News of the Weird

-- The Times of London reported in July on an 86-year-old woman living without electricity in her Sheffield, England, home for 20 years because she had interpreted a power failure in 1977 as her being dropped as a customer. It turns out that Yorkshire Electric Co. had only accidentally failed to hook her back up, but she said she was too embarrassed by her low utility use to ask if there had been a mistake. For years, neighbors thought the woman preferred to live by candlelight.

-- A Washington Post report in March on prison corruption in Mexico revealed that drug traffickers supposedly under maximum security actually have "spacious rooms, cooks and maids, cellular phones, a gymnasium, a sauna, and manicured gardens where they host barbecues," among other things. And in May, The New York Times revealed that a federal jail in Brooklyn has been run as a "Mafia social club," where family business "sit-downs" featured smuggled-in meatballs, manicotti, vodka and wine. And in May, imprisoned Gangster Disciple leader Larry Hoover was convicted in Chicago of running a vast prison drug operation in which he typically issued memos and gave orders by cellular phone while wearing $400 alligator boots and eating specially prepared food in his cell.

-- Union News: In July, a Teamsters local in Oakland, Calif., protested Mills College's use of goats to clear brush on its land. Since the union has a contract with Mills, a Teamsters official said the college should either replace the goats with its members, or unionize the goats. And in June, The New York Times reported that the union representing office cleaners gives worse treatment to the workers who clean its own New York City headquarters offices than it gives to any other office cleaners. The union's own cleaners have no right to grievance procedures regarding wages, discipline or firing.

-- In April off the coast of Long Beach, Calif., the Coast Guard managed to rescue 16 people from a 40-foot yacht that began to sink while a commercial porno movie was being shot on board. Among the rescued was the veteran star Nina Hartley.

-- Maria Soto, 42, of Silver Spring, Md., was charged in April with practicing dentistry without a license based on a complaint from a patient who was referred to her because she was "cheap." According to the complaint, Soto extracted the wrong tooth from the man, and on yet another visit, she said a tooth was too big for his mouth, removed it, filed it down, and put it back it with Krazy Glue.

-- Student Jaimie Rising of Indiana University of Pennsylvania filed a sexual harassment lawsuit in March against Prof. Gordon Thornton for his behavior in his psychology of death course. According to the lawsuit, Thornton asked in class whether any student had ever kissed a dead person, and Rising said she had kissed her father when he died, an action which Thornton then described aloud as "disgusting and gross." Thornton allegedly continued, asking Rising whether she had "stuck her tongue down her father's throat."

-- In May 1996, Marvin Bright was shot to death, reportedly by a co-worker near Nashville, Tenn. Since then, five women have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the alleged assailant, claiming they are the mothers of one each of Bright's five children. And in June, Glynn "Scotty" Wolfe, 88, reported to be the world's most often-married man, passed away in Redlands, Calif., but none of his 29 wives claimed the body, and only two weeks later did his son (from wife No. 14) do so.

-- Buenos Aires psychologist Federico Andahazi's first novel, about the discovery of the clitoris by a 16th-century Italian doctor, won a prestigious local literary prize last year, but when the sponsors canceled the award ceremony rather than honor such a controversial book, "The Anatomist" became a best seller. According to a May New York Times story, many Argentinians hope the book "will generate a new understanding of female sexuality," since male pleasure needs still predominate in that country.

-- During a March review of University of New Mexico Hospital expenses, the Board of Regents found that in 1996, a hemophiliac patient (a boy who has since died) received a genetically engineered blood-clotting medicine that cost $2.4 million over a three-month period. A hospital official explained that the clotting agent is so rare, they were unable to negotiate a volume discount. The university said it hoped Texas, where the boy lived, would pick up the tab.

-- Recent Medical No-No's: In May, a University of Maryland entomologist warned that people should not wear dog flea collars to ward off bugs, noting that human skin is far more sensitive to the ingredients than animal fur. And also in May, a doctor in Dublin, Ireland, writing in a British Medical Association journal, told of a golfer who developed hepatitis from the "agent orange" defoliant used by his golf course because he had the habit of licking his ball for good luck before each drive.

