A New York City man who spent five months walking from the Big Apple to California had his belongings stolen shortly after completing the cross-country journey.

Chantz Rivera, a Bronx resident, began the trek on May 31. For 149 consecutive days, he walked while hauling his possessions in a shopping cart before finally reaching the West Coast.

After arriving in San Francisco on Oct. 26, Rivera stopped at a McDonald’s near Fillmore Street and Golden Gate Avenue. While there, someone stole a bag containing his portable charger and USB flash drives.

Rivera said he initially was not especially concerned because he was exhausted and feeling ill.

“I’m like, ‘Oh, somebody took something? I don’t care. It ain’t worth nothing. I’m already here [in California],” he told the San Francisco Standard.

He soon realized, however, that the stolen memory cards and flash drive held videos and photographs documenting his journey.

“That’s when I got tight, because you can’t buy those videos,” he said. “That’s all I really care about.”

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The theft was not the only setback Rivera faced after reaching California.

While he was in Sacramento, someone gave him a pair of shoes. Rivera placed them in his shopping cart, which he briefly left unattended.

“I went back to the cart, and it was gone, but that was my fault, because I left them,” he told the Standard. “It was so quick. It was within an hour.”

Rivera, who gained more than 50,000 Instagram followers by sharing updates from the trip, said a fan also offered to arrange a hotel room for him following the McDonald’s theft. The promised booking never materialized.

“They said they booked me. I went there, and then they didn’t even book it. They kind of reserved it, but they didn’t pay for it,” Rivera said.

Still, Rivera’s time in California was not entirely defined by disappointment.

A San Francisco hotel’s general manager provided him with a complimentary two-night stay. Another person bought him pizza and took him on a driving tour to Twin Peaks.

Two college students who set out for a hike in Colorado were found dead after going missing for several days.

Deputies found the bodies of Kaden Matsuda, 19, and Jackson Donlon, 20, in a mountain basin on West Apostle Mountain, the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

Matsuda, a Ridgway, Colorado, resident, and Donlon, who was from Queensbury, New York, were students at Colorado Mountain College’s Leadville campus. Authorities said the pair left campus Friday, Oct. 23, for a hike near Ice Mountain.

Their bodies were discovered Wednesday, after Colorado Mountain College reported them missing on Monday.

The sheriff’s office said the bodies were located near each other and that “foul play is not suspected.”

Investigators provided detailed updates on social media about the search, which involved 60 search-and-rescue volunteers from six counties. Crews navigated treacherous trails and worsening weather while looking for the missing students.

Deputies later established a possible timeline for the students’ ill-fated hike.

Sheriff Andy Rohrich said in a statement, “Our heart aches for Kaden and Jackson’s family and friends. We are very proud of our team’s efforts to find them before this weekend’s coming storm. Although this is a gut punch, our prayers were answered that we would find Kaden and Jackson, allowing some closure for the family.”

The men’s remains were transferred to the Chaffee County Coroner’s Office for autopsies.

The investigation into the deaths remains ongoing.

News Media has contacted Colorado Mountain College for comment on the tragedy.

Former Medieval Times employees say the iconic dinner-theater chain fostered a frat-like “knights will be knights” culture marked by alleged sexual harassment and horse mistreatment, according to a bombshell report.

Medieval Times operates 10 “castles” across North America and welcomes about 2.5 million guests each year. The company became embroiled in a bitter labor dispute after workers raised concerns about what they described as troubling workplace conditions, Vanity Fair reported.

Employees at several locations, including the Lyndhurst, New Jersey, castle, described a locker-room environment reminiscent of a fraternity. New hires were allegedly subjected to hazing, the outlet reported.

“There’s like a whole pseudo-fraternity thing going on,” said Purnell Thompson, who worked for years in the stables at the New Jersey location.

Sean Quigley, a former lord chancellor at Lyndhurst who shared a locker room with the all-male knight staff, alleged that performers “would pull down their pants and wait for someone to come around the corner.”

Quigley said the behavior reflected a broader “knights will be knights” mentality.

At the Scottsdale, Arizona, castle, a former employee told Vanity Fair he was forced to run through sand until he vomited during his first two weeks on the job.

Former workers said the macho atmosphere extended beyond the men’s locker room, with female employees alleging persistent sexual harassment throughout the castle.

