News of the Weird

-- In March, armed with evidence that a drug dealer had been killed with a single gunshot during a robbery by two men, Torrance, Calif., district attorney Todd D. Rubenstein obtained separate jury convictions for both men for firing the fatal shot. Both robbers' guns had fired, but one missed, and a conclusion as to which one could not be drawn from ballistics tests. Rubenstein asserted confidently to one jury that Stephen Edmond Davis, 19, shot the man, and just as confidently to the other jury that it wasn't Davis, but rather John Patrick Winkleman, 19.

-- Correen Zahnzinger, 24, filed a lawsuit in Santa Ana, Calif., in May against her boyfriend of three years (and husband of one year), Ms. Valerie Inga, 29, who pretended the whole time to be a man. ("They did have a sexual relationship," said Zahnzinger's attorney, "but I'm not allowed to say how it was perpetrated.") And two weeks earlier in Arlington, Va., Margaret Hunter, 24, was awarded $264,000 in her lawsuit for fraud against her ex-husband, Ms. Holly Anne Groves, 26, who had posed as a man in their four-month marriage in 1996.

-- According to the 1997 platform of the Natural Law Party (based on teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) in Canada, released in May, people should stop using the south and west entrances to their homes because they are inharmonious and should instead use north and east entrances. Furthermore, Canadians entering the United States should do so from Niagara Falls, whose entrance (from the east) is the only nonsouthward entrance in the country. The party proposes to eliminate the federal deficit by "eliminating problems" and to create an "invincible" national defense through yogic flying (which resembles hopping like a frog). The party got 84,000 votes in 1993.

-- In October, Jay Urdahl, an incumbent running for county supervisor in Mason City, Iowa, was charged with criminal trespass while out campaigning. According to homeowner Debbie Opheim, Urdahl just walked right into her house to meet her without the benefit of an invitation or a knock on the door. Said Opheim, who heard a "hello," "I ran down the stairs, and he was standing in my living room." After Opheim ordered him out, she said, "He looked at me like I was insane."

-- In March, arguing for the legalization of holiday fireworks in Arizona, state Rep. Richard Kyle denounced opponents who said sparklers were dangerous: "I put them in my hair. I have stuck them in my clothes. They do not burn." (He lost.)

-- In April, North Providence, R.I., council member Charles A. Lombardi was charged with misdemeanor vandalism -- according to police, the drive-by egging of a car owned by a relative of his political opponent, Mayor Ralph Mollis. Said Lombardi, "This is politics in North Providence."

-- In a March New York Times story on vote-buying in Dodge County, Ga., a spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state tried to describe the depth of the problem: "We literally had people who said they had no idea that selling your vote was illegal. One guy said, 'It's my vote; I can do what I want with it.'"

-- In January, the U.S. Postal Service in Miami issued bulletins announcing a $25,000 reward for the return of something stolen from a mail carrier, but refused to say what it was, referring to it only as a "device." Said a postal inspector to a reporter, "I can't tell you what it is. I can't tell you what it's used for."

-- Former Prestonburg, Ky., school board member Wood R. Keesee, 59, filed a lawsuit in May against a female court clerk to whom he had allegedly loaned money in 1996. Under the terms of the $1,800 loan, according to Keesee, she was to have 18 sexual encounters with him, but when she stopped after three, he filed the lawsuit.

-- One week apart in March, in Ardmore, Okla., and San Francisco, Calif., schools disciplined female students who reported that they were raped on campus. A 15-year-old girl had been briefly suspended from Ardmore High for having sex at school despite the fact that her clothes were soaked in blood, as was the locker room area where she said the rape occurred. An 18-year-old woman was threatened with eviction from San Francisco State University housing because she had kept a hunting knife in her room, illegally, which she used to chase off the alleged rapist.

-- Among the recipients of the American Lung Association's "Thumb's Up" motion-picture awards, presented at the time of the Oscars in March to honor those films and characters who present a no-smoking image, was Woody Harrelson for his role in discouraging his movie wife from smoking in "The People Vs. Larry Flynt." However, in the movie, both Flynts are heavily addicted to illegal drugs and seem to be indifferent to sharing needles for injecting them.

