News of the Weird

-- 'Roid Rage: In July, police in Brooklyn, N.Y., accused Gail Murphy, 47, bedridden on her stomach while recovering from hemorrhoid surgery, of shooting her husband to death because he had gone on a six-hour fishing trip. Said a police investigator, "She felt that her husband didn't demonstrate that he cared for her on that particular day."

-- Hillsborough County (Fla.) sheriff's deputies charged Jeffrey Alan McLeod, 29, with robbing a Chevron gas station in August, then fleeing. He was caught after a brief chase when his car ran out of gas. Said a sheriff's spokesman, "When you're going to rob a gas station ... you're supposed to fill up the tank before you rob the clerk."

-- During a Tirana, Albania, divorce hearing in July, in which a man was contending that his wife beat him regularly over the course of their two-year union, the wife suddenly leaped at the man and beat him unconscious before she was restrained. The judge quickly granted the divorce.

-- In August, Cleveland, Ohio, judge Shirley Strickland Saffold, 45, attempting to counsel defendant Katie Nemeth to get her life together, recommended in court that she should get a better boyfriend than the one she has: "Men are easy. You can go sit in the bus stop, put on a short skirt, cross your legs and pick up 25. Ten of them will give you their money. If you don't pick up the first 10, then all you got to do is open your legs a little bit and cross them at the bottom."

-- In June, a California appeals court ruled against defendant Thomas Keister, who had been charged with attempted lewd acts against two underage girls in San Bernardino County. The court made the ruling even though the victims and the defendant do not exist. The "victims" were fictional (part of a police sting to entice pedophiles), and Mr. Keister died last year.

-- Detroit lawyer Leonard Jaques, 68, was fined $11,000 for a May courtroom outburst in which he verbally abused an opposing lawyer, then yanked his hair and threw him to the floor. (In a widely reported courtroom outburst in 1983 in Cleveland, Ohio, Jaques achieved notoriety by giving a federal judge the excuse for missing a court date that he had "screaming itches in the crotch.")

-- In July, Rhode Island Workers' Compensation Court Judge Debra Olsson awarded convicted murderer Antonino Cucinotta $18,500 in benefits. Cucinotta, a former Mafioso serving 60 years at an undisclosed prison as part of the federal Witness Protection Program, injured his head at a construction site in 1988 but was improperly cut off from benefits on the date of his arrest in 1994, rather than on the date of his conviction in 1995.

-- X-rated film actress Nina Hartley, telling a June news conference in Sacramento, Calif., that her films serve an important need -- promoting romance by warming up the viewers: "It's no different than Hamburger Helper."

-- Self-described "fishing fanatic" Tom Getherall of East Moriches, Long Island, telling a New York Daily News reporter the day after the crash of TWA Flight 800: "I felt bad when I heard about the wreck, real bad, but to be honest with you, the first thing I wondered was how it would affect the fishing."

-- John P. Royster, 47, serving a life sentence for murder, waxing nostalgic to a New York Times reporter in June about the joyous childhood of his son, John J. Royster, 22, who had just been charged with the vicious killing of a New York City dry cleaner: "He's a chip off the old block."

-- Canadian food inspector Pamela Morgan, warning the public in March after the death of a British Columbia man: "We caution the public not to eat seafood that glows in the dark." (Some bacteria in raw seafood are indeed luminescent, she said.)

-- Football star Deion Sanders, arrested for trespassing at a fishing hole near Fort Myers, Fla., in June: "The only defense I have is that I'm sorry but they were biting."

In June, a heavily suntan-oiled, 19-year-old man fell 10 stories to his death while "crabbing" (climbing from balcony to balcony) on a beachfront condominium in Panama City Beach, Fla. Two weeks later, in Barnstable, Mass., an 18-year-old man fell to his death while "car surfing" (standing atop a moving car). Also in June, at least 15 people dancing on the roofs of two buses enroute to an election rally near Dhaka, Bangladesh, were killed when the buses passed underneath high-voltage wires.

More Italian Justice: In August, Germano Maccari, freshly convicted of the 1978 murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, was released from jail pending his appeal, as is customary under Italian law. In March, the man who murdered an American during the Achille Lauro hijacking failed to return to his Italian prison following a 12-day furlough for good behavior. Last year, The Washington Post reported that members of a traveling prisoners' theatrical group in Italy used their performance disguises in bank robberies they pulled off while they were free between shows. And last year, a gang of AIDS-stricken bank robbers were released to pull off more jobs because Italian law forbids imprisoning people with AIDS.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or 74777.3206@compuserve.com.)

-- An Airplane "Black Box" for the Home: In July, The Dallas Morning News reported on Arlington, Texas, landscaper Alan Weaver's new in-home, half-inch-thick steel box, called the Safe-N-Side, which is large enough for a person to ride out a tornado in. The largest model is 48 (inches) by 40 by 27, weighs 1,300 pounds, and sells for just under $2,000; Weaver says it will resist most handgun bullets and a 2-by-4 going 100 mph.