Lexi-Lynn Taylor, a former queen at the Buena Park, California, location, said several knights harassed and touched her inappropriately. She alleged that one performer “wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Workers also described the castle as a setting for casual relationships and frequent romantic entanglements that sometimes became contentious.

“Everybody dated everybody,” said Kate Farrell, a former queen. “Things can get messy.”

Taylor said she was slut-shamed after kissing a colleague at a Christmas party and was called a “knight’s mattress” and “ye old whore.”

Farrell, who sued Medieval Times this year over allegations of sexual harassment, retaliation and gender discrimination, said another knight “pushed me up against my car and pressed his hand on my crotch.”

In one alleged incident, after a female employee reported harassment, a manager asked a subordinate to remove stitching from her costume in an effort to create “wardrobe malfunctions in front of live audiences.”

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A former Scottsdale employee said he corroborated a female colleague’s harassment complaint in 2020. Rather than discipline the accused worker, however, Medieval Times allegedly transferred him to another department and increased his pay.

“On multiple occasions, I watched instances of poor behavior almost be rewarded,” the former employee said.

Former workers also alleged that conditions in the horse stables were deeply troubling, claiming trainers mistreated the animals.

“I loved my job. But I couldn’t stand by while they mistreated us and the animals,” said Erin Zapcic, a former queen at the Buena Park castle.

Sidney Setzer, a former stable hand, alleged that “the horses would come back with visible raised welts on their hindquarters from whipping.” She said she eventually quit because of the physical exhaustion.

Another former cast member, Bethany Regan, alleged in a 2019 lawsuit that a trainer whipped horses unnecessarily, causing injuries and contributing directly to the death of one animal. The case was settled out of court in 2020, according to Vanity Fair.

Tensions spilled over in 2022 as the workers at Buena Park and Lyndhurst both organized unions over poor wages and toxic workplace conditions — before joining the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA).

The Buena Park Medieval Times employees went on strike in February 2023, launching a nine-month standoff — while the company flew in performers from other castles to replace the on-strike staff.

“Every single day for nine months, thousands of people crossed our picket line and called us a**holes in the name of a two-hour show,” said Zapcic.

Employees eventually returned in November 2023, though some claimed they faced hostility and had their roles changed.

“The amount we were relentlessly harassed and retaliated against by our coworkers was awful,” Zapcic said.

The Buena Park union never secured a contract, and the AGVA reportedly stepped away from the effort in 2024.

The following year, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled that Medieval Times had violated federal labor law in its efforts to defeat the union campaign. The company has since appealed the ruling.

Medieval Times did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Erin Patterson is likely to spend the rest of her life behind bars after her bid to overturn her conviction failed and prosecutors succeeded in having her non-parole period removed.

On Friday, Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal judges Stephen McLeish, Lesley Taylor and Peter Kidd dismissed Patterson’s appeal.

Supreme Court of Victoria Justice Christopher Beale sentenced Patterson to life in prison on September 8, 2025, after she was convicted of murdering Don and Gail Patterson and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. The three victims became ill after eating a poisonous beef Wellington.

Justice Beale initially set a non-parole period of 33 years. However, prosecutors successfully appealed the sentence, prompting the appeal panel to impose life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Patterson appeared by video link wearing a blue prison-issued jumper, glasses and her long brown hair tied in a ponytail. She showed no emotion as the judges delivered their decision.

Her lawyers have indicated that she will take the case to the High Court, the final legal avenue available to challenge both her conviction and sentence.

Patterson’s victims died after consuming death cap mushrooms served in beef Wellingtons at a lunch held at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.

Pastor Ian Wilkinson, who was not present at Friday’s hearing, survived after becoming critically ill. Patterson was also convicted of his attempted murder.

Patterson challenged her murder convictions on seven grounds, arguing that a series of errors had caused a substantial miscarriage of justice and that the convictions should be quashed.

A central part of her appeal was the claim that a ‘fundamental irregularity’ occurred because jurors were sequestered in the same hotel as police and prosecutors during their deliberations. Patterson argued the arrangement may have affected the verdicts, but the judges found the claim had ‘no basis’.

The courtroom was filled with true crime followers, journalists and Simon Patterson’s brother, Matthew.