-- A leading TV news program in Bogota, Colombia, reported in January that Jimmy Pacheco had been kidnapped for a month in the city of Cucuta in a scheme to pry undisclosed concessions from either friends or co-workers, but that to keep things low-key, Pacheco was permitted to return home every night so as not to alarm his family. The kidnappers would watch Pacheco's house at night and snatch him again in the morning as he left for work.

In February, Avi Kostner, 52, pleaded guilty in Newark, N.J., to the murders of his kids, aged 10 and 12, which he said he committed because he feared his ex-wife would not raise them as Jews. (In arguing successfully against the death penalty, Kostner's lawyer continually referred to Kostner in front of the jury as merely "less than perfect.") And in May, Harry Charles Moore was executed in Oregon for the 1992 murders of his in-laws because he was afraid they would persuade his ex-wife and infant daughter to move to Las Vegas and possibly get involved in prostitution and drugs.

Smoking: In April, authorities on North Carolina's Figure Eight island said they suspected the cause of the fire that destroyed the vacation home of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. president Andrew J. Schindler was a lighted cigarette butt. And after a New Year's Day domestic argument in Campinas, 60 miles north of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Silas Leite da Silva was Bobbittized by his wife because, among several reasons, according to police, he would not stop smoking at home.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- The first copies of the European Union's 24-page user's manual for boots recently hit the market in England, reported The Daily Telegraph in May. The booklet comes with the shoes and advises the consumer how to choose footwear, how to use and care for the boots, and how to wear them safely. It also explains how to read the EU-mandated boot comfort ratings, though it also advises, "Each boot should be tried for fitting before use."

-- Dueling Misjudgments: In April, expecting a $3 million gift destined for Children's Zoo in Central Park from philanthropists Edith and Henry Everett, the New York City Art Commission nonetheless approved only a small donor-name plaque on one entrance marker to the zoo, rather than the slightly larger plaque requested by the Everetts. Consequently, the Everetts snatched back their gift, jeopardizing the zoo's long-overdue renovation.

-- One of the members of the Mug House Players pub darts team in Worcester, England, commenting in February on his team's 50-match losing streak: "I think we all drink too much (during the matches). One regular feature (of our games) is to miss the board completely."

-- Fernando Magana-Rodriguez, 24, pleading not guilty to bigamy in Kelowna, British Columbia, in January: "I'm Mexican. I never knew you could go to jail for marrying two women, or I never would have done it."

-- John H. Bergantini, a candidate for tax assessor in Exeter, R.I., commenting in March on his being sued by the town for $2,678 in back property taxes: "My ability to write a check for a certain amount of money has nothing to do with (my ability to judge) how much a piece of property is worth."

-- Rochester, N.Y., Assemblywoman Susan John, who is the chair of the Assembly's Alcohol and Drug Abuse committee, upon her guilty plea in March for driving while impaired: "This will give me additional insights into the problem of drinking and driving, and I believe, will allow me to do my job even more effectively."

-- Owatonna, Minn., elementary school principal Kevin A. Thompson, 37, was charged in January with peeping into the window of a home and was apprehended hiding under the deck of another house. According to police, Thompson said he was merely checking street addresses in connection with the redrawing of school bus pickup boundaries.

-- Public television's "Frugal Gourmet," Jeff Smith, has denied that he sexually molested any of the five men who have since January filed complaints against him for having fondled them as boys. One of the men, Keith Thomas, who had worked for Smith in the 1970s as part of a high school work-study program, said that at the time he had shrugged off Smith's hugs and kisses as "weird, but (I thought) maybe that's the way it is with people in the food business."

-- According to the Berlingske Tidende newspaper of Copenhagen, Denmark, in January, an unidentified man drove his car onto the ice at the Augustenborg Fjord 120 miles to the south, but it broke through. The man managed to escape in the shallow water, though, and then minutes later attempted the crossing with a four-wheel drive vehicle, with the same result. He next tried it with a tractor (same result), then with another tractor (same). It took rescuers seven hours to pull the four vehicles out.