-- Who Cares?: A pre-trial hearing was held in March in the $3 million lawsuit by a Lehman Brothers investment banker against a Lehman Brothers bond trader for hitting him between the eyes with his tee shot at the Rockaway Hunting Club in Lawrence, N.Y.

-- In July, the Hanover Park, Ill., Village Board raised everyone's property taxes 5 percent for the next 15 years solely to pay off a $7.2 million judgment against the village for a 1988 traffic accident. Driver Thomas Redlin was injured by an abutment on the road that he said should have carried a warning sign, and he won his lawsuit despite the fact that he did not have a proper license and had been drinking.

-- The owner of MIT Tank Wash Inc. of Savannah, Ga., pleaded guilty in June to willful violation of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation in the death of an employee. The company cleans truck-based tanks of their chemical or food cargo residues, and apparently the company's normal procedure for using one poisonous cleaning substance was merely that the employee would enter the tank, swab the insides with the poisonous cleaner while holding his breath, climb a ladder to the top of the tank, and take a gulp of fresh air before descending again for more cleaning.

-- A University of Michigan School of Nursing study, published in June, reported that almost half of fifth-graders at two low-income schools in Milwaukee reported having had sexual intercourse, compared to 6 percent who smoked cigarettes and 3 percent who drank alcoholic beverages.

-- Leonard Ruckman, 40, was arrested in Stotts City, Mo., in June and charged with assault outside a bar following a dispute over car keys. In a fit of pique, Ruckman allegedly slashed open a female acquaintance's breast and removed her implant.

-- Pedophile Rights: In April, inmate John Gay filed a lawsuit against the Oskaloosa County (Fla.) Correctional Institution to recover about 100 sexually explicit photos of young boys confiscated from him; he claims that he needs them to prepare his appeal. And Robert H. Ellison, 65, of Chicago, arrested in the May FBI "Overseas Male" sting, asked a judge for the prompt return of his child sex videos because he feared he would molest more children if he could not relieve his urges through pornography. (The judge accomplished the same goal by jailing Ellison without bond.)

-- In April in Providence, R.I., Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent Sr. pleaded guilty to an organized-crime charge and took a 10-month prison sentence. He said he pled guilty only because an intestinal illness would have made it impractical for him to sit through a lengthy trial: "How can I go to trial with [the 40 to 50 daily] enemas I got to take?"

-- Kentucky Ku Klux Klan leader and grandmother Velma Seats, asked by a New Yorker writer for a March story why she wasn't wearing her robe that day: "We've had a lot of events lately," she said. "The cleaning bills will kill you."

-- In February, escaped Tennessee inmate James Sean Stuart, 30, was captured on Interstate 65 near Athens, Ala., after leading dozens of police officers at speeds up to 155 mph. Stuart told police he had wanted to turn himself in and was driving fast because he "wanted to get far enough ahead so there wouldn't be any question" that he was giving up on his own.

-- Joan Casavant, 36, was sentenced to 90 days in jail and restitution for a four-year fraud scheme in which she placed, and collected money for, bogus employees on the city of Edmonton, Alberta, payroll. According to her psychologist, Dr. Al Riedieger, Casavant engaged in the scheme "to maintain her dignity in a crumbling social circumstance, asking her employer to demonstrate its affection for her by unconsciously allowing her to take this money."

-- Rosevelt and Linda Matthews of New Bern, N.C., credit their dog, Roc, with awakening them by ringing the doorbell at 4 a.m. after lightning started a fire in their house in June. (Roc had not been trained to do it, but the couple said he had rung the doorbell once before.) And Tipper, a cat belonging to Gail Curtis of Tampa, Fla., was rescued in July while choking on his flea collar when, in the struggle, he knocked a telephone off a table and accidentally hit the speed-dial button for 911.

-- Out of Control: The newspaper feature Earthwatch reported in July that Brazilian angler Nathon do Nascimento choked to death on the Maguari River when a 6-inch-long fish jumped into his mouth while he was yawning. And aircraft were grounded for three hours one day in July at the airport in Vaernes, Norway, because a queen bee had landed there, drawing about 25,000 bees with her. And power outages were reported in Toledo, Ohio, in June (millions of mayflies smothering a power plant), Spotsylvania County, Va., in July (black snake short-circuiting a power line); and Charlottesville, Va., in July (iguana on a power line).

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (3) the robber who, having taken out a piece of identification to distract the clerk, grabs the money but forgets to take back the ID, as an Evansville, Ind., liquor store robber did in July after presenting his driver's license as proof of age. And (4) the mass march or ceremony for peace and brotherhood which erupts into violence, as did a concert for peace, unity and voter registration in New York City in June.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or 74777.3206@compuserve.com.)

-- According to a report in The People newspaper in London in July, British spies who set up high-tech clandestine cameras to gain intelligence on the Irish Republican Army discovered that the cameras also recorded much kinky sex. The newspaper said the British government is planning to use some sex scenes, including episodes in which IRA leaders have sex with the wives of their jailed comrades, in an upcoming propaganda campaign.

