Yesterday's episode of Murder at Ryan's Run was packed with a lot of important information that I'm going to spend time unpacking here throughout the next week. One of the most important developments is that the Murder at Ryan's Run team has posted the trial transcripts for the custody battle that preceded the murder of John Gilbride. This is a long document, over 500 pages, and it reveals much about the structure of MOVE and the hold that Alberta had on members. It's important to point out that if supporters, like myself, had known many of the things that Alberta openly admitted in court then we would have likely stopped being MOVE supporters. The only people who were allowed in the courtroom to testify and to hear testimony were either born into MOVE, or had children in MOVE, and therefore it would have been much more difficult for them to rebel against Alberta or to leave.
In the coming week, I plan to go into more detail about all of these points, but the first detail that would have sent supporters running is that Alberta blames the harassment campaign against the Gilbride family, or it least one of its major events, on former MOVE supporter Tony Allen. Alberta claims that she didn't know the supporters well, and specifically that she didn't know Tony very well. Meanwhile, she and Ria had organized a group of MOVE supporters to protest in front of the courthouse that very day. The claim that Tony organized the demonstration without Bert and Ria asking him to is also ridiculous, as nothing happened in that custody case without Alberta's sanction.
Alberta also admits in open court that Zack was conceived through In Vitro fertilization. I personally have no problem with this, the problem is that Alberta lied about this fact constantly. She frequently talked about how conceiving Zack in her late 40s was a miracle of John Africa. Also, MOVE is opposed to unnecessary (and often necessary) medical intervention. Young girls, like June, were forcefully denied medical care during difficult childbirths (at 13 years old). Alberta also often claimed that John was a deadbeat who never supported her or Zack, but one of the main reasons for John's financial difficulties was paying for her medical care, and later for fighting for custody. In the episode, Mario Hardy also states that Alberta intentionally sought out a white egg donor so that she would have a white child. I've heard this supported by many in MOVE. This fits in line with Alberta's white supremacist views and the internal racism that is rampant in MOVE. I'll be writing more about this soon.
The trial transcripts are long, and I plan to post some important pages here for analysis. There's much more in these documents than can be given proper attention in one blog post or podcast episode.
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