Latest news with #paranoia
Wall Street Journal
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Hunting Down Russian Spies With Norway's Intelligence Service
KIRKENES, Norway—Paranoia pervades the placid border town of Kirkenes in Norway's far north. Residents are routinely trailed by unknown men. The Wall Street Journal's camera crew was photographed and followed around town by a suspicious vehicle with no license plate. Most locals warn you to keep your wits about you because, as one said in a hushed tone, 'the Russians are watching.' The Journal's video shows us accompanying Norway's domestic intelligence agency, the PST, on patrol for Russian spies. We meet residents convinced they are under Russian surveillance and we find out firsthand what it feels like to be trailed.
Geek Tyrant
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Riz Ahmed and Lily James Get Tangled in High-Stakes Corporate Deceit in Trailer for RELAY — GeekTyrant
If you're into slick paranoia and morally flexible characters, Relay might be your next cinematic fix. Bleecker Street released the trailer for the corporate thriller directed by David Mackenzie ( Hell or High Water ), and it's serving up sharp tension with a side of moral rot. Riz Ahmed plays Tom, a master 'fixer' who orchestrates payouts between shady corporations and the people trying to blow the whistle on them. His anonymity is sacred. His rules are gospel. Then Lily James enters the picture as a desperate client running for her life, and suddenly all those carefully drawn lines start to blur. The synopsis reads: 'Riz Ahmed stars as a world class 'fixer' who specializes in brokering lucrative payoffs between corrupt corporations and individuals who threaten their ruin. He keeps his identity a secret through meticulous planning & always follows an exacting set of rules. But when a message arrives one day from a potential client (Lily James) needing his protection just to stay alive, all his rules quickly start to change.' The trailer gives off serious Michael Clayton meets Enemy of the State energy as it's the kind of story that gives the sense that nobody's in control. TIFF described the film as 'riddled with ingenious feats of misdirection, novel set pieces, and jaw-dropping twists that would have made Hitchcock proud.' The movie also stars Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, and Matthew Maher. It's set to hit theaters on August 22, 2025.
Irish Times
27-06-2025
- Irish Times
Michael Gaine murder: Ex-partner of suspect Michael Kelley says he became ‘very unstable' after 9/11 attacks
A former partner of the American man questioned about the murder of Kerry farmer Michael Gaine expressed serious concern about his mental wellbeing and increasing paranoia after the 9/11 attacks in the US. American woman Alicia Snow was involved in a relationship with Michael Kelley in the late 1990s and early 2000s and has two children with him. Ms Snow told The Irish Times that Mr Kelley (53) suddenly became 'very unstable' and increasingly paranoid after the September 11th, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks and began stockpiling supplies during their time together in Maine. She described the change in him as 'a total reversal to me'. Within three months, Ms Snow and her children moved out of the home they shared near the town of Swanville. They later separated and became estranged. READ MORE Mr Kelley, who moved to Kerry from the north-eastern US state of Maine about seven years ago, was arrested on May 18th last by gardaí investigating the murder of Mr Gaine (56) before being released without charge. Kerry farmer Michael Gaine who went missing in March and whose partial remains were discovered on his farmland last month. Mr Gaine's dismembered body was found the previous day in slurry spread on fields and in a slurry tank at his isolated farmyard 6km from Kenmare. He was last seen alive in a local shop in the town on March 20th. Mr Kelley lived and worked on Mr Gaine's farm. He has denied any role in his murder, claiming he is being framed by organised criminals. Gardaí investigating the murder of Mr Gaine travelled to Maine last weekend to interview Ms Snow and to search for any clues to explain what might have happened to the farmer. Ms Snow described her former partner as 'hardworking' and 'responsible' during their time living together on his mother's farm in Swanville. Mr Kelley worked as a farmhand on a nearby farm among a variety of other jobs, including as a cook and a butcher in a local shop. She said her then partner's increasing paranoia after the 2001 attacks 'surprised the hell out of me'. Alicia Snow, a nurse based in Maine in the United States and the former partner of Michael Kelley. Photograph via Ms Snow's website. Ms Snow, who is a qualified nurse, said Mr Kelley could be very sweet and was notably loyal but that he went through 'bouts of intense paranoia'. Others who knew him in Waldo County, where he lived in Maine, recalled his interest in conspiracy theories, including his fears about the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist group, and other groups of interest to conspiracy theorists. Mr Kelley previously claimed to The Irish Times that he fled to and applied for asylum in Ireland as he feared he was being targeted by the KKK. Ms Snow last spoke to Mr Kelley about 10 years ago when he came to her door saying a group called the Heaven and Earth Society were pursuing him. The Irish Times put her concerns about Mr Kelley to him in an interview this week in Tralee, where he is now living. Asked about his former partner's belief that he may struggle with mental illness, Mr Kelley said he would leave people to make up their own minds. 'People need to judge for themselves; they need to judge from their own observations,' he said. Michael Kelley photographed in Tralee this week. Photo: Domnick Walsh © Eye Focus Ltd Asked about what those in Waldo County had said about his beliefs in conspiracy theories, Mr Kelley said people should decide for themselves. 