100 men. Cortés left 200 men in Tenochtitlán and took the rest to confront Narváez. He overcame Narváez, despite his numerical inferiority, and convinced the rest of Narváez's men to join him. In Mexico, one of Cortés's lieutenants Pedro de Alvarado, committed the "massacre in the Great Temple", triggering a local rebellion.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés speedily returned to Tenochtitlán. On July 1, 1520, Moctezuma was killed (he was stoned to death by his own people, as reported in Spanish accounts; although some claim he was murdered by the Spaniards once they realized his inability to placate the locals). Faced with a hostile population, Cortés decided to flee for Tlaxcala. During the "Noche Triste" (June 30 – July 1, 1520), the Spaniards managed a narrow escape from Tenochtitlán across the Tlacopan causeway, while their rearguard was being massacred. Much of the treasure looted by Cortés was lost (as well as his artillery) during this panicked escape from Tenochtitlán.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: After a battle in Otumba, they managed to reach Tlaxcala, having lost 870 men. With the assistance of their allies, Cortés's men finally prevailed with reinforcements arriving from Cuba. Cortés began a policy of attrition towards Tenochtitlán, cutting off supplies and subduing the Aztecs' allied cities. During the siege he would construct brigantines in the lake and slowly destroy blocks of the city to avoid fighting in an urban setting. The Mexicas would fall back to Tlatelolco and even succeed in ambushing the pursuing Spanish forces, inflicting heavy losses, but would ultimately be the last portion of the island that resisted the conquistadores. The siege of Tenochtitlán ended with Spanish victory and the destruction of the city.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In January 1521, Cortés countered a conspiracy against him, headed by Antonio de Villafana, who was hanged for the offense. Finally, with the capture of Cuauhtémoc, the "tlatoani" (ruler) of Tenochtitlán, on August 13, 1521, the Aztec Empire was captured, and Cortés was able to claim it for Spain, thus renaming the city Mexico City. From 1521 to 1524, Cortés personally governed Mexico.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Many historical sources have conveyed an impression that Cortés was unjustly treated by the Spanish Crown, and that he received nothing but ingratitude for his role in establishing New Spain. This picture is the one Cortés presents in his letters and in the later biography written by Francisco López de Gómara. However, there may be more to the picture than this. Cortés's own sense of accomplishment, entitlement, and vanity may have played a part in his deteriorating position with the king:


title: Hernán Cortés

text: King Charles appointed Cortés as governor, captain general and chief justice of the newly conquered territory, dubbed "New Spain of the Ocean Sea". But also, much to the dismay of Cortés, four royal officials were appointed at the same time to assist him in his governing – in effect, submitting him to close observation and administration. Cortés initiated the construction of Mexico City, destroying Aztec temples and buildings and then rebuilding on the Aztec ruins what soon became the most important European city in the Americas.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés managed the founding of new cities and appointed men to extend Spanish rule to all of New Spain, imposing the "encomienda" system in 1524. He reserved many encomiendas for himself and for his retinue, which they considered just rewards for their accomplishment in conquering central Mexico. However, later arrivals and members of factions antipathetic to Cortés complained of the favoritism that excluded them.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1523, the Crown (possibly influenced by Cortés's enemy, Bishop Fonseca), sent a military force under the command of Francisco de Garay to conquer and settle the northern part of Mexico, the region of Pánuco. This was another setback for Cortés who mentioned this in his fourth letter to the King in which he describes himself as the victim of a conspiracy by his archenemies Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, Diego Columbus and Bishop Fonseca as well as Francisco Garay. The influence of Garay was effectively stopped by this appeal to the King who sent out a decree forbidding Garay to interfere in the politics of New Spain, causing him to give up without a fight.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Although Cortés had flouted the authority of Diego Velázquez in sailing to the mainland and then leading an expedition of conquest, Cortés's spectacular success was rewarded by the crown with a coat of arms, a mark of high honor, following the conqueror's request. The document granting the coat of arms summarizes Cortés's accomplishments in the conquest of Mexico. The proclamation of the king says in part:


title: Hernán Cortés

text: We, respecting the many labors, dangers, and adventures which you underwent as stated above, and so that there might remain a perpetual memorial of you and your services and that you and your descendants might be more fully honored ... it is our will that besides your coat of arms of your lineage, which you have, you may have and bear as your coat of arms, known and recognized, a shield ...


title: Hernán Cortés

text: The grant specifies the iconography of the coat of arms, the central portion divided into quadrants. In the upper portion, there is a "black eagle with two heads on a white field, which are the arms of the empire". Below that is a "golden lion on a red field, in memory of the fact that you, the said Hernando Cortés, by your industry and effort brought matters to the state described above" (i.e., the conquest). The specificity of the other two quadrants is linked directly to Mexico, with one quadrant showing three crowns representing the three Aztec emperors of the conquest era, Moctezuma, Cuitlahuac, and Cuauhtemoc and the other showing the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Encircling the central shield are symbols of the seven city-states around the lake and their lords that Cortés defeated, with the lords "to be shown as prisoners bound with a chain which shall be closed with a lock beneath the shield".