-- In May, the business school at the University of California at Berkeley appointed Ikujiro Nonaka to an endowed position (sponsored by $1 million from Xerox Corp. and its Japanese affiliate) as Distinguished Professor of Knowledge.

-- How to Tell If You're Too Rich: The Wall Street Journal reported in May on the growing market for designer clothing for the very young. One homemaker from Short Hills, N.J., reported spending $20,000 on clothes for her 2-year-old daughter. Among popular toddlers' items: a $250 Versace black motorcycle jacket and a $329 denim jacket-and-pants set from Moschino.

In Alabama, murderer Billy Wayne Waldrop was executed in January, and the next month, murderer Dudley Wayne Kyzer was turned down for parole. Two weeks later, murderer Coleman Wayne Gray was executed in Virginia. In May, murderer Larry Wayne White was executed in Texas. In July, Maryland inmate Richard Wayne Willoughby was sentenced to life in prison for killing another inmate. And once again this April 19, the nation was reminded that the Oklahoma City bombing date commemorated not only the seige at Waco, but the 1995 Arkansas execution of murderer and militia hero Richard Wayne Snell.

-- In May, News of the Weird mindlessly reported the conclusion of the editors of the journal Nature that the use of dog-hair DNA in a murder case was the first criminal-trial use of nonhuman DNA. Not only is that incorrect, but News of the Weird itself reported one such incident in 1995, in which two men were charged with cattle-rustling in Cocoa, Fla., based on matching the DNA of a calf with the DNA in an uncooked slab of pot roast from the calf's mother. A News of the Weird reader turned up an even earlier cattle-rustling case, in 1993 in Brownstown, Ill.

(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.)

-- Reuters News Service reported in April that, increasingly, Chinese families along the border with North Korea are refusing to bury their recently dead relatives until the bodies seriously decompose. The families fear that famine-plagued North Koreans who cross the border foraging for food will dig up fresh bodies and eat them.

-- Bennie Casson filed a $100,000 lawsuit in Belleville, Ill., in July against PT's Show Club in nearby Sauget for its negligence in allowing a stripper to "slam" her breasts into his "neck and head region" without consent as he watched her perform. Dancer Susan Sykes (a.k.a. "Busty Heart") claims show business's biggest chest (88 inches), which Casson said was responsible for his "bruised, contused, lacerated" neck.

-- Virgin Mary World Tour (apparitions): December 1996 (Clearwater, Fla., plate glass window of finance company; Lewis, Kan., wall of family home); April 1997 (Sunnyside, Wash., roadside sign); June 1997 (Gradina, Croatia, cluster of trees; Mexico City, floor of Hidalgo subway station).

-- In March, the First Baptist Church of Berryville, Ark., closed its day-care center, declaring its purpose inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible. (Working mothers wouldn't have to work, said the church, if they did without "big TVs, a microwave, new clothes, eating out, and nice vacations.") And in May, the chief of the Ekhupeleni area in northern Swaziland banned the use of condoms, citing the teachings of the Bible on the waste of reproductive fluids. (He said contraceptive pills are OK.)

-- In a March Amarillo (Tex.) Globe-News story, service technician Eddie Golden, 28, attributed his recovery from brain surgery to divine intervention. In October 1996, Golden had accidentally shot himself above the ear with a nail gun, embedding a 1 1/4-inch brad, avoiding death by about an eighth of an inch. After a doctor pulled it out, he suggested an MRI to assure there was no further damage. The MRI revealed a brain tumor, which has now been treated. Said Golden, "God's got a reason ... or he wouldn't have put that nail in there."

-- In February, the Houston Chronicle reported on the local Buddhist Temple of the Great Bodhisattva Washington, which founder Ong Dao Ton believes is the only temple in the world to jointly pray to Buddha and George Washington. Ton says he has about 40 members and formed the temple because he believes the United States saved him from oppression in Viet Nam twice, in 1954 and 1973.

-- Eddie Clyde Harris, 38, was sentenced to life in prison in March in Neosho, Mo., for the attempted rape of a 57-year-old woman. According to a psychiatrist who testified at the trial, Harris believes he has a special gift from God that enables him to look at a woman and determine whether she is promiscuous and that the victim in this case passed the test.

