A Tale of Two Cities
Anna Sorokin and Marcellus "Khaliifah" Williams
Dearest Reader,
It’s hard to imagine that no matter what, the U.S. will have a new president in less than a month. Republicans are feeling quite litigious with several cases primed to challenge the results should they lose. On the other hand, Vice President Harris has raised an eye-popping $1 billion for her campaign in just three months and still has the wind at her back. With those coffers of cash Democrats will be able to mount a legal defense as necessary and comfortably bankroll a final campaign push. But support for Donald Trump, a murky zeitgeist and the electoral college pose formidable challenge to a totally plausible Harris victory. At the moment, polling is mixed with Harris and Trump tied at 48% according to an October 13th NBC national poll. A comparable ABC poll had Harris leading 50% to 48%, a CBS poll had Harris up 51% to 48% and as of October 15th famed pollster Nate Silver has them both with 50/50 odds. All four national polls show a slight dip in support for Harris tightening the race in Trump’s favor compared to earlier polling with Harris more decisively in the lead. Regardless, neither candidate can be dismissed until after every vote is counted, though something tells me Harris and the turnout of women voting Democratic this election may well tip the scales. We will see.
Within this hazy political moment, I was reflecting on which people or events might embody the current zeitgeist—and offer some insight into America today. This month two prominent figures in popular discourse came to mind: con artist Anna Sorokin AKA Anna Delvey and the late death row inmate Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams.
The spectacular swindler Anna Delvey who’s real name is Anna Sorokin, arrived in New York City in 2013 as a determined, intelligent and ambitious young twenty-something. She emigrated from Russia as a child to Germany with her middle class family and later to London and Paris by herself before landing in the United States. As soon as she arrived in New York, Sorkin posed as a German heiress—with a $67m trust fund—hobnobbing among New York’s high society until her house of cards came down in 2017. A lot of people are fascinated by Sorokin including publications like The New York Times, People, Town and Country, NBC and more writing about her recent PR blitz for an appearance on reality television. I can see the appeal, especially as she has amusing eccentricities and a sharp wit as showcased in the journalism of Jessica Pressler for New York Magazine in 2018 that later inspired a 2022 Netflix TV series from Shonda Rhimes called Inventing Anna …but like fallen tech CEO Elizabeth Holmes of “Theranos,” I’m not so taken in.
Holmes is arguably more notorious for becoming one the few women to run a Silicon Valley $900m tech start up and later ordered to pay $452m in restitution for defrauding investors with a spurious blood testing technology. She also distinctly crafted a fake persona that makes crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried look incredibly lazy—he’s serving 25 years with $11 billion in forfeiture for a 2024 cryptocurrency fraud conviction, so he has plenty of time to come up with ideas. She and her co-executive/romantic partner Sunny Balwani also drove their chief scientist, Ian Gibbons, to suicide from pressure to keep their secrets about the bogus science. Holmes and Balwani were ultimately sentenced to eleven and thirteen years in prison, respectively.
Unlike Holmes, Sorokin wasn’t playing with life or death, but mostly other people’s money and time while living out her dream of developing the “Anna Delvey Foundation”—a private members’ club and art foundation. Surprisingly, Sorokin got close to realizing her dream. Flanked by VIP allies and financiers with deep pockets, Sorokin was on her way before reality set in and she was eventually convicted of three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny. Ironically, a Swedish photography museum took over the coveted real estate Sorokin was planning to “purchase” and just closed its doors in September 2024, with plans to relocate to a larger venue. Between landing in the U.S. in 2013 and 2017 when she’s arrested, Sorokin defrauded and deceived major financial institutions, banks, hotels, and individuals out of $275,000. in 2019 Sorokin was sentenced to four to twelve years for her crimes and was fortuitously released in 2021 as she fights to stay in the United States. In her latest attempt to rehabilitate her image, Sorokin went on hit reality show Dancing with the Stars, amidst much controversy, only to be in the first round of eliminations along with Tori Spelling from 90s teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210. I haven’t ever really watched the dance-centric show, but I know it’s popular—it can be a place for people to plant a seed in revitalizing their career.
On September 24, 2024, the same evening as Anna Sorkin’s final night on Dancing with the Stars, Marcellus Williams was executed by the state of Missouri in his hometown of St. Louis. Williams was facing a death sentence that was previously delayed in 2015 and again in 2017. The current prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, Missouri, Wesley Bell, was elected in 2019—the first Black prosecuting attorney in county history. Bell is also running for the House of Representatives and actually unseated incumbent Democrat Cori Bush in the 2024 primary. Bush was vying for a third term as a progressive democrat despite vocal opposition to the war on Gaza. Bell was partially buoyed to his primary victory by an $8.5m campaign against Bush by pro-Israel organization the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. Nevertheless, by 2024 Bell and the family of the victim were united in halting Williams’ execution. Indeed, a 2016 DNA test found that Williams was not the source of male DNA on the murder weapon which was compelling evidence of his steadfast, self-proclaimed innocence.
