- The Times charted voters’ opinions on the race between Trump and Harris
- One of the people who came into view was Anna Ayala, a 58-year-old Democrat who voted for Trump
- Ayala is a convicted felon who once put a severed finger in a Wendy’s chili bowl
A New York Times profile of voters claiming to be skeptical of Kamala Harris was ridiculed for featuring a woman who put her severed finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili.
The old gray lady a snapshot published of where voters stood after Harris effectively Joe Biden as the Democrat nominee against Donald Trump.
One of the people they interviewed was a 58-year-old “registered Democrat” named Anna Ayala, who said she would vote for Trump because “the border situation has gotten out of control.”
The newspaper had to retract these claims after social media revealed that this Anna Ayala has been to prison twice, including once for a bizarre incident in 2005 involving the severed finger.
The longtime lawsuit-fighting mother was released from prison in 2005 after serving four years for the horrific Wendy’s Chili Finger case.
The New York Times was ridiculed for interviewing Anna Ayala without realizing she had spent four years in prison for putting a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili
The bizarre scam gained worldwide attention after Ayala dropped the 4cm-long piece of her ring finger into her bowl of fast food chili.
It turned out that Ayala’s husband, Jaime Plascencia, had bought the figure for $100 from a coworker who had lost it in an accident. He then took it home, where Ayala cooked it before adding it to her meal on March 24, 2005.
Wendy’s claimed it lost $21 million in business because of the false allegations. Ayala served only four years of the nine years she was originally sentenced to.
In 2013, Ayala was sentenced to another two years in prison, this time for lying about a shooting involving her son.
The so-called Chili Finger Lady was arrested in October of that year after she told police that her son had been shot in the ankle by two men.
Her son, Guadalupe Reyes, accidentally shot himself to death with a gun he wasn’t supposed to have because he was on probation for a burglary conviction.
Ayala lied to avoid going to prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Reyes also received a two-year prison sentence for the same charge.
The Old Gray Lady published a snapshot of where voters stood after Harris effectively replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee against Donald Trump
The newspaper was forced to retract these claims after social media revealed that Anna Ayala had served two prison sentences, including once in connection with the bizarre 2005 incident.
Ayala fabricated detailed reports about two men “shooting” her 26-year-old son outside their San Jose, California home.
Junior Reyes told them he was attacked by two men “for no reason.”
After she and her son mixed up their stories, police arrested them both in February.
Ayala was charged with complicity in a crime and filing a false report with police.
Because Ayala has a felony conviction, she is not eligible to vote in federal elections, so the Times issued a correction on the day the story broke.
“The Times removed a constituent’s comments on an earlier version of this article after it became known that the person had been convicted in a racketeering case in which she made fraudulent claims,” they wrote.
The newspaper has since removed all references to Ayala’s comments.
The original Times article noted how Harris had bridged the gap left by her boss Joe Biden when he decided to withdraw from the campaign.