Mark Suppelsa's Closer Look

Civil Rights Reportorial Artist

The FBI will soon exhume Emmett Till's body from a suburban cemetery. While not everyone approves, most agree that justice was derailed when an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted two white men charged with the boy's brutal murder. The resulting trial helped ignite the American civil rights movement, as the entire nation heard what happened. One local man helped people see it, from his front-row seat to history.

There were no TV cameras to capture the racial tension, thick as the hot summer air in that courtroom. Just one artist, sketching history for Life Magazine. Franklin McMahon didn't know how important what he was watching, and drawing, would prove to be. He was worried about messing up. It was his first reporting job. In my closer look tonight, the Chicago artist whose dramatic pictures helped document a whitewash.

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Years before television crews captured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights dream, artist Frank McMahon drew the movement's true beginning.

"This trial was a flashpoint in civil rights history," I ask McMahon.
"Right, I think so. Yes," he says. "But at the time, of course, we didn't know that. I don't think we fully understood it yet."

McMahon was the only sketch artist assigned to what became the landmark trial of race relations in America: the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi.

"This was the first trial I'd ever done," McMahon explains. "I'd made some drawings on the constitution of Illinois and sent them to Life. And lo and behold, they were on the phone and asked me if I'd like to go down to Mississippi to do a trial."

Sixty years later, he's sold his original charcoal sketches to the Chicago Historical Society.

"I worked with spiral notebooks to make the first drawings," says McMahon. "I didn't want to call attention to what I was doing.

Why would he? McMahon was working for Life, a high-falutin', big-city magazine. Here he was in the middle of a hostile courtroom in rural, southern, racist America.

"Did they know which magazine you were drawing for?" I ask.
"No, but they were resentful of anybody who came down on a civil rights venture," McMahon recalls.

Not only were McMahon's drawings detailed --

"I had to get the spitoons in!"

-- his quotes and written observations paint an equally vivid picture. Important, since the trial transcript was missing for decades.

"I was worried about the drawings, to tell you the truth," confesses McMahon. "Getting them right. And at night, I would work in the motel room, advancing them. Taking a drawing that was a scribble, in a sense, and making it into a composition."

The artist was always on the lookout...

"...for the moment," McMahon says. "Because you need one big picture for a trial."

He found his 'moment' when Emmett Till's uncle took the stand. An illiterate black man in front of an all-white jury, Moses Wright leapt from his seat and stole the headlines by thrusting his finger at the two white defendants.

" 'They had come that night to take the boy from the house.' That was his testimony," McMahon remembers. "He shook off 300 years of history to get out of that chair and stand there and point at those guys."

"I was sitting behind the jury when I made my drawings -- and one of the jurors said 'Sambo. Sambo.' That suggested to me what the outcome of the trial would be."

McMahon remembers that historic moment not only passed by the jury, but most of white Mississippi as well. During a break in the trial, he walked with another reporter to a store to buy cigarettes.

"The man behind the desk said, 'are you down here making a mountain out of a molehill?' And he said, 'since when is murder a molehill?' "

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After the trial, McMahon dedicated his working life to covering the civil rights movement: from Dr. King's funeral to the Million Man March. Now 84 years old, about the only thing he confuses is where he was, when: Sumner, Mississippi or Selma, Alabama.

McMahon doesn't see himself hanging up his pen. Just last summer, he sketched Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention. His drawings from the Till trial are part of a new museum exhibit on lynching, opening June 4th at the Chicago Historical Society.

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Lion Keeper's Survival Story

You could say she's been as elusive as a lion in the wilderness. Now, the animal keeper mauled by two lions at the Lincoln Park Zoo is finally breaking her silence, telling me how it felt to be attacked by the cats she loves.

It's been six months since a firefighter pulled Nancy DeFiesta to safety - her face bloodied, her clothes torn. I think you'll be struck, as I was, by how calmly she describes the attack that left her permanently scarred. She's even gone back to work. Not in the lion's den where she was nearly killed. But back with animals she so clearly loves.

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"There was, at the time, no fear," DeFiesta tells me. "Afterthought, I think probably the fear was so great as to be just too great to feel."

