• Odd invitation from Nebraska jail: Spend the night for $30

    Sergeant Casey Mitchell / Lancaster County Corrections

    For $30 a night, law-abiding Nebraska citizens can rest their heads here to help out corrections officers and benefit children's charities.

    By Elizabeth Chuck, Staff Writer, NBC News

    A couple square meals, brand new bedding on a four-inch-thick mattress, and the chance to benefit children's charities are attracting some law-abiding Nebraskans to spend a night in the unlikeliest of places: behind bars.


    Starting Thursday night at 6 p.m., the 90-square-foot cells at the new Lancaster County Adult Detention Facility in Lincoln, Neb., will be filled with voluntary inmates -- 200 people from the community who signed up for a night in the pen. The cost for participants is $30.

    The event also will function as a dry run for the facility.

    "We want to use 'compliant' inmates," Lancaster County Corrections Director Michael Thurber said. "We'll use the intercoms, we'll see how the camera angles are, how the views from our control center are. We'll use the lights, we'll run the water, we'll see how everything drains." 

    Participants will arrive at 6 p.m. and leave at 7 a.m. the following morning, starting Thursday night of this week and running through Saturday night. Their fee goes to The Child Advocacy Center, a nonprofit that helps victims of child abuse, and Operation Santa Claus, which gives toys to needy children.

    The schedule for the overnight stay includes a tour of the jail at 8:30 p.m., lockdown at 10 p.m., lights out at 11 p.m., and a light breakfast at 6 a.m. the following morning. Participants will be fingerprinted and have their mugshot taken upon arrival. They will be invited to wear jail jumpsuits, but can wear street clothing if they want.

    The deadline for signing up to stay the night in jail has passed, but Thurber said free tours of the jail -- which is scheduled to open in the summer -- will continue through April. Among the 200 people who are spending the night: criminal justice college students, book clubs, a local TV host, and a state senator.

    Corrections staff will do a dry run of everything exactly as they would with real inmates.

    "I want to see the cell doors working. I want to know they shut," Thurber said. "We want them to tell us what they're hearing in the cells. How's the sound echoing in here? We're just trying to break it in. That's the best way to see how our systems work." 

    Dinner, however, might be a tad classier.

    "There might be a chicken-fried steak," he said. "There's a vegetable, some bread, some type of a pudding or a dessert. There might be a chicken entree as well. I haven't seen the exact entree yet. But I know mashed potatoes, green beans, maybe a little salad. We're probably jazzing the meal up just a little bit."

    The nearly 300,000-square-foot facility has 779 beds and will replace an overcrowded detention center in downtown Lincoln. Participants in the overnight stays must be 18 or older, but anyone can take a free tour of the jail. 

    The event has raised $600 for charity so far; others have pledged to donate checks during their tours later in the month, which are free, Thurber said.

    Lynn Ayers, the executive director of the Lincoln-based Children Advocacy Center, said Thurber contacted her four or five years ago, when the jail was still being built, about the idea of teaming up for the charity. 

    "I was excited about it then and glad it came to happen. It's kind of a cool idea," she said, adding that as a nonprofit, her organization does special events all the time -- though this was one of the more unusual partnerships.

    Unlike actual inmates, participants in the overnight stays are allowed to leave before their stay ends in the morning. 

     

  • Doctor's report on Lincoln assassination discovered by researcher

    AP Photo/Library of Congress

    Dr. Charles A. Leale was the first doctor to treat President Abraham Lincoln after he was shot at a Washington theater on the night of April 14, 1865. Helena Iles Papaioannou, a researcher with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project has discovered an original copy of Dr. Leale's clinical 21-page report from the night Lincoln was shot.

    By Phil Rogers, NBCChicago.com

    Researchers at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library are marveling over the historical equivalent of buried treasure: an up-to-now undiscovered account of the night Lincoln was assassinated, written by the first doctor to treat him.


    Dr. Charles Leale was a 23-year-old army surgeon who was in attendance at Ford's Theatre when John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln days after the conclusion of the Civil War. 

    Abraham Lincoln researcher Helena Iles Papaioannou discovered Leale's account while searching the records of the surgeon general in the National Archives in Washington, DC. The 21-page report is Leale's own retelling of the tragedy, written just hours after the president died the following morning.

    Read the original report on NBCChicago.com

    "What is remarkable about this newly discovered report is it's immediacy and poignancy," said Daniel Stowell, director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project. "You can sense the helplessness Leale and the other doctors felt that night, but it does not have the sentimentality or added layers of later accounts."

    The young doctor was sitting just 25 feet away from the Lincoln box, giving him a front-row seat to the tragedy. He then became the first doctor to treat Lincoln, supervising his care until the president's own doctor arrived.

    The National Archives has re-discovered a long-forgotten note written by the doctor who first evaluated Abraham Lincoln after the 16th president was shot in Ford's Theater. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

    "The theatre was well filled, and the play 'Our American Cousin' progressed very pleasantly until about half past ten," Leale wrote, "when the report of a pistol was distinctly heard."

    "About a minute after, a man of low stature with black hair and eyes was seen leaping to the stage beneath, holding in his hand a drawn dagger."

    Leale described how Booth had become entangled in the flag draping the front of Lincoln's box in his leap to the stage. Booth broke his leg in the fall.

    "I then heard cries that the 'President has been murdered,' Leale wrote, adding that calls of "kill the murderer" and "shoot him" began echoing through the theatre.

    AP Photo/Alexander Gardner

    Dr. Charles Leale rushed to the upstairs balcony where Abraham Lincoln had been seated after hearing the president had been shot. He was the first to administer aid
    immediately following the shooting.

    "I immediately ran to the President's box and as soon as the door was opened was admitted and introduced to Mrs. Lincoln, when she exclaimed several times, 'O doctor, do what you can for him, do what you can!'"

    Leale said that Lincoln's breathing was "intermittent" and that he could find no pulse. Using a finger, he removed a clot of blood from the bullet wound and said Lincoln's breathing became "more regular."

    The doctor described in great detail how he and others carried Lincoln from the box, down the stairs of the theatre and across the street to the Peterson house across the street.

    "We placed the President in bed in a diagonal position, as the bed was too short.  As soon as we placed him in bed we removed his clothes and covered him with blankets. While covering him I found his lower extremities very cold from his feet to a distance of several inches of above his knees. I then sent for bottles of hot water, and hot blankets, which were applied to his lower extremities and abdomen."

    Leale said Mary Todd Lincoln entered the room "three or four times" during the evening and that the president's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, remained at his bedside throughout the night. Unmentioned in the report, but well known to history, is the fact that the First Lady was eventually expelled and kept from the room, her grief was so intense.

    After hours of futile efforts to save the fallen president, Leale described Lincoln's final moments.

    "At 7:20 a.m. he breathed his last, and 'the spirit fled to God who gave it.'"

    Leale had received his medical license only six weeks earlier. At the time of the assassination, he was in charge of a wounded officers' ward at the United States Army hospital in Armory Square in Washington. He had been present on the lawn at the White House a few evenings earlier, when Lincoln delivered what would become his final speech to a crowd celebrating the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.  Booth was present on the lawn that night as well, and many historians believe he solidified his decision to kill the President that evening.

    Researchers at the Lincoln Library say that in the ensuing years, Leale rarely discussed his role in the drama. Indeed, it was not until 1909, 44 years after the assassination, that he spoke publicly about the events at Ford's Theatre.

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