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés's wife Catalina Súarez arrived in New Spain around summer 1522, along with her sister and brother. His marriage to Catalina was at this point extremely awkward, since she was a kinswoman of the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, whose authority Cortés had thrown off and who was therefore now his enemy. Catalina lacked the noble title of "doña," so at this point his marriage with her no longer raised his status. Their marriage had been childless. Since Cortés had sired children with a variety of indigenous women, including a son around 1522 by his cultural translator, Doña Marina, Cortés knew he was capable of fathering children. Cortés's only male heir at this point was illegitimate, but nonetheless named after Cortés's father, Martín Cortés. This son Martín Cortés was also popularly called "El Mestizo".


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Catalina Suárez died under mysterious circumstances the night of November 1–2, 1522. There were accusations at the time that Cortés had murdered his wife. There was an investigation into her death, interviewing a variety of household residents and others. The documentation of the investigation was published in the nineteenth century in Mexico and these archival documents were uncovered in the twentieth century. The death of Catalina Suárez produced a scandal and investigation, but Cortés was now free to marry someone of high status more appropriate to his wealth and power. In 1526, he built an imposing residence for himself, the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca, in a region close to the capital where he had extensive encomienda holdings. In 1529 he had been accorded the noble designation of "don", but more importantly was given the noble title of Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca and married the Spanish noblewoman Doña Juana de Zúñiga. The marriage produced three children, including another son, who was also named Martín. As the first-born legitimate son, Don Martín Cortés y Zúñiga was now Cortés's heir and succeeded him as holder of the title and estate of the Marquessate of the Valley of Oaxaca. Cortés's legitimate daughters were Doña Maria, Doña Catalina, and Doña Juana.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Since the conversion to Christianity of indigenous peoples was an essential and integral part of the extension of Spanish power, making formal provisions for that conversion once the military conquest was completed was an important task for Cortés. During the Age of Discovery, the Catholic Church had seen early attempts at conversion in the Caribbean islands by Spanish friars, particularly the mendicant orders. Cortés made a request to the Spanish monarch to send Franciscan and Dominican friars to Mexico to convert the vast indigenous populations to Christianity. In his fourth letter to the king, Cortés pleaded for friars rather than diocesan or secular priests because those clerics were in his view a serious danger to the Indians' conversion.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: If these people [Indians] were now to see the affairs of the Church and the service of God in the hands of canons or other dignitaries, and saw them indulge in the vices and profanities now common in Spain, knowing that such men were the ministers of God, it would bring our Faith into much harm that I believe any further preaching would be of no avail.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: He wished the mendicants to be the main evangelists. Mendicant friars did not usually have full priestly powers to perform all the sacraments needed for conversion of the Indians and growth of the neophytes in the Christian faith, so Cortés laid out a solution to this to the king.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Your Majesty should likewise beseech His Holiness [the pope] to grant these powers to the two principal persons in the religious orders that are to come here, and that they should be his delegates, one from the Order of St. Francis and the other from the Order of St. Dominic. They should bring the most extensive powers Your Majesty is able to obtain, for, because these lands are so far from the Church of Rome, and we, the Christians who now reside here and shall do so in the future, are so far from the proper remedies of our consciences and, as we are human, so subject to sin, it is essential that His Holiness should be generous with us and grant to these persons most extensive powers, to be handed down to persons actually in residence here whether it be given to the general of each order or to his provincials.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: The Franciscans arrived in May 1524, a symbolically powerful group of twelve known as the Twelve Apostles of Mexico, led by Fray Martín de Valencia. Franciscan Geronimo de Mendieta claimed that Cortés's most important deed was the way he met this first group of Franciscans. The conqueror himself was said to have met the friars as they approached the capital, kneeling at the feet of the friars who had walked from the coast. This story was told by Franciscans to demonstrate Cortés piety and humility and was a powerful message to all, including the Indians, that Cortés's earthly power was subordinate to the spiritual power of the friars. However, one of the first twelve Franciscans, Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinia does not mention it in his history. Cortés and the Franciscans had a particularly strong alliance in Mexico, with Franciscans seeing him as "the new Moses" for conquering Mexico and opening it to Christian evangelization. In Motolinia's 1555 response to Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas, he praises Cortés.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: And as to those who murmur against the Marqués del Valle [Cortés], God rest him, and who try to blacken and obscure his deeds, I believe that before God their deeds are not as acceptable as those of the Marqués. Although as a human he was a sinner, he had faith and works of a good Christian, and a great desire to employ his life and property in widening and augmenting the fair of Jesus Christ, and dying for the conversion of these gentiles ... Who has loved and defended the Indians of this new world like Cortés? ... Through this captain, God opened the door for us to preach his holy gospel and it was he who caused the Indians to revere the holy sacraments and respect the ministers of the church.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In Fray Bernardino de Sahagún's 1585 revision of the conquest narrative first codified as Book XII of the Florentine Codex, there are laudatory references to Cortés that do not appear in the earlier text from the indigenous perspective. Whereas Book XII of the Florentine Codex concludes with an account of Spaniards' search for gold, in Sahagún's 1585 revised account, he ends with praise of Cortés for requesting the Franciscans be sent to Mexico to convert the Indians.