-- Rev. Joe Bullard resigned from the Copper Ridge Baptist Church in Halls, Tenn., in May, ending what had been a months-long feud with many of the parishioners over whether he was pocketing the offerings by pilgrims who had come from afar to see the so-called glowing-cross apparition in the church windows. Police had been called several times to break up fistfights among its largely elderly congregation. And in December during a feud over who did and did not have the authority to fire minister Marvin Hodge of the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Rembert, S.C., Hodge's opponents would regularly attend services and heckle and boo him while he preached.

-- Driver Anthony Lowe, 16, allegedly rammed a Winston-Salem, N.C., utility pole in February, cut it in half, and knocked out power to 7,000 customers, including an old-folks' home, just as a sleet storm began. News photos at the scene revealed a clearly pleased-with-himself Lowe, who suggested a headline for a reporter ("Anthony 1, Telephone Pole 0"). Lowe had had his driver's license for less than three weeks and told police he "wasn't really paying attention" as he drove. When informed of the power outages, Lowe and his passenger allegedly responded, in unison, "Cool!"

-- Latest Handcuffed-Behind-My-Back Escapes: David Thornton, 28, stopped for DUI in Spartanburg, S.C., in April, and Tommy Richards, 21, arrested for assault in Elmwood, Ill., in May, allegedly stole their arresting officers' cruisers and drove several miles, using various parts of their bodies to steer and shift gears, before being recaptured.

-- According to a May Advertising Age report, the rock group Motley Crue is promoting its latest album with a bright-blue-colored soft drink, Motley Brue, among whose characteristics is that it leaves both the drinker's mouth, and any contemporaneous excrement, blue. The independent soft-drink company Eat Me Now says the beverage is "for people who are done with the whole drugs and alcohol thing, but still want to have fun."

-- Recent Chain-Link Fence Impalings: Shayne Henry, 22, impaled by a section of pipe when he allegedly drove through a fence while horsing around a golf course at night in Edmonton, Alberta, in April; and Michael Brown, 29, impaled by a 10-foot-long section of galvanized pipe on a fence when his mother accidentally drove through it while taking him to a job interview in Ripon, Calif., in April.

-- Recent Flying Things: cars (going over embankments or ramps), landing on Rob Hasenwinkle's house in Kamloops, British Columbia, in February, J.C. Warner's motel room in Grants Pass, Ore., in March, and an Amtrak train in Portland, Ore., in July; a couch, tossed out a fourth-floor apartment in Edmonton, Alberta, in March, clipping a newspaper carrier and sending him to the hospital; a one-ton bull, falling from a cliff onto Elizabeth Hanks' car near Joseph, Ore., in July; and a 3,000-pound wrecking ball, rolling off a truck onto a car, near Shepherd, Mont., in July.

-- One day apart in June in Stafford County, Va., two husbands were charged with beating their wives during channel-changing disputes. Joseph W. During, 20, was charged with assault for punching his wife for changing radio stations in the car, and Edgar D. Colvin, 49, was charged with assault for roughing up his wife, who had commandeered the remote control and changed channels with two minutes left during Game 5 of the NBA championship series.

(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 1993 India Scott dated both Darryl Fletcher and Brandon Ventimeglia when she lived in Detroit and moved in with Fletcher in 1994 when she was about to give birth. Neither man knew about the other, and she told each he was the father. For two years, Scott managed to juggle the men's visitation rights, but in March 1997 when she announced she was marrying another man and leaving the area, both Fletcher and Ventimeglia separately filed for custody of "his" son. Only then did Ventimeglia and Fletcher find out about each other. They took blood tests to determine which was the real father of the boy they had been caring for for more than two years, and in May the blood test revealed that neither was.

-- Connecticut Police Academy: Robert Jordan filed a lawsuit in May against the New London, Conn., police department for illegal discrimination, claiming he was rejected as an officer solely because he scored too high on an intelligence test, which the department claims is evidence that Jordan would get bored on the job and be a bad officer. And an Associated Press report from New Haven, 50 miles away, revealed that new-recruit police classes include training in the arts (watercolor drawing, ballet, etc.), which was the brainchild of former police chief Nicholas Pastore, who himself resigned in February after admitting that he had fathered a child with a prostitute.

