Widow of landlord murdered by anti-white black says his murder shouldn’t ruin his vision of making Detroit a better place

David B. writes:

As a follow-up to your item on the murder of Gregory McNicol, the Detroit News reports that McNicol’s widow “won’t allow her husband’s murder to ruin his vision of making Detroit a better place.” The murder of her husband hasn’t soured Mrs. McNicol on Detroit. “He thought this was a good city, and said there were some bad parts, but also a lot of good parts,” she said. “It’s true, There are a lot of nice people here.”

LA replies:

From Mrs. McNicol’s comment, which presumably reflects her late husband’s views, we may conclude that Mr. McNicol wasn’t just thoughtless and naive in failing to defend himself from black violence, i.e., that he wasn’t a typical Darwin Award winner; rather, he was an Amy Biehl type, positively reaching out to blacks and getting killed in the process. From which it follows that it wouldn’t matter how many whites get murdered in similar circumstances. The whites would never alter their behavior that results in their being killed. To the contrary, with each murder, they will embrace the suicidal behavior with more fervor than before.

“Let’s see now,” the McNicol types will say to themselves (with appropriate changes for each situation), “A misbehaving tenant two months behind in her rent punched me in the mouth and said that she’s ‘tired of white people.’ Then she called her father on her cell phone and afterward said to her friends—an angry group of females that have also been arguing with me—that she told her father to ‘kill the dude.’ Now the father has arrived in his car and he gets out of his car brandishing a gun and he tells me to ‘Watch your mouth.’ Since I believe so strongly in my vision of making Detroit a better place, I think this is a perfect opportunity for me to reach out to the father and explain to him why I, for eminently fair and rational reasons, need to evict his daughter.”

Based on Mrs. McNicol’s remarks about her late husband, combined with other contemporary statements by white liberals, we can say that here is the liberal mentality in a nutshell:

• White-hating blacks routinely assault and murder whites, because they’re white, and the white liberal victims and relatives of the victims reply that this has nothing to do with race and that it doesn’t change their benevolent view of blacks and of racial relations at all, but only strengthens their desire to reach out to blacks.

• Meanwhile, race-blind mainstream-conservative whites oppose a gargantuan expansion of federal spending which will impoverish America, and liberal whites say that the conservatives whites are doing this because they hate blacks.

UPDATE: Now maybe I am being unfair to Mrs. McNicol. We don’t know that her quoted statements in the Detroit News piece were all she said. That’s only what the reporter chose to tell us she said. She might have made less Polyannish comments that the reporter didn’t include. However, as the article stands, there is something inhuman about her remarks. Consider. She has no word of grief for her slain husband, no word of shock or horror about the murder, no condemnation of the man who took her husband’s life. Just this stuff about how nice Detroit is and how she will keep her husband’s business going and keep running and maintaining the apartment complex. The message is: the murder of a white man, even if he was your own husband, doesn’t matter, except insofar as it might result in blacks losing a decently maintained apartment building.

Here is the article (VFR comments begin here):

Widow keeps slain husband’s dreams alive in Detroit
George Hunter/ The Detroit News

Detroit—Katie McNicol vows she won’t allow her husband’s murder to ruin his vision of making Detroit a better place.

Greg McNicol, a native of Melbourne, Australia, fell in love with the city during a visit last year, she said, so he decided to purchase some buildings and fix them up. His pride and joy was a 10-unit apartment complex at 4110 Beniteau, where he kept an apartment after buying it in February.

“Greg believed in the American Dream; he believed in Detroit,” she said Friday. “He wanted to invest in Detroit and was really happy with what he’d done with this building so far.”

Residents say McNicol, who lived in California, became more than a landlord, hosting weekly barbecues and staying in a first-floor unit during the renovation.

But McNicol was killed last Saturday while arguing with a woman he planned to evict because she refused to pay rent. The shooting, which was witnessed by children who were playing nearby, made international news.

Police on Friday said they have arrested the alleged shooter—the father of the woman with whom McNicol was arguing.

“We’ve got him in custody,” said Detroit Police Lt. Dwane Blackmon, commanding officer of the department homicide section. “A warrant has been submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office.”

Witnesses say a man pulled up in a black Chevy Avalanche and fired one shot before driving away. McNicol died of a gunshot wound near the groin, pathologists determined.

Florida Benton and other apartment residents were devastated—not only because they had lost a man they considered a friend, but because they feared his wife would sell the building and it would become “just another eyesore.”

But Katie McNicol said the residents needn’t worry.

“I’m not going to sell this building,” she said. “I’m going to keep his dream alive; I’m going to keep his place and finish the work he started.”

She cut short a business trip to Brazil to come to Detroit to visit the building. She planned to leave Friday night for Australia to arrange her husband’s funeral.

The incident, meanwhile, hasn’t soured her on Detroit, she said.

“He thought this was a good city, and said there are some bad parts, but also a lot of good parts,” she said. “It’s true. There are a lot of nice people here.”