In 2001 Williams was charged with the tragic 1998 first-degree murder of journalist Felicia Gayle in her home, as well as, robbery and burglary. Offering inconsistent testimonies, two key witnesses incentivize by leniency for their own crimes and financial reward placed Williams at the scene. However, there was no forensic, DNA, video or photographic evidence to place him there and Williams always asserted his innocence. In fact, according to advocacy organization The Innocence Project and prosecuting attorney Bell, the original prosecutors from the early aughts made many “admitted constitutional errors” including a “mishandled” murder weapon, destroyed bloody finger prints left at the crime scene and during trial they dismissed six out the seven prospective black jurors denying Williams a jury of his peers.
For the next 24 years, all told, Williams would remain in prison, but instead of checking out of life over this grave injustice, he turned to studying Islam and writing poetry. Williams ultimately converted, eventually earning the honorific “Khaliifah” meaning leader in Arabic. According to the Innocence Project, Williams was well respected within the prison walls and elsewhere for his strength of character plus a stellar prison record. When the time came, his last meal was chicken wings and tater tots. Williams spent his final hours with his imam in prayer, who accompanied him to the execution chamber. Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams last words were: “All Praise Be to Allah In Every Situation!!!”
As I sat down to write this newsletter, I was struck by how much of Anna Sorokin’s rise and fall is about her personal vision and personal freedom. Though she served time in prison, Sorokin was released and has her whole life ahead of her. Not so for Marcellus Williams who, as it turns out, was about the same age as Sorokin today when he was incarcerated in 2001. USA Today reported Williams was born in South Bend, Indiana in 1968 and later moved to St. Louis, Missouri with his mother and two brothers around five years of age. According to court records, Williams childhood home was dysfunctional resulting in early exposure to drugs, alcohol and guns.
In 1997 when his older brother died, the grief of losing a father-figure drove Williams to be more reckless, eventually landing in jail for a home burglary that year and again for robbing a doughnut shop in 1998. Then in 1999, just after beginning an already lengthy 20-year sentence for robbing the doughnut shop, a charge was levied against Williams by his former cellmate alleging he confessed to Felicia Gayle’s murder. So essentially, if anyone was going to take a fall for a murder they didn’t commit, in a racist town, Williams was the perfect candidate. In the end, his case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court after Missouri’s GOP Governor Mike Parson and GOP State’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey kept undermining prosecuting attorney Bell’s efforts to redress a clear pattern of “constitutional errors” in Williams’ case. Sadly, the court decided not to intervene with the three liberal justices objecting and so his fate was sealed. Given this tragic backstory, I’m genuinely moved by Williams’ last words—despite everything he found grace.
Aside from highlighting obvious contrasts in the ways that Anna Sorokin versus Marcellus Williams were treated in our justice system (even accounting for the gravity of their crimes), I was disturbed by their narrative juxtaposition in nightly news reporting and popular discourse. I think both lives foreshadow growing trends.
Sorokin’s story portends legitimacy of celebrity/influencer culture and white collar crime as a legitimate path to success and financial prosperity (akin to an increasingly morally bankrupt version of the American Dream that no longer feigns virtue or starting in the proverbial mailroom —*cough* Donald Trump). Sorokin has sold rights to a Netflix show for $320,000 and has a forthcoming reality series based on her life after prison following her stint on Dancing with the Stars, among other ventures. You can compare her to Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried on the basis of financial fraud, but unlike them, Sorokin hasn’t upturned the deep pockets of major investors (yet?) and is a kind of cult hero despite the fact that when you Google her name, her Wikipedia job title is literally “con artist.”
For Marcellus Williams, I fear his state-sanctioned murder—I think it’s fair to call it that—portends an increasingly violent and callous political and judicial system. If the state can kill a clearly innocent man, using every dirty trick in the book, and GOP lawmakers and judges are actively sanctioning such a glaringly unjust case—what does that mean for due process going forward? What does Marcellus Williams’ case say about state sponsored violence? What exactly is being signaled to us in 2024 in the shadow of George Floyd?
Even with a potential Harris administration the polarization across the legislative and judicial branch (and especially the Supreme Court) won’t magically dissolve given the years invested in gumming up the works by the GOP. Fixes are possible, but I fear something sinister in how the execution of Marcellus Williams was aggressively championed and publicly white-washed by GOP officials in such an overtly corrupt and polarized manner. Missouri Governor Parson had the audacity to say in a statement, “No juror nor judge has ever found Williams’ innocence claim to be credible,” knowing full well he denied a man his just day in court. Whereas the NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement, “Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man.”
As the election approaches and Americans consider local, state and federal candidates to serve their communities, I think the lives of Sorokin and Williams are informative. Voters should take local and state elections very seriously because with a different governor and state’s attorney general with the exact same evidence of “constitutional errors,” Williams would likely be alive today. With respect to Sorokin, people should also consider what kind of society is being created for young people so they have more opportunities for success that are not wrapped up in fame and fortune, but self-development and financial security. To think that Williams was thirty-three when he went on death row in St. Louis in 2001 and Sorokin is that age today in New York City, embarking on a new, hopefully healthier, life albeit with an ongoing desperation for the lime light. Imagine—two cities in America, a world apart.
Rest in Peace Marcellus "Khaliifah" Williams.
With Love During End Times,
Agunda