'People need to judge for themselves – that's the blanket answer for all these things people are saying about me,' he said. Following the couple's separation, Mr Kelley and Ms Snow were involved in a legal dispute over rights of access to their children. A US judge concluded that Mr Kelley made 'false accusations' claiming Ms Snow was 'a witch' and 'practises witchcraft on their children'. The judge also found that Mr Kelley's ability to determine fact from fiction was 'questionable'. In his interview with this newspaper, Mr Kelley gave more detail about how he came to work on Mr Gaine's farm. He declined to answer any questions about the Garda investigation into the murder or his relationship with Mr Gaine as he said it might affect the investigation. He said Mr Gaine offered him board and lodging at the old Gaine family farmhouse in return for doing farm work. Members of the Garda forensic team carrying out a search at the farm of Michael Gaine (56) near Kenmare last month. Photo: Domnick Walsh © Eye Focus Ltd The American said he began working for Mr Gaine after he approached a number of farmers in the Kenmare area on New Year's Day 2022 looking for farm work, having spent more than a year living in a camp at Scully's Wood near Dromquinna outside Kenmare. He said he moved to Kerry after he applied for asylum in Dublin and was transferred to Killarney where he lived with other men in accommodation provided by the State's International Protection Accommodation Service. He later left there and camped in Killarney National Park before he was ordered to leave by National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers. Mr Kelley did a variety of casual jobs in Co Kerry, harvesting seaweed in Kenmare Bay for a man from Glenbeigh and cutting grass at an adventure centre at Blackwater. Before moving to Mr Gaine's old farmhouse, Mr Kelley set up a camp at Scully's Wood and bought a solar panel and battery to charge his headlamp and mobile phone. He spent much of the Covid pandemic living in the wood before deciding on New Year's Day 2022 to look for farm work. He said he convinced Mr Gaine to give him a job after he repaired Mr Gaine's quad bike and he moved into the old farmhouse. Michael Kelley photographed in Tralee Town Park this week. Photo: Domnick Walsh © Eye Focus Ltd Mr Gaine paid him €100 a week to help with the farm work, including repairing machinery, bringing fodder to cattle and fetching sheep from the mountain. He brought him into Kenmare once a week to buy supplies. Mr Kelley said the money was 'more than enough for me to live on and I was actually able to save money'. The old farmhouse had no electricity but it had a stove. He described it as 'a serious upgrade on living in the woods'.
Daily Mail
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Chilling mystery of the missing teenage Scarface actress whose final months were consumed by paranoia someone was 'coming to get her' after witnessing something 'distressing' at a Hollywood wrap party
As the 1980s got into full swing and Tammy Lynn Leppert turned 18, the model and actress who starred alongside Al Pacino had the world at her feet. But the Florida-born starlet's rise to fame was abruptly stopped in 1983 when she vanished from Cocoa Beach. More than four decades on, no sign has ever been recovered of Tammy Lynn, while her loved ones remain haunted by chilling details of her final months before her disappearance which were marred by paranoia. In the years since she vanished, Tammy Lynn's friends have revealed the actress had become 'fearful' and was a 'different person' after witnessing something distressing at a cast party on the set of Spring Break, a sex comedy film directed by Sean S. Cunningham. So intense was her paranoia that when Tammy's big break came with a small role in gangster movie Scarface, in which she played a bikini-clad girl who distracted a lookout car, she hysterically ran off set in tears after watching the cast act out a murder scene. After the incident, she quit the film altogether and moved back home with her mother. While film fans may not remember Tammy Lynn's fledgling career, they will likely recognise the bikini body used to promote Spring Break, which is thought to be her torso and legs. Tammy Lynn Leppert began modeling in beauty pageants at the age of four, taking home 280 crowns from the 300 pageants she entered. Throughout her teenage years she worked primarily as a model before dipping her toes into acting shortly before she went missing. And her star was rising fast after landing the role of a boxer in the 1983 comedy Spring Break - before a fateful cast party after filming had wrapped changed the course of her life forever. Tammy Lynn attended the party unaccompanied but, according to her friend Wing Flannagan, she came home 'a different person'. She refused to divulge exactly what she saw on the night of the party, but kept insisting 'they' would come after her. She also refused to eat or drink out of fear that she would be poisoned. In the weeks following her departure from Scarface, Tammy Lynn's mental health began to decline even further. She reportedly smashed all the windows of her house with a baseball bat when she was locked out, in a frantic panic to get back in. Her mother, Linda Curtis, who was a theatrical and modeling agent and guided Tammy's career, saw the change in her daughter and has since revealed she expressed fears that someone was trying to kill her. Linda recalled: 'Then she said Mom, what would you say if I told you somebody was trying to kill me. I just took a deep breath, and I said, 'do you think somebody's trying to kill you, Tammy?' She said, 'yes.' Linda checked her daughter into a mental health facility, where an evaluation revealed that Tammy was not abusing drugs or alcohol. It was also determined Tammy did not