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: From 1524 to 1526, Cortés headed an expedition to Honduras where he defeated Cristóbal de Olid, who had claimed Honduras as his own under the influence of the Governor of Cuba Diego Velázquez. Fearing that Cuauhtémoc might head an insurrection in Mexico, he brought him with him to Honduras. In a controversial move, Cuauhtémoc was executed during the journey. Raging over Olid's treason, Cortés issued a decree to arrest Velázquez, whom he was sure was behind Olid's treason. This, however, only served to further estrange the Crown of Castile and the Council of Indies, both of which were already beginning to feel anxious about Cortés's rising power.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés's fifth letter to King Charles attempts to justify his conduct, concludes with a bitter attack on "various and powerful rivals and enemies" who have "obscured the eyes of your Majesty". Charles, who was also Holy Roman Emperor, had little time for distant colonies (much of Charles's reign was taken up with wars with France, the German Protestants and the expanding Ottoman Empire), except insofar as they contributed to finance his wars. In 1521, year of the Conquest, Charles was attending to matters in his German domains and Bishop Adrian of Utrecht functioned as regent in Spain.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Velázquez and Fonseca persuaded the regent to appoint a commissioner (a "Juez de residencia", Luis Ponce de León) with powers to investigate Cortés's conduct and even arrest him. Cortés was once quoted as saying that it was "more difficult to contend against [his] own countrymen than against the Aztecs." Governor Diego Velázquez continued to be a thorn in his side, teaming up with Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, chief of the Spanish colonial department, to undermine him in the Council of the Indies.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: A few days after Cortés's return from his expedition, Ponce de León suspended Cortés from his office of governor of New Spain. The Licentiate then fell ill and died shortly after his arrival, appointing Marcos de Aguilar as "alcalde mayor". The aged Aguilar also became sick and appointed Alonso de Estrada governor, who was confirmed in his functions by a royal decree in August 1527. Cortés, suspected of poisoning them, refrained from taking over the government.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Estrada sent Diego de Figueroa to the south. De Figueroa raided graveyards and extorted contributions, meeting his end when the ship carrying these treasures sank. Albornoz persuaded Alonso de Estrada to release Gonzalo de Salazar and Chirinos. When Cortés complained angrily after one of his adherents' hands was cut off, Estrada ordered him exiled. Cortés sailed for Spain in 1528 to appeal to King Charles.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1528, Cortés returned to Spain to appeal to the justice of his master, Charles V. Juan Altamirano and Alonso Valiente stayed in Mexico and acted as Cortés's representatives during his absence. Cortés presented himself with great splendor before Charles V's court. By this time Charles had returned and Cortés forthrightly responded to his enemy's charges. Denying he had held back on gold due the crown, he showed that he had contributed more than the quinto (one-fifth) required. Indeed, he had spent lavishly to build the new capital of Mexico City on the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, leveled during the siege that brought down the Aztec empire.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: He was received by Charles with every distinction, and decorated with the order of Santiago. In return for his efforts in expanding the still young Spanish Empire, Cortés was rewarded in 1529 by being accorded the noble title of "don" but more importantly named the ""Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca"" (Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca and married the Spanish noblewoman Doña Juana Zúñiga, after the 1522 death of his much less distinguished first wife, Catalina Suárez. The noble title and senorial estate of the Marquesado was passed down to his descendants until 1811. The Oaxaca Valley was one of the wealthiest regions of New Spain, and Cortés had 23,000 vassals in 23 named encomiendas in perpetuity.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Although confirmed in his land holdings and vassals, he was not reinstated as governor and was never again given any important office in the administration of New Spain. During his travel to Spain, his property was mismanaged by abusive colonial administrators. He sided with local natives in a lawsuit. The natives documented the abuses in the Huexotzinco Codex.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: The entailed estate and title passed to his legitimate son Don Martín Cortés upon Cortés's death in 1547, who became the Second Marquess. Don Martín's association with the so-called Encomenderos' Conspiracy endangered the entailed holdings, but they were restored and remained the continuing reward for Hernán Cortés's family through the generations.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés returned to Mexico in 1530 with new titles and honors. Although Cortés still retained military authority and permission to continue his conquests, Don Antonio de Mendoza was appointed in 1535 as a viceroy to administer New Spain's civil affairs. This division of power led to continual dissension, and caused the failure of several enterprises in which Cortés was engaged. On returning to Mexico, Cortés found the country in a state of anarchy. There was a strong suspicion in court circles of an intended rebellion by Cortés.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: After reasserting his position and reestablishing some sort of order, Cortés retired to his estates at Cuernavaca, about 30 miles (48 km) south of Mexico City. There he concentrated on the building of his palace and on Pacific exploration. Remaining in Mexico between 1530 and 1541, Cortés quarreled with Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán and disputed the right to explore the territory that is today California with Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés acquired several silver mines in Zumpango del Rio in 1534. By the early 1540s, he owned 20 silver mines in Sultepec, 12 in Taxco, and 3 in Zacualpan. Earlier, Cortés had claimed the silver in the Tamazula area.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1536, Cortés explored the northwestern part of Mexico and discovered the Baja California peninsula. Cortés also spent time exploring the Pacific coast of Mexico. The Gulf of California was originally named the "Sea of Cortés" by its discoverer Francisco de Ulloa in 1539. This was the last major expedition by Cortés.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: After his exploration of Baja California, Cortés returned to Spain in 1541, hoping to confound his angry civilians, who had brought many lawsuits against him (for debts, abuse of power, etc.). On his return he went through a crowd to speak to the emperor, who demanded of him who he was. "I am a man," replied Cortés, "who has given you more provinces than your ancestors left you cities."


