News of the Weird

-- Monika and Mark Skinner filed a $35 million lawsuit in July in Newport News, Va., in connection with the 1994 death of their son, age 16, who was riding in a car that drove off a road and plunged into a lake. Among the defendants: Kmart, which sold a computer cleaning product to the car's driver, which he and the Skinner boy used to get high by "huffing"; two engineering consulting firms that designed the lake that the car fell into; and the company that designed the road the car was traveling on because it should have been farther away from the lake.

-- In August, the St. Louis Art Museum filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and other parties, because a Whitney guard damaged a Roy Lichtenstein painting while it was on loan to the Whitney. According to the lawsuit, guard Reginald Walker, 21 at the time, drew a heart and "Reggie + Crystal 1/26/91" on the painting with a felt-tip marker and wrote, "I love you Tushee, Love, Buns."

-- The Austin (Texas) American-Statesman reported that writer-actor Stephen Grant, who starred in a film based on gunman Charles Whitman's 1966 assault from the University of Texas tower (and who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Whitman) was himself shot by a stray bullet on a street near the tower in March on his first visit to Austin.

-- According to a May report in The New York Times, one of Argentina's most popular radio programs is "Loony Radio," produced by and featuring patients at the Borda Psychiatric Hospital in Buenos Aires. One presents "The Bolivian Minute" show but usually giggles uncontrollably until the producer reminds him that he is on the air. Another man delivers philosophy lectures claiming to be "more schizophrenic than anyone" and says he is anxious with every incoming patient because he fears losing his title. One of Argentina's best-known talk radio hosts says the patients are often more insightful than his callers are.

-- In May, Harlan County (Ky.) prosecutor Alan Wagers said his office would help Denise Rush, 27, appeal a trial court's denial of her lawsuit to get the father of her child to pay support. The father was 14 at the time, making Rush apparently guilty of statutory rape, but she was never prosecuted.

-- The Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal reported in April that private security officer David Anderson Jones, 51, who is fully certified by the state to be capable of physical work such as breaking through barriers and crawling in confined spaces, among other physical tasks, was granted a handicapped parking permit by another state office because of a sinus problem.

-- The Broome, Australia, town council recently required that the camels that carry tourists on commercial nighttime rides along Cable Beach be outfitted with flashing, battery-operated taillights, according to a July Associated Press story.

-- An entire 86-member jury pool for a criminal case in Centerville, Tenn. (population 16,000), in July had to be dismissed because, according to prosecutor Ron Davis, too many members of the pool were related to each other.

-- Jim Baen, publisher of Newt Gingrich's novel "1945," told reporters in August that almost 100,000 copies are stockpiled in a warehouse in Bristol, Pa., and that if they are not bought soon, they will suffer the usual fate of surplus books -- to be converted to pulp and used for such things as toilet paper.

-- Davenport, Iowa, police arrested a 34-year-old man in April and charged him with indecent exposure along a busy city street. The police were alerted by two women in a car who said they first spotted the man, then drove by again to confirm what they had seen.

-- In the Journal of Abnormal Psychology released in August, a University of Georgia researcher concluded that a group of homophobic men (men who feared and hated homosexuals and dreaded being close to them) contained twice as many men who were sexually aroused by erotic photos of men as did an equal group of nonhomophobic men.

-- In Sri Lanka, where monogamy is the law, Mr. Pavulupitiyage Gunapala, 35, was jailed in May on the complaint of the latest of his 15 current wives. (Police also found love letters to another 54 women.) The basis of the complaint was that the man was not faithful.

In July, college president John Upton was arrested in Allegan, Mich., for murdering his wife, allegedly because, he said, "She was demanding a great number of things that weren't feasible." And in June, Ross Horton admitted at his trial in Honolulu that he killed his business partner in 1993 after the man criticized his ability to lay tile, which Horton takes seriously as "an art form." On the same day, according to police in Sauk Centre, Minn., Paul Crawford shot four neighbors and himself to death to culminate a feud over a 5-foot strip of land that separates their properties.

The virtually semi-annual student cheating riots in Bangladesh were first reported in News of the Weird in September 1988. Then, students so adamant and blatant about the right to receive outside help when taking national placement exams sparked a rampage in which more than 500 people were injured. This year, in March, in Kanpur, India, all high school final exams had to be taken barefoot to discourage students from carrying notes in their shoes. And in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in July, hundreds of children scaled walls to pass notes to their friends taking high school entrance exams despite the presence of more than 100 police officers who ringed the school in anticipation of the cheating.

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

-- '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.)