suffer from any significant mental illness and she was released after a 72-hour observation. She insisted that Tammy should report her safety concerns to the police, however even though she did go to the police she did not mention that she felt her life was in danger. For two weeks Tammy went into isolation at home, staying in her room and getting people to test her food to see if it had been poisoned. A frightened Linda was unsure if her daughter's fears were paranoid delusions or real concerns. She was adamantly insisting that she had 'seen something awful, that she was not supposed to see' at the Spring Break cast party. However things took an even more bizarre turn when Tammy left her house without brushing her hair, which her mother found to be out of character, to meet a male friend, Keith Roberts. Tammy and Keith drove to the local beach where, according to Detective Jim Skragg of the Cocoa Beach, Florida Police Department, they started to argue. Keith told authorities he left Tammy in the car park at the Glass Bank building in Cocoa Beach, near an Exxon gas station on State Road A1A, which was about five miles from her house. According to Detective Skragg, it was the last time she would be seen alive. When her daughter never returned home, Linda made a missing person report to police on July 11, 1983. According to the police report, she was wearing a blue shirt with floral appliques, a blue denim skirt, carrying a gray purse and wearing flip-flops. In the days after her disappearance, local newspaper Florida Today ran a front page article with the headline Have You Seen Tammy-Lynn? Keith gave an interview in which he said Tammy Lynn had called him and asked him to pick her up on the day she went missing. She asked to borrow $300 and they fought because he would not drive her to a friend's home in Fort Lauderdale. He said: 'At that point, she said, 'Let me out! Let me out!' So I just said 'OK, whatever you want' and that's the last time I saw her.' After getting out of the car Tammy Lynn walked a short distance to a local petrol station where she made three frantic telephone calls to her aunt Ginger Kolsch, who never answered the phone. Tammy Lynn's sister Suzanne previously said she thought Tammy might have been three months pregnant at the time of her disappearance but this was never confirmed. Meanwhile her friends told police that they thought she had run away because she was unhappy with her home life. Linda claimed she didn't believe her daughter 'ran away,' as she had made plans to go to Hollywood for three months to shoot films. This theory strengthened when shortly after Tammy's disappeared, the Cocoa Beach police received a call from an anonymous woman claiming to know Tammy, who said she was 'alive and well'. She insisted that the actress had chosen to abandon her life and was attending school to become a nurse. Some other rumours that circulated suggested that Tammy might have been a victim of a serial killer. Vampire rapist John Crutchley, suspected of killing 30 women, moved to Brevard County in 1983. However in 2002, Crutchley committed suicide while in prison. A second suspect was Christopher Bernard Wilder, a roaming serial killer who had killed at least 12 women between California and Florida in early 1984. Wilder lured his victims by telling them that he was a photographer for a magazine. He was killed by police when he resisted arrest. Linda passed away on October 4, 1995 at the age of 54, never knowing what had happened to her daughter. To this day, 42 years on, Tammy Lynn remains missing and police have no new leads over her disappearance.
Arab News
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Review: ‘The Eternaut' — compelling post-apocalyptic sci-fi from Argentina
DUBAI: At first, it seems like 'The Eternaut' is going to be a climate-crisis-focused piece. It's summer and Buenos Aires is boiling in more ways than one — demonstrations against government incompetence rage on the streets while power cuts only increase the oppressive heat felt by residents. Then a sudden fall of deadly radioactive snow kills hundreds of thousands instantly. The snow continues to fall as survivors quickly work out that to venture outside without full body cover and masks is to guarantee death. A small group of middle-aged friends were enjoying their regular poker night when the snow began to fall, and it is on them that the series centers — particularly Juan Salvo, a veteran of the war between Argentina and the UK over the Falkland Islands (or the Malvinas, as they're called in Argentina). There are many other survivors, including people in the neighborhood they've known for years, and the show does a fine job of exploring the escalating paranoia as people accustom themselves to their new reality and realize that their acquaintances are potentially as deadly as the snow. There are echoes of the source material's political edge too, as the line between neighbor and enemy blurs. Juan (a convincingly grizzled Ricardo Darin) manages to find his ex-wife, but their daughter, Clara, is missing — she was at a friend's house when the snowstorm started. Much of the first two episodes is taken up with Juan's unsuccessful search for her. The starkly beautiful cinematography is often breathtaking, and the claustrophobia is palpable, both in the houses of the survivors and in the suits they must wear to go anywhere. Halfway through the six episodes, though, there's a grinding shift of gears. The apocalypse, it tuns out, was actually the result of an alien invasion, the first wave of which involves giant bugs. Juan's super-smart friend Tano correctly predicts that the bugs are controlled by something more sinister. That sudden shift means the enjoyable slow-burn grittiness of the opening episodes is lost, as the show becomes more CGI-action-based. It's still gripping, but what had promised to be a unique standout fades into something far more generic.
