The O-town Scene

R.o.B.S. Russian prison to be A. gulag-like no more It’s hard to tell what’s true these days. Take a gander below, and guess if A. and B. are Real or B.S. (Answers at the bottom of the page.) Man puts his faith B. in Rapture and in will COUER d’ALENE, Idaho — A local man was so sure of his place in Heaven that he wrote it into his will. Now his family is taking the will to court, arguing that its provision for certain worldly goods to be allocated in the Great Beyond is unenforceable. According to his obituary, Fred Broadus “died peacefully at home Dec. 29, surround- ed by family and friends.” The 87-year-old Couer d’Alene native had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just months earlier. He left behind a sizable estate, and a large family, most of whom still live in the area. The Broadus/MacLean/Thompson clan — all 26 members who could attend — gath- ered at the downtown law office of Plattner & Brook in early January to hear the reading of the will. Karen MacLean, Broadus’ oldest child, said she wasn’t at all worried or anxious at what she might hear. MOSCOW — A centuries-old Russian prison notorious for its primitive conditions will soon offer inmates a new perk — tan- ning beds. The ITAR-Tass news agency Sunday cited federal prisons service Viktor Dezhurov as saying the tanning beds at Moscow's Butyrskaya prison will be ready for observances of its' 240-year anniversary this year. Dezhurov was quoted as saying the tanning beds are meant to compensate for inadequate sunlight in the cells. But inmates will have to pay and at 10 rubles (33 cents) a minute, that's a siz- able fee in a country where the average monthly salary is well under $1,000. The prison's dismal conditions attracted wide attention in 2009 after the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a young lawyer who died of pancreas disease there after inad- equate medical care. “My father knew he was dying,” MacLean said. “We talked about his arrangements, talked about what he would want. We met with his attorney several times. I was very involved in the process.” So MacLean, 66, was Like us, digitally. Find the Scene at www.otownscene.com “shocked” to hear attorney Harmon Brook, a lifelong friend of her father, read a will that was very dif- ferent than any she had seen before. Fred Broadus’ new will — the one in place at the time of his death — was short. It declared that all Broadus’ assets would be evenly distrib- uted among his next of kin after the second Jan. 20, 2011 O-Town Scene 21 coming of Christ. “My client was a very religious man,” Har- mon Brook said. “He believed firmly that the Rapture was imminent.” The term refers to a belief among evangeli- cal Christians that believers will be swept into the air to be with Christ at the time of the second coming. According to Brook, Broadus had expe- rienced a “deathbed conversion” to share Brook’s evangelical faith. But MacLean and her brother, Charles Broadus, dispute this claim and believe their ill father was coerced into signing the new will. “Dad was most certainly not a religious man,” Charles Broadus countered. “He hasn’t set foot in a church for anything but weddings and funerals for the last 50 years. He couldn’t have told you what the Rapture was if you paid him.” “He probably would have said it sounds like some fancy type of perfume,” MacLean added. “That was Dad’s sense of humor.” The lawsuit filed by Broadus, MacLean and their three siblings will be heard in district court in March. A. is real; B. is B.S., by Emily Popek.

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