The brief hearing was livestreamed on the court’s website, while a television crew was permitted inside to record what could be the final stage of Patterson’s legal battle.

Patterson also argued that some evidence should never have been admitted, while other material was wrongly excluded. This included mobile phone tower data connected to death cap mushroom sightings, Facebook messages, evidence from ‘friends’ and photographs and videos of mushrooms stored on an SD card that she said supported her foraging account.

She further claimed that the prosecution’s lengthy cross-examination was ‘unfair and oppressive’. Patterson also alleged that the prosecutor’s closing address contained numerous errors or misstatements and improperly suggested that she had a motive to kill.

Following the failed appeal, Patterson will be returned to the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, where she is expected to spend decades in custody.

Because she is so despised inside the prison, Patterson is held in near-solitary confinement in the restrictive Gordon Unit.

She spends up to 23 hours a day there crocheting, watching television, using a computer and reading books or magazines.

She is confined to a small cell with a tiny attached courtyard, receives food and medication through a slot in the door, has very little contact with other inmates and must be escorted by two officers whenever she moves within the prison.

They are conditions imposed for her own protection due to the notoriety of her crimes. 

The end of the drawn-out legal saga might now provide some semblance of peace for the surviving victims. 

Lone survivor Ian Wilkinson had attended practically every day of Patterson’s ten-week trial in Morwell last year and was there during her appeal hearing in August. 

During a pre-sentence hearing, Wilkinson condemned Patterson for the ‘callous and calculated disregard’ for the lives of people who had only good intentions toward her, and questioned the ‘foolishness’ of believing murder could solve problems.   

During that hearing he carefully limited his forgiveness, offering it only for the harms done to him and not for the murders of Heather, Gail and Don. 

He encouraged Patterson to accept that offer ‘with full confession and repentance’, adding that he bore her no ill will and prayed she would use her time in prison wisely to become a better person. 

‘I am no longer Erin Patterson’s victim. She has become the victim of my kindness,’ he said. 

Little has been seen recently of Patterson’s former husband Simon, who believed she had repeatedly tried to murder him in the years before she killed his family. 

Mr Patterson alleged his wife tried to poison him on multiple occasions in 2021-2022 with meals she prepared, including a Tupperware of penne bolognese, a chicken korma curry during a camping trip, a beef stew while he was recovering at her home and a curry wrap on another outing.

Each time he became seriously ill, requiring hospitalisation; one episode left him in a medically induced coma for more than two weeks and required emergency bowel surgery.

Police charged Patterson with three counts of attempted murder based on those incidents, and investigators noted research on her devices into barium carbonate (rat poison) around the time of one illness, but no specific poison was ever forensically confirmed.

Those charges were discontinued before her main trial and never went to a jury.

In April, it was revealed Mr Patterson would pen his memoir with a publishing deal already agreed. 

With the appeal over, that book is now expected to finally see the light of day.   

Patterson even had black plastic sheeting erected over the entry to her Leongatha home, to hide her from the media when she walked free from court after her trial. 

That home will now be officially stripped from her and sold to compensate the victims of her crime. 

Her plot to get away with murder had been foiled by Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall, who formally took over the investigation around August 3, 2023 after the mass poisoning. 

Det Eppingstall had attended every single day of Patterson’s pre-trial, trial and subsequent appeal. 

On Friday, he maintained a dignified silence as he left the court in respect for those victims he had worked to represent.

Eppingstall had been a long-respected member of the force who in 2024 received a Prince of Wales Award for his service as a Defence Force reservist.

He conducted Patterson’s first formal police interview on August 5, 2023, in which she denied owning a dehydrator or foraging for mushrooms.

At her trial, he gave extensive evidence as the Crown’s final key witness and was cross-examined at length by the defence. 

After bringing Patterson to trial, he also recently brought to justice the teenage killer who murdered 16-year-old Oscar Hamilton. 

Crown prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers, who grilled Patterson for days in the witness box, has all but called it quits as a Victorian prosecutor. 

Patterson’s appeal had been doomed from the start.   

The main push had hinged on the claim that the court’s decision to house the jury in the same hotel as police and prosecutors was a ‘catastrophic failure’. 