title: Hernán Cortés

text: The emperor finally permitted Cortés to join him and his fleet commanded by Andrea Doria at the great expedition against Algiers in the Barbary Coast in 1541, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. During this campaign, Cortés was almost drowned in a storm that hit his fleet while he was pursuing the Pasha of Algiers.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Having spent a great deal of his own money to finance expeditions, he was now heavily in debt. In February 1544 he made a claim on the royal treasury, but was ignored for the next three years. Disgusted, he decided to return to Mexico in 1547. When he reached Seville, he was stricken with dysentery. He died in Castilleja de la Cuesta, Seville province, on December 2, 1547, from a case of pleurisy at the age of 62.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: He left his many mestizo and white children well cared for in his will, along with every one of their mothers. He requested in his will that his remains eventually be buried in Mexico. Before he died he had the Pope remove the "natural" status of four of his children (legitimizing them in the eyes of the church), including Martin, the son he had with Doña Marina (also known as La Malinche), said to be his favourite. His daughter, Doña Catalina, however, died shortly after her father's death.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: After his death, his body was moved more than eight times for several reasons. On December 4, 1547, he was buried in the mausoleum of the Duke of Medina in the church of San Isidoro del Campo, Sevilla. Three years later (1550) due to the space being required by the duke, his body was moved to the altar of Santa Catarina in the same church. In his testament, Cortés asked for his body to be buried in the monastery he had ordered to be built in Coyoacan in México, ten years after his death, but the monastery was never built. So in 1566, his body was sent to New Spain and buried in the church of San Francisco de Texcoco, where his mother and one of his sisters were buried.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1629, Cortes's last male descendant Don Pedro Cortés, fourth Marquez del Valle, died. The viceroy decided to move the bones of Cortés along with those of his descendant to the Franciscan church in México. This was delayed for nine years, while his body stayed in the main room of the palace of the viceroy. Eventually it was moved to the Sagrario of Franciscan church, where it stayed for 87 years. In 1716, it was moved to another place in the same church. In 1794, his bones were moved to the "Hospital de Jesus" (founded by Cortés), where a statue by Tolsá and a mausoleum were made. There was a public ceremony and all the churches in the city rang their bells.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1823, after the independence of México, it seemed imminent that his body would be desecrated, so the mausoleum was removed, the statue and the coat of arms were sent to Palermo, Sicily, to be protected by the Duke of Terranova. The bones were hidden, and everyone thought that they had been sent out of México. In 1836, his bones were moved to another place in the same building.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: It was not until November 24, 1946 that they were rediscovered, thanks to the discovery of a secret document by Lucas Alamán. His bones were put in the charge of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). The remains were authenticated by INAH. They were then restored to the same place, this time with a bronze inscription and his coat of arms. When the bones were first rediscovered, the supporters of the Hispanic tradition in Mexico were excited, but one supporter of an indigenist vision of Mexico "proposed that the remains be publicly burned in front of the statue of Cuauhtemoc, and the ashes flung into the air". Following the discovery and authentication of Cortés's remains, there was a discovery of what were described as the bones of Cuauhtémoc, resulting in a "battle of the bones".