Veteran lion keeper Nancy DeFiesta was doing routine chores last September, hauling buckets of fresh water for the big cats she loved. She'd done it hundreds of times before. This time, investigators say, she forgot something.

"Of all the lions, it was like 'Oh my goodness, Helene!' "

Nancy had already unlocked the lions' gate. Helene and Adelor, 700 pounds of lion, were prowling 12 feet above the moat where she worked. The female lion spotted her first.

"When she first jumped down, I thought--my instant thought was, 'This is not real. This is a dream. This is not real.' I saw myself laying there with the cats around me and I was dead," DeFiesta says.
"You had that vision?" I ask.
"Yeah, and that's when I got my radio," she replies.

Somehow, Nancy managed to call for help. "I'm in the moat with a lion!" she said. Soon, it was two lions.

"Sometime later---seconds, minutes---seemed like minutes, five minutes to me. HE came down," she recalls.
"He being?" I ask.
"Adelor. And he's a wonderful cat. They're all wonderful cats. But he looked at me and I knew I was going to get bit."

From the sidewalk above, animal keepers who'd already come to the rescue saw Nancy curled in a ball, head down, her zoo uniform ripped from her back.

"Two keepers, Scott and Chris, they kept saying, 'It'll be okay. Nancy, it's okay. It's okay.' And it was comforting to me," DeFiesta explains. "But I also thought, 'They really don't know it's gonna be okay.' "

It looked bad. The exhibit's designed so the animals can jump down into the moat, but not up and out. A door is the only exit -- for them and for Nancy.

"I know I turned away, like I thought I was gonna leave!" she says. "And I was flung back and kinda knocked around. I remember distinctly, her bite on my shoulder. I mean, I saw it coming and there was no pain."

Nancy was badly injured. But somehow, aware enough to know if she panicked, she was dead.

"Helene was stretched out in front of me with her paws on my arm," says DeFiesta. "If you ever watch a cat with a mouse and the mouse doesn't move, the cat will keep waiting for it to move. I didn't move."
"You think if you moved, she might have killed you?" I ask.
"Oh yeah. Yeah. Maybe not on purpose. But certainly the play would have gotten rougher."

The 'play' lasted no more than a minute. Helene's mouth and chest were stained with Nancy's blood. Rescuers blasted fire extinguishers to scare the cats off.

"She's kind of a skittish cat, for who knows what reason," DeFiesta says.

Spooked by the commotion, the cats finally leaped over Nancy and darted through the door.

"When I got up, it seemed like this whole sheet of blood came down my face," recalls DeFiesta.

Firefighter Ben Hosek raced down a ladder into the moat.

"I says 'Well you have to move, because if we don't get out of here soon, the lions are going to come back out.' " Hosek told Fox News.

"And I said, 'I can't climb that ladder.' And he said, 'Well, we have to.' And he grabbed me by the belt. In the back. Seat of my britches, I guess. And I don't know. That gave me courage," DeFiesta remembers. "And just, arms came out and picked me up and put me on the stretcher. So many people. It was amazing."

Doctors would count at least 64 puncture wounds.

"My head had quite of bit of lacerations on it. They shaved half my head. Had lots of stitches," DeFiesta says. "My ear---everywhere. I don't think there was a spot that wasn't touched. My breast, my chest, my thighs -- the deepest was my left thigh."

Nancy told herself she'd be back to work in a couple weeks. Maybe a month. But intense physical therapy came first.

"It was very, very, very hard," she says.
"How many days a week?" I ask.
"Five days a week. Half a day. Four hours. And it was pretty much straight exercise."

"No bitterness toward... the animals?" I ask.
"Towards no one. Towards no one."

"You found out, at one point, that they had guns ready. For those cats that you love so much. Why does that touch you so much?"
"Because lions are lions. It's not their fault. That they would be killed over acting like a lion is bizarre. I don't know what I would have done if that had happened. Or how I would feel today. Unthinkable."

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Nancy wouldn't talk about how she ended up in the yard with the lions. But the zoo has added more warnings and flashing lights - so other keepers won't accidentally come face to face with the cats. Nancy said it was her choice to move to another part of the zoo. She'll be working with wolves and bears, of all things, in the new children's zoo.