-- Kids Lacking "Quality Time": Brian Smith, 42, was charged in Cassville, Mo., in July with locking his three kids in 55-gallon drums during the day while he was at work. And Jeffrey Hoveland, 50, pleaded guilty in St. Paul, Minn., in July to using an electrified dog collar to punish his two sons, ages 9 and 11. And Jan and Joyce Duplantis were arrested in New Orleans in June and charged with forcing their two female wards, ages 8 and 9, to live outside in a crude playhouse so as not to mess up their apartment.

-- In June, the Houston Health and Human Services Department warned of a local diarrhea outbreak caused by cyclospora. The department said two clusters of cases had been reported, the first among a group of executives of the natural gas industry meeting at a local club.

-- In June, the Arkansas State Medical Board ordered Waldo, Ark., family physician Jewel Byron Grimmett Jr. to start keeping written records. At a hearing, Grimmett told board members that he has kept all patient histories, including prescription records, only in his head for the 35 years he has been practicing medicine. Grimmett avoided license revocation because he is Waldo's only doctor and because, according to him, he treats about half his patients for free.

-- In March, after the parents of Huang Pin-jen, 27, and Chang Shu-mei, 26, of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, refused to bless their wedding, the couple opted for suicide. They drove a car off a cliff (but survived), tried to hang themselves (but survived), and leaped from atop a 12-story building (but survived, landing on an adjacent roof, suffering multiple fractures). In April, the parents reconsidered.

-- On May 23, the bodies of two Dominican Republic nationals were discovered, one near JFK Airport in Long Beach, N.Y., and the other about 10 miles from Miami (Fla.) International Airport. Both had grease marks, and after investigations, police in both places said they believed the men had fallen from the wheel wells of airliners, where they had stowed away hoping for illegal entry into the United States.

-- Fifteen New York City police officers were indicted in July and as many as 700 other city employees are under investigation for not paying federal taxes. The cops had bought fake-legal-gibberish documents (for $900 to $2,000 each) from scam artists who had convinced them that, despite the fact that they were police officers, they could legally claim not to be subject to government jurisdiction. (In the document, the officers were "nonimmigrant nonresidents" who are "alien to the United States.") In each case, the city payroll office unquestioningly accepted the form and did not withhold federal tax, in some cases for up to four years.

-- Oslo, Norway, police inspector Leif Ole Topnes admitted in July that "our body-search techniques aren't good enough." He was commenting on a male prisoner's having been locked up for two weeks in the women's jail despite having been "body-searched" at the Sola Airport and then "strip-searched" at the jail. The man was wearing female makeup and had hormone-treatment breasts, but Topnes admitted that otherwise he was obviously a man and should have been detected as such.

-- Jeffrey J. Pyrcioch, 19, and an alleged accomplice were arrested in West Lafayette, Ind., in May on theft and fraud charges. Pyrcioch allegedly cashed checks that he had written with disappearing ink, apparently believing the checks would be blank by the time they were presented to the bank for collection. However, traces of ink remained, and police said Pyrcioch would have a better chance of getting away with it if he had not used checks pre-printed with his name and account number on them.

-- In April, Edward Lopez, 19, and Eric Harb, 18, were arrested in Lincolnwood, Ill., after police were called to a Summit department store. According to a clerk, the two men had approached him and asked politely if he would permit them to pay for clothes with a stolen credit card.

-- Columbus, Ohio, police arrested Timothy E. Lebo, 39, and Charles J. Kinser, 32, around 5 a.m. on June 5 and charged them with ripping an ATM out of a bank's wall and attempting to carry it away in the trunk of their car. When questioned by police, the pair tried to convince officers that the ATM was a washing machine.

-- In March, in Clawson, Mich., and in January, in Federal Way, Wash., parents mistakenly packed cans of Bud Ice beer in their elementary schoolchildren's lunchboxes. They said they confused the Bud Ice with a Hawaiian Punch can (Clawson) and a holiday can of Pepsi (Federal Way).

-- Ms. Terry Klemann, 42, received several traffic citations and was ticketed for filing a false report after her car rammed two pickup trucks in Belleville, Ill., in July. An apparently serious Klemann steadfastly maintained that her cocker spaniel, Mutzie 2, had gotten behind the wheel and maneuvered the car into the trucks. Later, she told the Belleville News-Democrat that several years ago the original Mutzie had driven Klemann's friend's car into a tree in New York City.

-- Although Los Angeles police-beating victim Rodney King was convicted in Alhambra, Calif., in July of misdemeanor hit-and-run for injuring his estranged wife by driving away while her arm was still reaching into his car, he was acquitted of more serious charges, including assault with a deadly weapon. Outside the courtroom, a triumphant King told reporters, "I'm going to Disneyland."

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or 74777.3206@compuserve.com.)