In other developments, building manager Karen James said Friday she was going to 36th District Court to try to get an emergency eviction order for the tenants McNicol had planned to evict.

ghunter@detnews.com

- end of initial entry -

Mark A. writes:

I know this may sound extremely cruel, but I do not feel sorry for this man. These are not people looking to make Detroit a better place, they are just more white liberals making a buck off of the race racket. Section 42 of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 42) is one of the most disgusting pieces of legislation that I have ever seen: the low-income housing tax credit. If the public had any idea how much money lobbies for this in Congress, it would blow their mind. I’ll provide the Cliff’s notes version:

• Investors lobby for Section 42 and the Section 8 HUD credit

• A town designates a section of town as Section 8 permissible (usually a working-class white section of town: surprise!)

• Liberal wealthy whites in the all-white enclave suburb invest in these properties and get to take a substantial basis in these properties as credits against their income taxes.

• Blacks move in, get a nice tax-payer subsidized place to live in for pennies, rich whites make a fortune by lowering their tax bills. Who gets hosed? The taxpayers who must pay more tax to account for these credits and the working class whites who now flee their formerly nice neighborhoods.

I’m not suggesting that this man deserved death for investing in these properties, but I have no sympathies for any rent-collector who gets harmed by the tax-payer subsidized scum who rent these properties.

LA replies:

Your explanation of Sect. 8 and the modus operandi of white landlords is very helpful, but I don’t think it explains McNicol’s behavior that led to his death. If he was a self-interested, rational person, why did he keep talking to the father after the father brandished a gun and told him to “Watch your mouth”? It seems to me that there was an Amy Biehl motive operating here alongside the pecuniary motive.

Mark A. replies:

The perpetrator shot from his vehicle. The story stated that Young had a gun in his hand, but he also remained in his vehicle. There is no evidence that McNicol saw the weapon. Moreover, McNicol was more likely than not an arrogant, liberal idiot. Liberals do not generally suffer the consequences of their behavior. They have enforcers to ensure that their enemies are swiftly removed from their living-space (e.g. police officers, corporate “human resources” executives, security guards, zoning administrators, and various attorneys). McNicol was clearly outside of his living-space.

Lastly, he was cheap. Most wealthy investors hire some poor schmuck and pay him to run around and manage these properties. McNicol wanted to save a nickel by not hiring a property manager. Moreover, he could’ve paid a lawyer to get a court order to evict the tenants, and then taken that court order to the sheriff’s office. The police will get involved once they have a court order. McNicol didn’t understand the system, and paid for it with his life.

LA replies:

I missed that Young fired from his vehicle. The article from 7 News makes it sound otherwise:

“Young then pulled up in a black vehicle, had a gun in his hand and confronted the Australian, the court heard. [Italics added.]

“The man said, ‘Watch your mouth.’”

For Young to “confront” McNicol it’s more likely that he would have to have gotten out of his vehicle.

The Detroit News piece is more vague:

Witnesses say a man pulled up in a black Chevy Avalanche and fired one shot before driving away. McNicol died of a gunshot wound near the groin, pathologists determined.

This laconic account makes it sound as though Young simply drove up to where McNicol was standing, fired, and kept driving. Which would contradict the report of a confrontation. At the same time, the Detroit News account, because it is so lacking in detail, is compatible with the idea that he could have driven up, gotten out of the car, confronted McNicol and shot him, then gotten back in the car and driven away. So looking at these two accounts I’d guess that Young got out of his car, though that’s far from certain.

Also, in your sweeping indictment of McNicol, you want it both ways. First you castigate him as a spoiled elite liberal who does not exercise normal precautions because he’s surrounded by security people and gofers. Then you portray him as “cheap,” meaning that he was a hands-on businessman who did everything himself. The second image is the opposite of the first. They can’t both be true.

Mark Jaws writes:

What we need is a term such as Uncle Tom to inform and shame these naively suicidal white people who simply do not get the danger they face in an encounter with inner city blacks. Two suggestions come to mind—Amy Biehl or Reginald Denny. I prefer the latter because it sounds better and the assault was caught on tape and is universally known.

I am throwing this out because until we can come up with a satirical—yet hard hitting—term such as Uncle Tom, then more whites will recklessly operate in this manner, and I just don’t want to see innocent people get hurt. Just as I would not want to see a black man end up at a 1920’s Klan Rally.

LA replies:

But Reginald Denny wasn’t a liberal do-gooder. He was a truck driver who incautiously drove through South Los Angeles in the middle of the riots and was pulled out of his vehicle and subjected to the standard black treatment.

James P. writes:

Katie McNicol said,

“Greg believed in the American Dream.”

Managing a “rat trap” full of deadbeats with homicidal relatives in the middle of a blighted urban wasteland is the American Dream now? Sounds more like a nightmare to me. Most Americans dream of putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the likes of Freddie Young and his daughter. And they don’t merely dream of doing so, they pay as much as they need to pay to make their dream a reality!

Or maybe it was Ayana Young who lived her version of the American Dream: Whitey maintains a building for you to live in, and if he has the tiresome impertinence to demand that you pay the rent, your father kills him.