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The Man Who Knew too Much

When you think about the Cubs locker room lately, some people might think "soap opera." From Sammy to Stoney, to Dusty's relationship with the players, the events behind the scenes make bigger headlines than the games. One man with a unique perspective says he was fired for blowing the whistle on the Cubs.

You likely heard the name Sandy Krum a few months back, when this former assistant trainer sued the team. "The Man Who Knew Too Much" says he's been blackballed from baseball: no team will hire him. I figured: here's a guy with nothing to lose in speaking out about what's going on behind Wrigley's doors.

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"I had to go. I'd had enough!"

Sandy Krum says the Chicago Cubs deliberately misled fans last season, telling them pitching ace Mark Prior was sidelined because of an inflamed Achilles tendon, not because of a stiff elbow.

"But you knew there was an elbow problem?" I ask.
"Sure," Krum replied.
"[General Manager Jim] Hendry knew there was an elbow problem?"
"Sure!"

"Whose decision was it to obfuscate? Whose decision was it to lie to the media?"
"Jim Hendry," Krum says. "The two trainers were called into a meeting and told, 'This is what we're going with.' "

"Was there anything else last year we didn't know about?"
"I've got a list of 40 items, of incompetencies and inadequacies from the head trainer."

That head trainer was Dave Groeschner. Krum says his decisions caused some players to be out of the game longer than they needed to be, last year.

"Chicago Cubs, everybody's favorite," Krum explains. "You've got a non-licensed trainer taking care of their injuries. That's what I'm talking about today. That's what upsets me. This profession's come too far for some kid to come in here and do what he did!"

What he did, Krum says, was practice without a license: making medical decisions without the state's blessing. Krum complained about it. He says that cost him his job.

"Why do you think the Cubs fired you?" I ask.
"Because I told the truth," says Krum. "And Jim Hendry and company didn't want to hear the truth. The truth hurts sometimes."

Groeschner was fired along with Krum. In a letter, he tells me he stands behind his 10 years as a certified athletic trainer, implying it simply took the State of Illinois all season to process his paperwork.

I sat down with Krum to talk "inside baseball." As a witness to all things Cub, including the locker room's most guarded secrets, he's an irresistible interview.

"Steroids in the clubhouse. Ever see any?" I ask.
"Nope. Are they there? I'm sure they're there," Krum answers.

"The tussle between Steve Stone and the players."
"It should have been nipped in the bud," Krum says.

"Who's at fault?"
"I'd have to say Dusty. Dusty's at fault. He didn't have control of the clubhouse. How can you allow a player to sit and pick up the phone and call the press box during the middle of the game?"

"You're not just saying that -- sour grapes -- because you've been fired?"
"No. I knew Dusty Baker when he played for the Dodgers. That's how far our relationship goes back."

Krum says it was he, not the head trainer, whom the multi-million dollar athletes trusted. Take last season's infamous final day. Sammy Sosa will be remembered for leaving the ballpark before the game ended. Krum remembers Sosa coming to him the day before.

"Sammy Sosa came to me in the locker room and said, 'I don't want to play tomorrow. Tell Baker that I want off,' " Krum recalls. "I took it to the head trainer and said, 'Dave, you need to be the one to go to Baker with this information that Sammy doesn't want to play tomorrow.' "

Of course, I had to ask about Sammy's boom box, which became the piñata of this frustrated, losing team.

"Who broke the boom box?"
"I can't tell you that," Krum says.
"Come on!"
"I can't tell you that."
"Okay, tell me this: Was it more than one player that broke that boom box?"
"The boom box was used as the scapegoat for all the other frustrations that his teammates had. It's a team sport. And everybody has to be on the same page. And what you saw from the 2004 team was everybody was not on the same page. Even though superficially, it may have appeared they were on the same page, they weren't."

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Krum says he wants the public to know everything. His attorneys say they may try to depose everyone in the Cubs locker room. They want those sessions open to the media.

As for the Cubs, they say Krum wasn't fired; he simply wasn't rehired. They say he's not a whistleblower and his boss' license has nothing to do with him being let go. Neither general manager Jim Hendry nor manager Dusty Baker would comment for our story.

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