Franciscan Health shows off $43M Cancer Center
Plus, YouTubers booted from Delphi murder trial. Cast rounds out in Hulu version of the Barnett/Natalia Grace saga. Boilers prep for Grambling State. Wabash/Tippecanoe land use plan advances
Thanks today to sponsor Food Finders Food Bank, presenting the Blue Jean Ball on Saturday, May 4. For tickets and more details, click the link below.
FRANCISCAN OPENS $43 MILLION CANCER CENTER IN LAFAYETTE
Bishop Timothy Doherty blessed Franciscan Health Lafayette’s new Cancer Center Wednesday, capping a week of tours, public open houses and finally the opening this week of a $43 million facility on the north side of the hospital on South Creasy Lane.
Terry Wilson, Franciscan Health Western Indiana president and CEO, told a crowd that morning that the promise of the 68,000-square-foot, three-story facility was to bring Franciscan’s oncology services, spread in five spots in various parts of the hospital campus and in offices off-campus in Lafayette, into one spot.
In doing it, Wilson said, Franciscan was able to upgrade equipment and use it as a pitch to recruit oncologists and the hospitals cancer care team. Wilson called it an investment in the community by Franciscan Alliance at a time when questions swirls about health care costs and whether not-for-profit systems are making enough of those investments.
“We said it will help us improve the care we provide to our patients,” Wilson said. “We’ll keep that promise. …This is going to be a wonderful place for our patients.”
Among the features touted by Franciscan: a new PET/CT machine which can scan a patient in as little as 15 minutes; a new linear accelerator; and robotic bronchoscopy available for lung biopsy, providing earlier diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer.
The center opened to patients on Monday, with treatment happening even as Bishop Doherty made rounds with his blessing.
Here’s a look from inside the facility during tours in the past week.
HOW’S YOUR BRACKET SO FAR? MORE IMPORTANTLY …: Are you braced for the first round for Purdue? Tipoff against No. 16 seed Grambling State is 7:25 p.m. tonight/Friday, from Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Here’s J&C reporter’s Sam King’s look at what’s coming: “Prediction for 2024 NCAA Tournament opener.”
It was also good, via King, to hear these NCAA Tournament tidbits from former Purdue guard Brandon Newman, now playing for Western Kentucky, and Harrison High School grad Jonah Lucas, now at Marquette, which is a No. 2 seed.
LAND USE PLAN PROPOSAL SAILS THROUGH: A reworking of Wabash Township and Tippecanoe Township’s land use plan – the first since 1981 – advanced with little comment at Wednesday’s Area Plan Commission. The plans have been in the works since 2022 for the fast-growing areas west and north of West Lafayette. Among the ideas in a plan meant to guide development and conceptual road projects is a potential northern, more direct extension of U.S. 231 between Sagamore Parkway and Interstate 65 in the northern part of Tippecanoe County.
The Area Plan Commission board voted unanimously to send the study to Tippecanoe County commissioners with a recommendation for approval. The commissioners meet next at 10 a.m. Monday, April 1.
For more details, here’s a link to the proposed plan. Also, here’s a breakdown of goals outlined in the land use plan, via a previous story in Based in Lafayette:
TRUE CRIME YOUTUBERS BOOTED FROM DELPHI MURDER TRIALS: The complicated wrangling this week in the high-profile trial of Richard Allen, accused in the 2017 murders of Delphi teens Abby Williams and Libby German, wasn’t limited to the courtroom during Monday’s hearing in Allen Superior Court. On Wednesday, Judge Fran Gull issued an order banning Richard Snay and David Noe, who have YouTube channels dedicated to the Delphi case, from the courtroom for the remainder of the trial.
According to the order, Gull decided that Snay and Noe have violated a court order demanding decorum in the courtroom and the courthouse during Monday’s hearing. The order, issued ahead of the hearing, warned that “any conduct the Court finds disruptive of the proceedings is punishable as direct contempt of Court and will result in a term of imprisonment and permanent exclusion from the Courtroom, the Courthouse, and all future proceedings." Gull expanded that expectation to how the public and media conducted themselves so they didn’t disrupt other offices in the courthouse.
This was the scenario Gull laid out in her order with the punishment filed Wednesday: “The Court recessed the morning hearing at approximately noon. The Court observed a member of the gallery, later identified as Richard Snay, becoming animated and somewhat vocal with Courtroom Security, who admonished him to sit down. At approximately 12:10 p.m., Court Security observed Snay and David Noe engaged in conversation on the first floor, that ultimately became heated. Court Security advised them to be civil and leave the building. Court Security removed both participants from the building and observed a verbal altercation between them on the sidewalk and surrounding areas of the Courthouse.”
Snay, who calls his commentary on the case “Delphi After Dark” and focuses on theories that Allen isn’t guilty, issued a statement that he understood and accepted the ban from the rest of the Allen case, but “I do not understand nor accept the lies Judge Gull told in reporting this to the public.” Snay said he’d stopped in the courtroom “to offer love and support for my friend, Kathy Allen,” who is Richard Allen’s wife. He disputed whether he was arguing with Noe when he was asked to leave the courthouse and that the dispute that ensued on an outside sidewalk happened where “it is not the court's concern what I do.”
Noe’s YouTube channel includes him retracing the Delphi trails, near where the girls were killed, and singing songs with themes tied to the case, including one called “Down the Hill.”
AND PLAYING MICHAEL BARNETT IS …: Movie industry trade publication Deadline reported this week that actor Mark Duplass would play opposite Ellen Pompeo and Imogen Reid in a made-for-Hulu retelling of the story of Michael and Kristine Barnett and their adopted daughter, Natalia Grace.
The story, of course, has close ties to Lafayette, where the Barnetts brought Natalia – an orphan born in Ukraine – to live a decade ago before moving from their Hamilton County home to Canada. They were charged with neglect in 2019. The big question in a case that followed was whether Natalia was a pre-teen when she arrived, as her birth records showed, or an adult old enough to legally drink. After years of hearing that included a ruling, at one point, from the Indiana Supreme Court, a jury acquitted Michael Barnett. Prosecutors dropped remaining charges against Kristine Barnett. (For a closer look at the ins and outs of that case: “As Natalia Grace doc looms, prosecutor releases evidence blocked in Barnett case.”)
The saga has played out in dramatic docu-drama style in a pair of multi-episode series called “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace” in 2023 and 2024 on Investigative Discovery. Both were bizarre, big hits. Pompeo has been developing a version of the story, under the working title “Orphan,” since before the Barnett trials.
According to his deposition in March 2022, Michael Barnett sold the rights for the Hulu version of the story for $300,000. It’s a production that also drew comparisons to “The Orphan,” a 2009 movie about a family adopting a girl who turned out not to be who they thought she was. Here’s what producers released in 2022 as a teaser about the series on the Barnett case: “Inspired by the true story of the Midwestern couple who adopts what they believe is a little girl with dwarfism. As they begin to raise her alongside their three biological children, they slowly start to believe she may not be who she says she is. As they question her story, they’re confronted with hard questions of their own about the lengths they’re willing to go to defend themselves, falling into a battle that’s fought in the tabloids, the courtroom and ultimately their marriage.”
The question facing Duplass: Does he lean into Michael Barnett’s dramatic flair on display in the “Curious Case” episodes or finally give audiences the believable role they’ve been waiting for?
Thanks, again, to sponsor Food Finders Food Bank, presenting the Blue Jean Ball on Saturday, May 4. For tickets and more details, click here.
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