title: Hernán Cortés

text: On December 16, 1560, the lawsuits related to vassals of the Cortes estate were resolved by a royal order issued by Philip II.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés is commemorated in the scientific name of a subspecies of Mexican lizard, "Phrynosoma orbiculare cortezii".


title: Hernán Cortés

text: There are relatively few sources to the early life of Cortés; his fame arose from his participation in the conquest of Mexico and it was only after this that people became interested in reading and writing about him.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Probably the best source is his letters to the king which he wrote during the campaign in Mexico, but they are written with the specific purpose of putting his efforts in a favourable light and so must be read critically. Another main source is the biography written by Cortés's private chaplain Lopez de Gómara, which was written in Spain several years after the conquest. Gómara never set foot in the Americas and knew only what Cortés had told him, and he had an affinity for knightly romantic stories which he incorporated richly in the biography. The third major source is written as a reaction to what its author calls "the lies of Gomara", the eyewitness account written by the Conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo does not paint Cortés as a romantic hero but rather tries to emphasize that Cortés's men should also be remembered as important participants in the undertakings in Mexico.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In the years following the conquest more critical accounts of the Spanish arrival in Mexico were written. The Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote his "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies" which raises strong accusations of brutality and heinous violence towards the Indians; accusations against both the conquistadors in general and Cortés in particular. The accounts of the conquest given in the Florentine Codex by the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún and his native informants are also less than flattering towards Cortés. The scarcity of these sources has led to a sharp division in the description of Cortés's personality and a tendency to describe him as either a vicious and ruthless person or a noble and honorable cavalier.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In México there are few representations of Cortés. However, many landmarks still bear his name, from the castle Palacio de Cortés in the city of Cuernavaca to some street names throughout the republic.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: The pass between the volcanoes Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl where Cortés took his soldiers on their march to Mexico City. It is known as the Paso de Cortés.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: The muralist Diego Rivera painted several representation of him but the most famous, depicts him as a powerful and ominous figure along with Malinche in a mural in the National Palace in Mexico City.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: In 1981, President Lopez Portillo tried to bring Cortés to public recognition. First, he made public a copy of the bust of Cortés made by Manuel Tolsá in the Hospital de Jesús Nazareno with an official ceremony, but soon a nationalist group tried to destroy it, so it had to be taken out of the public. Today the copy of the bust is in the "Hospital de Jesús Nazareno" while the original is in Naples, Italy, in the Villa Pignatelli.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Later, another monument, known as "Monumento al Mestizaje" by Julián Martínez y M. Maldonado (1982) was commissioned by Mexican president José López Portillo to be put in the "Zócalo" (Main square) of Coyoacan, near the place of his country house, but it had to be removed to a little known park, the Jardín Xicoténcatl, Barrio de San Diego Churubusco, to quell protests. The statue depicts Cortés, Malinche and their son Martín.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: There is another statue by Sebastián Aparicio, in Cuernavaca, was in a hotel "El casino de la selva". Cortés is barely recognizable, so it sparked little interest. The hotel was closed to make a commercial center, and the statue was put out of public display by Costco the builder of the commercial center.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Hernán Cortés is a character in the opera "La Conquista" (2005) by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, which depicts the major episodes of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: Cortés's personal account of the conquest of Mexico is narrated in his five letters addressed to Charles V. These five letters, the "cartas de relación", are Cortés's only surviving writings. See "Letters and Dispatches of Cortés", translated by George Folsom (New York, 1843); Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" (Boston, 1843); and Sir Arthur Helps's "Life of Hernando Cortes" (London, 1871).


title: Hernán Cortés

text: His first letter was considered lost, and the one from the municipality of Veracruz has to take its place. It was published for the first time in volume IV of "Documentos para la Historia de España", and subsequently reprinted.


title: Hernán Cortés

text: The "Segunda Carta de Relacion", bearing the date of October 30, 1520, appeared in print at Seville in 1522. The third letter, dated May 15, 1522, appeared at Seville in 1523. The fourth, October 20, 1524, was printed at Toledo in 1525. The fifth, on the Honduras expedition, is contained in volume IV of the "Documentos para la Historia de España".