LA replies:

I don’t think it is a rat trap. I think he maintained it as a decent building. (And as far as we know the only deadbeat was Ayana Young.) You seem to be assuming that any building inhabited by blacks is a rat trap. It is not true, and it is not helpful, to portray everything pertaining to blacks as though it were beneath the level of humanity. For example, there are many nice residential blocks and nice apartment buildings in Harlem.

At the same time, Section 8 housing is a monstrosity and should be ended. The idea of spreading black welfare recipients, with all the disorders they bring, through the whole society, is racial socialism of a particularly terrible kind.

James P. replies:

I used the term “rat trap” because this story described it as such:

Tenants described the building as a “rat trap” before Mr McNicol bought it and started renovations.

Not every building inhabited by blacks is a rat trap, but this one was (at least when McNicol started managing it)—the black residents themselves said so.

LA replies:

Touché.

Mark A. replies to LA:

No, they can be true. You make a great point, though. Let me be more clear: the elite liberal is surrounded by security people and gofers in his normal sphere of influence: the board room, any corporate office, his all-white suburban enclave, his gym, his fancy cigar bars, etc. He is untouchable in these areas. McNicol stepped out of his normal sphere and into Detroit. With respect to him being cheap, there is nobody more cheap than the elite liberal! I’ve worked for almost a dozen of them! The average CEO gleefully makes 400x what the average employee makes. Most of them are white liberals. Alternatively, watch them tip at bars—they are the worst tippers on Earth. Ask any bartender—the best tipper is a blue collar white man.

LA replies:

Assuming decent service, I always tip at least 20 percent of the after tax amount (to the surprise of most people I eat with, who regard it as excessive). I guess that makes me blue collar.

Paul K. writes:

Here is a lengthy article from an Australian newspaper about the shooting of Greg McNicol. From the article it’s not clear that McNicol was an Amy Biehl type—he seems to have been a confident and dynamic individual who naively thought he could deal with the criminal element in his building. He does not seem to have been sympathetic to that element, though.

It says:

But the dream was cut short. That warm Saturday afternoon, everything changed, suddenly, savagely, and with no comeback.

Greg McNicol was taking a break, but found himself in an argument with some female tenants he had evicted but who had not left. It became heated. They were outside on the footpath. Benton says he was telling them he wanted them to leave. They were calling him names, waving their arms.

”He wasn’t going to allow them to bully him,” Benton says.

Detroit police say one of the women then said ”call daddy” and only moments later a black Chevy Avalanche pick-up truck pulled up, a man jumped out and shot Greg once, reportedly with a silver .357 Magnum, from about five metres.

The bullet hit him in the groin.

Family and neighbours now wonder whether it was supposed to be a warning shot in the leg rather than a fatal blow. The man got back in the truck and drove off.

”Greg tried to walk then he collapsed down to his knees,” says Benton [a black woman with whom he had become friends]. ”I said, ‘Lay on down, lay on down. You are going to be OK. Hold still, you are going to be OK.”’

Neighbours, angry because they liked McNicol and knew he meant well, brought bandages. Some tended to him. But it was too late. There was blood everywhere.

The single shot severed a major artery.

In a bizarre revelation, the article says that the shooter, Freddie Young, had recently won a large lottery payout: “Young had recently won the lottery, taking about $U.S. 1.8 million as part of a syndicate of postal centre co-workers who won $46 million. The Detroit News revealed yesterday he spent part of the money on two new cars, one the same as the pick-up truck he allegedly drove to the apartment.”

LA replies:

Also, this story does not speak of Young confrontng McNicol with the gun and saying, “Watch your mouth,” with McNicol then recklessly repeating that he wanted to evict Young’s daughter, and Young then shooting him. It makes it sound as though Young leaped out of his truck and shot him, so that McNicol never had a chance. In this version, McNicol does not seem suicidally naive or engaged in a Biehl-type outreach.

Today’s news media are like Rashomon; with each article telling the story differently, giving rise to different interpretations on our part.

Paul K. writes:

An afterthought on this story: Freddie Young, 62, a multi-millionaire who could easily have paid his daughter’s rent—even bought her her own building!—instead chose to murder her landlord, a crime he could not possibly have expected to get away with. In other words, Young, with the prospect of a comfortable life ahead of him, was willing to throw it away for the momentary satisfaction of venting his wrath on a white man.

This is the level of irrationality that McNicol was up against.

LA replies:

A quibble: he wasn’t a multi-millionaire. His share of the jackpot was $1.7 million, and he may have only received a small amount of that so far, since the payment can come in installments, though he might have received it in one pot. Either way, he was not a multimillionaire, but a millionaire at most. Still, he obviously had enough to help his offspring out with maybe $1,000 for her rent to keep her from being evicted.

To me, the first story I read, from 7 news in Australia, reads like an execution. The gang of angry young woman surrounding him, then the punch in the face accompanied by the racial slur, then the call to the father to “kill the dude,” then the father arrives with the gun and kills the dude.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 27, 2011 11:15 AM | Send