In August, Patterson’s barrister Richard Edney claimed the jury’s placement in a hotel alongside journalists, police and prosecutors was unfair.

‘We would describe the sequestration and what occurred during it as catastrophic, and in our submission, what has occurred here is that there has been a fundamental failure to comply with the dictum already referred to,’ he said.

‘So what?’ was the short response by Justice Peter Kidd.

The Daily Mail reporters from across the globe had been staying in the same hotel.

The Age’s Chris Vedelago later wrote an article that revealed her lawyer Bill Doogue had complained to the court that the Daily Mail had potentially tainted the jury.

‘There was also an article published by the Daily Mail that can only be based on discussions with the jurors, either directly or indirectly, including mention of one of the jurors being allowed to watch an AFL game separately with a jury keeper,’ Mr Doogue claimed.

His claim referred to a Daily Mail article reporting that the jury had watched the Carlton and Collingwood game after being sequestered. The article was sourced from someone in no way associated with the jury.

The jury in the high-profile death cap mushroom trial was sequestered at a hotel in the Morwell area while deliberating.

Members of the prosecution team, reporters and a key police witness were also staying there for a period. 

Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane KC shot down the claim by Patterson’s barrister Richard Edney at appeal.

‘Far from being some sort of catastrophic failure, to use the words that Mr Edney used, there’s no evidence in our submission to support this ground,’ he said during the August hearing.

Mr Kissane argued the evidence showed the system worked exactly as intended.

Mr Edney had raised 35 complaints about the prosecution’s closing address at Patterson’s trial.  

At trial, she had been represented by Colin Mandy SC, who tried every avenue to exonerate Patterson.

‘The defence counsel was very alive to the complaints that you’re now making under ground six. So alive was he to them that he raised most of them in his final address,’ Justice Lesley Taylor told Mr Edney.

‘When one looks at the final address delivered by a very experienced trial counsel, the complaints that you are now raising, they were on the table at the time.

‘Nothing was being overlooked here.’

Mr Kissane argued Justice Beale should not have set a non‑parole period at all and Patterson should have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

He said that if a non-parole period was to be fixed, 33 years was manifestly inadequate given the gravity of her offending.

As it stood before the appeal, Patterson would be aged 81 when she became eligible for parole.

Mr Kissane said Justice Beale’s reliance on prison conditions to justify a 33‑year non‑parole period was legally and factually flawed.   

‘If somebody’s in their 80s and commits an offence that requires a significant non-parole period, then the court is sentencing somebody in effect, albeit that they may well impose… a non-parole period by the statute, the court is still in effect sentencing somebody beyond what one would normally expect to be the term of their natural life,’ Mr Kissane said.

‘It has its harsh aspect about it, of course, but we accept that. But in our submission, that is not a matter that’s outweighed by the seriousness of the offending… that’s a harsh, harsh submission to make.

‘But we submit that it’s demanded by the nature of the offending in this case.’

The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division is probing a series of unexplained freezer and refrigerator failures that spoiled food at military bases across the United States, amid concerns that a cyberattack may have triggered the outages.

The Army CID’s Cyber Field Office is collaborating with the Defense Commissary Agency and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service to identify the cause of the refrigeration breakdowns reported at military commissaries in August, an Army CID spokesperson confirmed to Fox News.

Investigators are also coordinating with French law enforcement as they examine a separate series of refrigeration outages in Europe and determine whether the incidents may be linked.

Reuters was the first to report the investigation. 

At least six commissaries—on-base stores where military personnel purchase groceries—reported sudden refrigeration problems in late August.

Fort Huachuca in Arizona said in a Facebook post dated Aug. 26 that its refrigeration units had unexpectedly “went into defrost mode” overnight.

“ALL freezers went into defrost mode – ALL frozen food has spoiled,” the base said.

The other affected facilities were F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island, Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, Travis Air Force Base Commissary in California and Fort Irwin in California.

Reuters reported that in at least one instance, the refrigeration units were adjusted to higher temperatures overnight instead of being switched off entirely. 

Several weeks earlier, hackers targeted hundreds of French supermarkets, manipulating refrigerators so temperatures climbed to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The resulting heat spoiled significant quantities of food and was blamed for fires reported across Europe.

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed the cyberattack, calling it a “large-scale” assault that affected several major food retailers throughout the country.