The 18 year old son of a famed Broadway costume designer and a popular Brooklyn teacher was murdered on July 2nd in Richmond, Virginia. Toni-Leslie James has won and been nominated for many awards for her work. Just this season she designed the costumes for Tom Hanks’s “Lucky Guy” on Broadway and the amazing “Comedy of Errors” at Shakespeare in the Park.

On July 2nd, her 18 year old son Jett left the house where they spend summers in Richmond, Virginia at 10:45pm. According to reports he had $4 and an iPhone in his pocket. He went to the corner store to get snacks. Within 15 minutes he was dead, the victim of  a robbery gone bad.

In New York, where Toni-Leslie James and her husband, lighting designer David Higham (he teaches at Brooklyn’s PolyPrep), have many ties, only CBS2 has reported this story locally. But at the opening of “Fruitvale Station” this past Monday, a movie with a similar story, someone mentioned this tragedy to me.

In Richmond, three young men were arrested and charged with the crime. Jett has been down in Richmond only six days.

Here’s the not very good report from Richmond TV. (Not to diminish the story. But I don’t know why the correspondent is dressed this way. A jacket and tie might make him and the story seem more important. The guy looks homeless.)

I don’t even know I can explain this: Sumner Redstone‘s ex-stewardess girlfriend is named Malia Andelin. She is listed as the sole donor to Global Poverty Project. They’re the underlying registered charity of Global Citizen, the group that’s putting on the all-star charity event in Central Park this September.

Global Citizen says it’s part an an Australian clothing company called Cotton One. (You can read about them in my last post.) But when I asked about a Form 990 for Global Citizen, they referred me to the Form 990 filed for Global Poverty Project, And the sole donor to GPP is one Elizabeth Malia Andelin of Beverly Hills, a former flight attendant on Viacom  chief Sumner Redstone’s private plane. Andelin donated $1.5 million. She’s the purported 35ish galpal of 90 year old Redstone. Their pictures are pretty much all over the internet, and they look about as couple-y as Redstone will allow given his checkered romantic history.

The Form 990 for Global Poverty states that they have no– zero– donations to anyone in 2011. (Their 2012 form hasn’t been filed.) But of the $3 million they had on hand in 2011, more than half– $1.6 million–went to salaries, advertising, travel, and legal fees. They spent $899,000 on advertising.

Hugh Evans is the extremely well spoken founder of the group. I spoke to him this morning. He has the Australian gift of gab, which isn’t a bad thing when you’re raising lots of money and chatting up celebrities. Evans is passionate about ending global poverty. He insists on a couple of things: One– that Redstone and Andelin “are not a couple. She isn’t his girlfriend.” Two– that all the money raised by Global Citizen goes to the cause of ending extreme poverty. He seemed unaware of the Form 990 expense listings.  Evans was featured last year in the New York Times and he’s a celebrity in Australia. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/arts/music/hugh-evans-29-force-behind-global-festival-on-great-lawn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

He told me that all of the musicians in this year’s show are performing for free. At 30, he expressed shock that I had attended the famous concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, back in 1981, with Simon & Garfunkel. “You don’t sound old,” he said. I assured him I had aged naturally.

Evans said Global Citizen doesn’t make charitable donations. “We’re an advocacy group. We got $1.3 billion last year in commitments from other groups and corporations,” he said. “You can see them on our website.”

He also said that a committee of people in the music industry and with big agencies like CAA, WME, Live Nation and AEG Live met to organize the concert.

And what’s the interest of Australian retailer Cotton One, which seems to be somewhere at the root of all this? “They have 153 stores in the US now, and they’re planning a thousand more in the next year.”

“King of Queens” star Leah Remini has reportedly left — er, escaped– Scientology. The New York Post took credit for the scoop but they got it from Tony Ortega’s fascinating blog. (www.tonyortega.org) The former Village Voice editor is writing a book about Scientology and keeps up with it at an amazing clip.

Remini apparently grew disaffected from Scientology after questioning leader David Miscavige about many things including his long-missing wife, Shelly Miscavige. Remini’s exit is major because Scientology keeps a tight grip on celebrity members and uses them to attract new members. They’re also the cult’s big money makers, donating millions.

It could be that Remini, who’s been off TV for a while, isn’t as important to Miscavige anymore. Ortega says that at Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s wedding in 2006, Remini questioned Miscavige regarding his wife’s whereabouts. After the wedding she filed a “report” on Miscavige, and was then punished.

Remini now joins Oscar winning director Paul Haggis, actor Jason Beghe and possible Lisa Marie Presley on the list of celebs who’ve made it over the wall. Remini faces some obstacles because her mother, sisters, and stepfather remain deeply embedded in Scientology. The cult forces members to “disconnect” from exiles and have nothing to do with them again. So if she’s actually made the break, Remini is tremendously brave.

Stay tuned because there’s more…