-- More than 200 students at Molalla (Ore.) High School petitioned officials in May to overturn the school's mandatory-brassiere policy after two girls were sent home for not wearing them. Protesters complain that the dress code is not fairly enforced, in that more heavily endowed violators are more frequently punished than less-endowed violators.

-- The National Labor Relations Board ruled in December that Caterpillar Inc. workers who were on strike from June 1994 to December 1995 were entitled to be compensated for the popcorn, sodas, ice cream and other snacks that the company provided workers who remained on the job during that time.

-- In February, the student government at Oxford University in England appointed a person to patrol the grounds and stop couples' public displays of affection. In one place, petting was banned from the dining hall, and another facility was divided into heavy- and light-petting-allowed zones. The government also banned sexual intercourse in libraries between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. (although no student leader claimed to have actual knowledge that it had ever occurred). The actions were taken because some students who did not have dates found the behaviors offensive.

-- Two inmates serving life sentences at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola filed a lawsuit in February claiming officials have denied them the chapel space and equipment necessary to observe their religion of Satanism. Even though they allegedly cannot practice faithfully, their credentials for the Satanic afterlife seem substantial: One plaintiff is in for first-degree murder and the other for rape, robbery and kidnapping.

-- According to police in Mesa, Ariz., Jean K. Dooley opened fire with a handgun in Valley Lutheran Hospital in 1995, intending to kill her husband, who was a patient there. (She missed but managed accidentally to hit a nurse and a paramedic.) In January 1997, she filed a lawsuit against the hospital for negligently failing to stop her from bringing the gun inside.

-- In March, the New York Appellate Division of the Supreme Court unanimously took away the $15 million award that a jury had made to Jose Barretto, who is paralyzed from the waist down. Barretto sued Richmond Hill High School in New York City for not stopping him from horsing around before volleyball practice in 1988, when, with the coach momentarily out of the gym and allegedly to show off for his friends, he ran toward the net from 30 feet away, dived over it, and landed on his head. Said Barretto, "I accept part of the blame, but what about the responsibility of the teacher and the school?"

-- Federico Perales, 52, was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, in April and charged with stabbing his wife to death in front of their two teen-age kids because he was angry that the three of them started dinner before he arrived at the table. According to the Peraleses' son, Perales' last words to his wife were, "You pushed me to the limits. You did this to yourself."

-- In April, Mary Durante, the inheritor of a house in Newark, N.J., found 133 neatly stacked boxes upon her first visit to the attic, each with the remains of a cat wrapped in newspapers that dated back to 1945. She was startled by the discovery but said she knew the house once belonged to the late Newark Star-Ledger pet columnist, William H. Hendrix.

-- Sandra L. Archer, 35, was sentenced to two years in jail in April in Omaha, Neb., for disorderly conduct and cruelty to animals after videotapes surfaced of her having sex with her boyfriend (Mark W. Williams, 36, who is awaiting trial) atop groups of dogs, including sick ones, that had been obtained from local shelters.

-- The Mainichi Daily News (Tokyo) reported in April that a 24-year-old local man from Adachi-ku was arrested and charged with assaulting a 17-year-old schoolgirl on her way home. According to police, the man rubbed saliva in the girl's hair as an expression of anger because her socks were too loose around her ankles. Police quoted him as saying, "When I saw those socks, I just went crazy."

-- According to a recent Canadian documentary film, Troy Hurtubise, a scrap-metal dealer from North Bay, Ontario, was so disappointed at his 1984 first encounter with a grizzly bear that he embarked on a 10-year, $100,000 project to build a safety suit that would enable him to wrestle and defeat a grizzly. He has not yet found a bear to wrestle, but he has spent money so obsessively on the suit that he recently had to file for bankruptcy.

Michael Forgue, a Jackman, Maine, restaurateur, expressing doubt in May that his neighbor James Darrow was guilty of the murder for which he had been arrested and which he had allegedly claimed credit for: "They don't call (him) 'Big Jim the Liar' for nothing. You name it, he lied about it."

(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.)