-- Daniel Sutherland of Indiana, Pa., accidentally shot himself in the mouth in February while he was blowing down the barrel of a gun to see whether it was loaded. Said Sutherland, haltingly, to a reporter, "You know that hanging-down thing in the back of your mouth (the uvula)? I lost mine."

-- According to a police report in the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin in February, a man wearing a flowered dress, swearing and making obscene gestures, was subdued by police officers but only after he had softened himself up by accidentally running smack into a car and then a brick wall. At the police station, he tried to escape but wound up colliding with the wall in a stairwell.

-- In Bozeman, Mont., in March, according to Gary Gerhardt, the owner of County Lanes bowling alley, a man walked in, told the cashier he had just gotten out of prison for having robbed County Lanes several years before, and said he would like to look around on top of the ceiling to see if he could find the wallet he had dropped during that job. When Gerhardt ordered him to leave, the man just shrugged and walked away.

-- Brothers Patrick and Daniel Worthing were charged in December with attempted corporate espionage. Patrick was a supervisor for a cleaning contractor working for PPG Industries in a suburb of Pittsburgh, and in a letter full of misspellings and grammatical errors allegedly offered to sell many PPG corporate secrets to competitor Owens Corning. According to the prosecutor, Patrick had sent PPG's financial statements (actually "finacial" statements, providing "intimant details" that would be "of intrest"), asked only $1,000 for all the information Owens Corning could use, and had given PPG's fax number for any return calls. At his first court appearance, Patrick asked the magistrate, "If we, like, fully cooperate with all the details, is there, like, a lesser sentence?"

Cleveland county clerk Gordana Giovinale was suspended for three days in April as punishment for leaving $65,000 in taxes and fee receipts in a bag in the restroom stall he was using. After finishing his business, he apparently just forgot that he had been headed to another office to drop off the money. And Mike Shreckengost appeared in court in Somerset, Pa., in April to reclaim the $20,000 that he had tossed onto the side of a road in February 1996 as a trooper approached his stopped car. He drove off without the money and made no inquiries about what happened to it until he heard in August 1996 that the trooper was claiming the money under a "finders-keepers" law.

Carrollton, Ga.: In March, a sheriff's investigator learned that Jodi Denman Cecconi had elaborately faked the leukemia death of her 2-year-old daughter (hospital vigils, funeral arrangements, grave-site selection, obituary in the newspaper, etc.) to win back her estranged boyfriend, Neal Casey, who bought onto the story for a while before learning that the child was in good health. And the next month, Carrollton country-music radio station manager Amy Bullington, 23, who was charged with shooting her boyfriend to death, surrendered to police only after having aired her favorite song, "Has Anybody Seen Amy?"

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- In May, a San Francisco Chronicle feature alerted readers to the problem of people addicted to lip balm, and especially Chapstick brand. According to one addict who studied the problem, the Chapstick ingredients fuse with the skin, requiring constant re-use. Another source cited a better, nonaddictive lip balm: a person's own nose oil, which is reported to have been used by watchmakers for years to lubricate tiny gears.

-- Sexual Rejuvenations: The Hong Kong Standard newspaper reported in February on the thriving business of a Dr. Liu, who runs a virginity- (hymen-) restoration practice in Ghangzhou province, China, charging about $500. "So many Hong Kong girls come to us," she said. "They come just before their wedding. They don't want their husbands to know they had many boyfriends in the past." And New Scientist magazine reported in January that the German government, fearful of immune-system reactions and the spread of "mad cow" disease, has banned the popular sheep-fetus injections that men and women have been receiving to firm up their buttocks.

-- Following in the footsteps of her completely unsuccessful predecessors (Mr. Mellon E. Bank and Mr. Roadway V. Express, reported in News of the Weird in 1989 and 1996, respectively), Keisha Yvette Gregory was arrested in Durham, N.C., in March and charged with theft of a check made out to the Tension Envelope company, which she tried to pass off as a personal check made out to Ms. Tension Nicole Envelope.