title: Hernán Cortés

text: He married twice: firstly in Cuba to Catalina Suárez Marcaida, who died at Coyoacán in 1522 without issue, and secondly in 1529 to "doña" Juana Ramírez de Arellano de Zúñiga, daughter of "don" Carlos Ramírez de Arellano, 2nd Count of Aguilar and wife the Countess "doña" Juana de Zúñiga, and had:


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Rodney James Alcala (born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor; August 23, 1943 – July 24, 2021), dubbed the Dating Game Killer, was an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for five murders committed in the state between 1977 and 1979, and received an additional sentence of 25 years to life after pleading guilty to two homicides committed in New York in 1971 and 1977. While he has been conclusively linked to eight murders, Alcala's true number of victims remains unknown and could be much higher – authorities believe the actual number is as high as 130.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala compiled a collection of more than 1,000 photographs of women, teenage girls, and boys, many in sexually explicit poses. In 2016, he was charged with the 1977 murder of a woman identified in one of his photos. Alcala is known to have assaulted one other photographic subject, and police have speculated that others could be rape or murder victims as well.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Prosecutors have said that Alcala "toyed" with his victims, strangling them until they lost consciousness, then waiting until they revived, sometimes repeating this process several times before finally killing them. One police detective described Alcala as "a killing machine," and others have compared him to Ted Bundy.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala is often referred to as The Dating Game Killer because of his 1978 appearance on the television show "The Dating Game" in the midst of his murder spree.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Rodney Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor in San Antonio, Texas, to a Mexican-American couple, Raoul Alcala Buquor and Anna Maria Gutierrez. In 1951, Alcala's father moved the family to Mexico, then abandoned them three years later. In 1954, when Alcala was about 11 years old, his mother moved him and his two sisters to suburban Los Angeles.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In 1961, at the age of 17, Alcala joined the United States Army and served as a clerk. In 1964, after what was described as a nervous breakdown—during which he went AWOL and hitchhiked from Fort Bragg to his mother's house—he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder by a military psychiatrist and discharged on medical grounds.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: After leaving the army, Alcala graduated from the UCLA School of Fine Arts and later studied film under Roman Polanski at New York University.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala committed his first known crime on September 25, 1968, when an eyewitness in Los Angeles called police after watching him lure an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro into his Hollywood apartment. When the police arrived, the girl was found alive, having been raped and beaten with a steel bar, but Alcala had fled. To evade the resulting arrest warrant, Alcala left the state and enrolled in the NYU film school, using the name "John Berger." In 1971, he obtained a counseling job at a New Hampshire arts camp for children using a slightly different alias, "John Burger." In June 1971, Cornelia Michel Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, was found raped and strangled in her Manhattan apartment. Her murder remained unsolved until 2011.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: The FBI added Alcala to its list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives in early 1971. A few months later, two children attending the arts camp noticed his photo on an FBI poster at the post office. Alcala was arrested and extradited to California. By then, Shapiro's parents had relocated their entire family to Mexico and refused to allow her to testify at Alcala's trial. Since the authorities were unwilling to charge him with rape and attempted murder without their primary witness, Alcala was convicted of child molestation and sentenced to three years.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala was paroled in 1974 after 17 months. Less than two months after his release, he was re-arrested for assaulting a 13-year-old girl identified in court records as "Julie J.," who had accepted what she thought would be a ride to school. Alcala was again paroled after serving two years.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: After Alcala's second release in 1977, his Los Angeles parole officer took the unusual step of permitting a repeat offender—and known flight risk—to travel to New York City. NYPD cold-case investigators now believe that a week after arriving in Manhattan, Alcala killed Ellen Jane Hover, 23-year-old daughter of Herman Hover, the owner of the popular Hollywood nightclub Ciro's, and goddaughter of Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Her remains were found buried under heavy rocks on a hillside overlooking the Hudson River, about half a mile west of the Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown in Westchester County.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In 1978, Alcala worked briefly at the "Los Angeles Times" as a typesetter, and was interviewed by members of the Hillside Strangler task force as part of their investigation of known sex offenders. Although Alcala was ruled out as the Hillside Strangler, he was arrested and served a brief sentence for marijuana possession.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: During this period, Alcala convinced hundreds of young men and women that he was a professional fashion photographer, and photographed them for his "portfolio." A "Times" co-worker later recalled that Alcala shared his photos with workmates. "I thought it was weird, but I was young; I didn't know anything," she said. "When I asked why he took the photos, he said their moms asked him to. I remember the girls were naked."


