David Blaska:

This Wednesday 09-07-22, Khari Sanford will be sentenced in Dane County Circuit Court for the execution-style slaying of Dr. Beth Potter and her husband Robin Carre.

They were murdered by a person they had tried to help,” their memorial obituary reads.

Khari Sanford was 18 years old on March 30, 2020 when he entered the Carre-Potter’s home in upper middle-class University Heights some time after 10:40 p.m. Using the Volkswagen minivan the couple had lent him, Sanford and his convicted accomplice Alijah “Hunch” Larrue took their captives on a circuitous route to the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. There, not far off the Vilas Park entrance, Sanford forced the two, still wearing their bed clothes in the March cold, to their knees.

With his powerful Glock .357 SIG semi-automatic handgun, Sanford shot Robin once behind the left ear at close range, execution-style. He shot Beth twice, once in the upper arm, once in the back of the head. Perhaps she had struggled. During the 26-minute drive to their execution, one can only imagine how Beth and Robin tried to dissuade the young man from his deadly deed, to remember their many kindnesses, to promise more favors.

“It was calculated, cold blooded and senseless,” the chief of University of Wisconsin Police said at the time.

Shocking and puzzling, too, since the murdered couple had given every consideration to Sanford, a young black man in a romantic relationship with the Carre-Potter’s daughter Miriam, whom the white couple had adopted out of an orphanage in Guatemala.

In the immediate hours after his deadly deed, Sanford attempted to cash out the dead couple’s ATM cards. A form of reparations, perhaps. Payment for the dead couple’s white privilege and the larger society’s institutional racism, it could be argued. Because Khari Sanford certainly identified as a victim. He posted on his Facebook page a few months before the murders. (Source here.)

“We gon’ change this world, cause it’s time to let our diversity and youth shine over all oppressive systemsand rebuild our democracy.”


“They were murdered by a person they had tried to help.”
—  Robin Carre – Beth Potter obituary.

In fairness, Khari O. Sanford came to Madison as damaged goods. Writing from his jail cell to Judge Ellen Berz in September 2021, Sanford wrote he was the oldest of seven children to a single mother in Chicago and a father who spent the son’s first 10 years in prison.

“One of my greatest friends died in my arm at the age of seven years old as the result of a drive by shooting,” he wrote. “That was my first traumatic experience.”

Did progressive Madison teach Sanford his sense victimhood — despite all the opportunities presented him? In his sophomore year at West high school, Sanford joined its newly formed Black Student Union just as social justice warriors, informed by critical race theory taught at the University of Wisconsin, were waging war on police.

A culture of victimization

Madison public schools had already sacrificed discipline in favor of identity politics because “A zero tolerance policy toward discipline … was having a disproportionate and negative effect on students of color.”

A dedicated practitioner of cancel culture, the school district erased name of the slave-holding Founder and renamed one of its schools after a minor black office holder. Inconveniently, Wisconsin’s capital city — founded the year that President died — retains his disgraced name.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?