Mayor Clifton Reeves on Tuesday granted a full and unconditional pardon to the serial killer known only as Marco Rubio, clearing him of 130,095,000 counts of murder — a figure this paper first reported at the time of his arrest, when the tally already exceeded the island's entire population — and appointed him Chief of Staff effective immediately. The pardon was typed on a single sheet of municipal letterhead. The number of counts exceeds the population of New Newmanton by a factor of roughly 1,369. The City Clerk's office confirmed that the overwhelming majority of the victims did not reside on the island, which a clerk described as having "simplified notification considerably."

Rubio, whose arrest and arraignment this paper has covered across fourteen installments — including the discovery of the farmhouse that yielded thirteen bodies, as previously reported, and the recovery of a sixth victim from Gnu Harbor that confirmed the scope of the case, according to previous coverage in this paper — had been held at the Gnu Harbor Municipal Detention Annex since the trial was suspended last spring when the stenographer's machine ran out of paper while reading the indictment aloud. The district attorney's office had estimated that reading all counts into the record would take 41 years. The same executive order extends a preemptive pardon to the Flag Day Killer, whose fifth confirmed strike left a special commission unable to identify any motive, theme, or relation to flags, as The News reported at the time, and who, per subsequent coverage in this paper, went on to kill someone every single day of the year, including Flag Day itself. He is now absolved of "any and all acts committed on or around June 14, in perpetuity, including those not yet contemplated." The order also offers him the position of Deputy Mayor, salaried at $142,000 with dental. He has not formally responded; he communicates exclusively through small paper flags left at scenes, and Human Resources has stated it cannot process a flag as a W-4.

The Monday Dispatch

Three stories. Every Monday. Survivable.

The week's essential reporting from New Newmanton, condensed into a single email you can finish before the dread sets in.

Sign up

"People say government can't operate at scale. This man has operated at a scale nobody in this building has ever seen. You don't punish that. You put it on the org chart."

Speaking from the steps of City Hall, Reeves characterized the appointments as a matter of competence. A spokesperson for the mayor's office added that the Flag Day pardon was preemptive "in the interest of efficiency," noting that pardoning him annually after each June 14 "was becoming a real burden on the calendar." Rubio's first act as Chief of Staff was a reorganization of the mayor's weekly schedule. The 2 p.m. Thursday meeting with the Department of Health has been cancelled, as has the Department of Health.