title: Rodney Alcala

text: "He said he was a professional, so in my mind I was being a model for him," said a woman who allowed Alcala to photograph her in 1979. The portfolio also included "... spread after spread of [naked] teenage boys," she said. Most of the photos are sexually explicit, and most of the subjects remain unidentified. Police fear that some of the subjects may be additional cold-case victims. In 1979, according to later trial testimony, Alcala knocked unconscious and raped 15-year-old Monique Hoyt while she was posing for photographs.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In 1978, Alcala was a contestant on the popular game show "The Dating Game". Host Jim Lange introduced him as a "successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed. Between takes you might find him skydiving or motorcycling."


title: Rodney Alcala

text: A fellow "bachelor" contestant later described Alcala as a "very strange guy" with "bizarre opinions." Alcala won the competition and a date with the episode's bachelorette, Sarah Bradshaw, who subsequently refused to go out with him because she found him "creepy." Criminal profiler Pat Brown, noting that Alcala killed at least three women after his "Dating Game" appearance, speculated that this rejection might have been an exacerbating factor. "One wonders what that did in his mind," Brown said. "That is something he would not take too well. [Psychopaths] don't understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: 'She played me. She played hard to get. She wanted to live.' "


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl from Huntington Beach, disappeared somewhere between the beach and her ballet class on June 20, 1979. Her decomposing body was found 12 days later in the Los Angeles foothills. Samsoe's friends told police that a stranger had approached them on the beach, asking to take their pictures. Detectives circulated a sketch of the photographer, and Alcala's parole officer recognized him. During a search of Alcala's mother's house in Monterey Park, police found a rental receipt for a storage locker in Seattle; in the locker, they


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala was arrested in July 1979 and held without bail. In 1980 he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for Samsoe's murder, but the verdict was overturned by the California Supreme Court because jurors had been improperly informed of his prior sex crimes. In 1986, after a second trial virtually identical to the first except for omission of the prior criminal record testimony, he was again convicted and sentenced to death. In 2001 a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel nullified the second conviction, in part because a witness was not allowed to support Alcala's contention that the park ranger who found Samsoe's body had been "hypnotized by police investigators".


title: Rodney Alcala

text: While preparing their third prosecution in 2003, Orange County, California investigators learned that Alcala's DNA, sampled under a new state law (over his objections), matched semen left at the rape-murder scenes of two women in Los Angeles. Additional evidence, including another cold case DNA match in 2004, led to Alcala's indictment for the murders of four additional women: Jill Barcomb, 18, a New York runaway found "rolled up like a ball" in a Los Angeles ravine in 1977, and originally thought to have been a victim of the Hillside Strangler; Georgia Wixted, 27, bludgeoned in her Malibu apartment in 1977; Charlotte Lamb, 31, raped, strangled, and left in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex in 1978; and Jill Parenteau, 21, killed in her Burbank apartment in 1979.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: All of the bodies were found "posed...in carefully chosen positions". Another pair of earrings found in Alcala's Seattle storage locker had residue that matched Lamb's DNA.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: During his incarceration between the second and third trials, Alcala wrote and self-published a book, "You, the Jury", in which he claimed innocence in the Samsoe case and suggested a different suspect. He also filed two lawsuits against the California penal system, for a slip-and-fall incident and for refusing to provide him a low-fat diet.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In 2003, prosecutors entered a motion to join the Samsoe charges with those of the four newly discovered victims. Alcala's attorneys contested it; as one of them explained, "If you're a juror and you hear one murder case, you may be able to have reasonable doubt, but it's very hard to say you have reasonable doubt on all five, especially when four of the five aren't alleged by eyewitnesses but are proven by DNA matches." In 2006, the California Supreme Court ruled in the prosecution's favor, and in February 2010, Alcala stood trial on the five joined charges.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: For the third trial, Alcala elected to act as his own attorney. He took the stand in his own defense, and for five hours played the roles of both interrogator and witness, asking himself questions (addressing himself as "Mr. Alcala" in a deeper-than-normal voice), and then answering them. During this self-questioning and answering session, he told jurors, often in a rambling monotone, that he was at Knott's Berry Farm applying for a job as a photographer at the time Samsoe was kidnapped. He showed the jury a portion of his 1978 appearance on "The Dating Game" in an attempt to prove that the earrings found in his Seattle locker were his, not Samsoe's. Jed Mills, the actor who competed against Alcala on the show, told a reporter that earrings were not yet a socially acceptable accoutrement for men in 1978. "I had never seen a man with an earring in his ear," he said. "I would have noticed them on him."