-- Tacky, Tacky, Tacky: The trial of National Institutes of Health police officer Bruce Blum ended in a hung jury in April on the Dec. 19 accusation (based on a surveillance videotape) that he stole the current issue of People magazine from the NIH library in Bethesda, Md. And Rhode Island state traffic court clerk-typist Sharon James, 30, was fired in March for stealing a bag of potato chips and some coins on the counter of a blind vendor in the traffic court building.

-- In March, in cases in San Diego, Calif., and Norfolk, Va., prosecutors came under fire for allegedly allowing witnesses in a gang murder case and drug case, respectively, to have numerous conjugal visits in government offices after business hours while in custody as part of deals to coax their testimony.

-- A 24-year-old, unidentified woman was arrested in Waukesha, Wis., in April on suspicion of child abuse. Her son had complained of a nose infection, which she said was caused by acid from a wristwatch battery that he had put in his nose several months earlier, but which she had declined to help him remove until the battery started leaking.

-- Peter Lerat, 33, was arrested in Toronto, Ontario, in May and charged with two robberies, one in a doughnut shop while he was carrying a goose and one on the street while he had a raccoon. In each case he threatened to kill the animal unless someone gave him money. He cleared $60 from a woman in the doughnut shop, but a prospective victim in the second robbery ran to call police, and Lerat was captured nearby.

-- In January, West Palm Beach, Fla., police officer Ed Wagner filed a lawsuit against the city for removing him from the SWAT team following a complaint he made about a neck injury. The injury occurred at a car-crash scene in 1993 when one of Wagner's colleagues playfully grabbed his head and gave him a noogie. And Franklin, Tenn., water and sewer director Eddie Woodard was suspended for three days in February after he goosed police chief Jackie Moore at a fire scene.

-- Richard Lee Hamrick, 28, was picked up in Longview, Wash., in February, suspected of being the guy who robbed a Safeway a few minutes before. Not only was the robber wearing bikini briefs on his head, backward, with eye holes cut in the derriere, but, according to the officers who had to book the evidence, they were soiled.

-- Life Imitates the Three Stooges: Julio Guaman, 31, landed in a tree, with a broken pelvis, after a five-story fall from his Queens, N.Y., apartment in December. According to his wife, Julio had lunged at her in a fight in order to push her out the window, but she ducked, sending him out.

-- Life Imitates Prison Movies: Joshua John Jaeger, 25, housed at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre in Toronto in January, and David Anderson, housed at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville in April, became the latest inmates to escape by tying bedsheets together and lowering themselves to the ground. (Anderson even left a pillow-and-blankets dummy in his bed as a decoy.)

-- Marsha Watt, a 1990 graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and formerly an associate at the prestigious Winston and Strawn law firm in Chicago, had charges filed against her in February by the Illinois Bar Association's discipline committee over her most recent conviction for prostitution (i.e., the kind involving sex, for which her published rate, according to a personals ad, was roughly three times what the law firm billed for her).

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (19) The person easing into the parking lot of the driver's license office, either arriving for the exam or just completing it, who accidentally crashes into the office's storefront, as a woman did in Hillsboro, Ore., in May and a man did in Barrie, Ontario, in March. And (20) the burglar attempting to enter an establishment from the roof via a vent pipe but who gets stuck and must be rescued by the police, or, as with a 20-year-old man in Dayton, Ohio, in December, who suffocated.

Guns in the Reading Room: In April in Chandler, Ariz., Johnel Trinidad, 18, sitting on the toilet inspecting a gun he planned to buy from a friend, accidentally shot himself in the knee. Said police Sgt. Matt Christensen, "Bathroom gun safety and gun safety in general pretty much dovetail." It was Chandler's second such shooting in a year. In July, Harold Hughes, 52, was on the toilet, his gun on the counter and his pit bull lounging nearby, when the dog became startled and knocked the gun to the floor, where it fired a shot into Hughes' leg.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)