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala made no significant attempt to dispute the four added charges, other than to assert that he could not remember killing any of the women. As part of his closing argument, he played the Arlo Guthrie song "Alice's Restaurant" in which the protagonist tells a psychiatrist that he wants to "kill". After less than two days' deliberation the jury convicted him on all five counts of first-degree murder. A surprise witness during the penalty phase of the trial was Tali Shapiro, Alcala's first known victim.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Richard Rappaport, a psychiatrist paid by Alcala and the only defense witness, testified that borderline personality disorder could explain Alcala's claims that he had no memory of committing the murders. The prosecutor argued that Alcala was a "sexual predator" who "knew what he was doing was wrong and didn't care". In March 2010, Alcala was sentenced to death for a third time.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In March 2010, the Huntington Beach, California and New York City Police Departments released 120 of Alcala's photographs and sought the public's help in identifying them, in the hope of determining if any of the women and children he photographed were additional victims. Approximately 900 additional photos could not be made public, police said, because they were too sexually explicit. In the first few weeks, police reported that approximately 21 women had come forward to identify themselves, and "at least six families" said they believed they recognized loved ones who "disappeared years ago and were never found".


title: Rodney Alcala

text: None of the photos were unequivocally connected to a missing person case or unsolved murder until 2013, when a family member recognized the photo of Christine Thornton, 28, whose body was found in Wyoming in 1982 (see below).


title: Rodney Alcala

text: , 110 of the original photos remain posted online, and police continue to solicit the public's help with further identifications.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: After his 2010 conviction, New York authorities announced that they would no longer pursue Alcala because of his status as a convict awaiting execution. Nevertheless, in January 2011, a Manhattan grand jury indicted him for the murders of Cornelia Crilley, the TWA flight attendant, and Ellen Hover, the Ciro's heiress, in 1971 and 1977, respectively. In June 2012, he was extradited to New York, where he initially entered not guilty pleas on both counts.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In December 2012, he changed both pleas to guilty, citing a desire to return to California to pursue appeals of his death penalty conviction. On January 7, 2013, a Manhattan judge sentenced Alcala to an additional 25 years to life. The death penalty has not been an option in New York State since 2007.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In 2010, Seattle police named Alcala as a "person of interest" in the unsolved murders of Antoinette Wittaker, 13, in July 1977, and Joyce Gaunt, 17, in February 1978. Alcala rented the Seattle-area storage locker in which investigators later found jewelry belonging to two of his California victims in 1979. Other cold cases were reportedly targeted for reinvestigation in California, New York, New Hampshire, and Arizona.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In March 2011, investigators in Marin County, California, north of San Francisco, announced that they were "confident" that Alcala was responsible for the 1977 murder of 19-year-old Pamela Jean Lambson, who disappeared after making a trip to Fisherman's Wharf to meet a man who had offered to photograph her. Her battered, naked body was subsequently found in Marin County near a hiking trail. With no fingerprints or usable DNA, charges were never filed, but police claimed that there was sufficient evidence to convince them that Alcala committed the crime.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In September 2016, Alcala was charged with the murder of 28-year-old Christine Ruth Thornton, who disappeared in 1977. In 2013, a relative recognized her as the subject of one of Alcala's photos made public by Huntington Beach PD and NYPD. Her body was found in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, in 1982, but was not identified until 2015 when DNA supplied by Thornton's relatives matched tissue samples from her remains.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala admitted taking the photo, but not to killing the woman, who was approximately six months pregnant at the time of her death. Thornton is the first alleged murder victim linked to the Alcala photos made public in 2010. The 73-year-old Alcala was reportedly too ill to make the journey from California to Wyoming to stand trial on the new charges.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: Alcala died of unspecified natural causes in Corcoran, California on July 24, 2021, at the age of 77.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: A biographical film about Alcala's life titled "Dating Game Killer" was directed by Peter Medak and broadcast on the American television network Investigation Discovery produced December 3, 2017.


title: Rodney Alcala

text: In 2021, Netflix announced a biographical film, "Rodney and Sheryl", starring Anna Kendrick which depicts the story of Alcala's appearance on "The Dating Game" in the midst of his killing spree.


title: Natasia Demetriou

text: Natasia Charlotte Demetriou is an English comedian, actress, and screenwriter. She is best known for her roles as Nadja in the FX horror comedy series "What We Do in the Shadows" (2019–present) and Sophie in the Channel 4 sitcom "Stath Lets Flats" (2018–2021).


title: Natasia Demetriou

text: In 2022, Natasia co-wrote and starred in the BBC sketch show, "Ellie & Natasia", alongside her comedy partner Ellie White.


title: Natasia Demetriou

text: Natasia Charlotte Demetriou was born in London, the daughter of an English mother and a Greek-Cypriot father. She was raised in North London. Her younger brother, Jamie Demetriou, is a comedian and actor with whom she often collaborates. She studied acting at University of Leeds. Prior to becoming a professional comedian, Demetriou worked as a makeup artist, notably working on music videos for Boy Better Know.