News of the Weird

-- An August London Observer story alerted Britons that this summer's New York City fashion fad of live snakes as women's accessories would soon hit England. Londoners just back from Manhattan reported they had seen "several" or "quite a few" snakes on the street, from dance-club exhibitionists to the upscale patrons of trendy bars like Max Fish, with serpents usually carried in handbags and chosen for their color, e.g., albinos or green garters or bright-banded corn snakes.

-- In May, William Pittman, an official at the Hazelden Foundation near Minneapolis and an authority on alcoholism and anger management, pled guilty to harassing his ex-wife, including sending anonymous notes suggesting she kill herself. And in September, anesthesiologist Thomas J. Valente, 41, pled guilty in Apple Valley, Minn., to punching a 69-year-old woman in the face in a road-rage incident. And in August, Debra A. Doherty, 38, was charged in Minneapolis with administering a nearly fatal beating with a broomstick and a crutch to a 39-year-old roommate with muscular dystrophy.

-- In May, Miami-Dade police arrested John Troy Davey, 37, and accused him of being one of a gang of serial flashers working Miami neighborhoods. Gang members' outfits included bandannas, g-strings and women's panties with the crotch cut out. According to police, the men discussed techniques and target neighborhoods on the Internet.

-- At an academic conference on sexuality in Madison, Wis., in May, Robert Bahr, the founder of a newsletter on masturbation, told attendees that some of his readers have adopted the "solo" sexual orientation, being neither hetero- nor homo- nor bi-sexual. According to Bahr, in remarks reported by Canada's National Post, these men "have fallen in love with their own reflections." Some engage in "marathons of masturbation, honeymoons in which they lock themselves away in their own homes, parading naked from mirror to mirror."

-- In June, a Sandpoint, Idaho, publisher released a book on numerical patterns that reveal the "musical and electromagnetic frequencies for spiritual evolution and world healing," patterns that appeared spontaneously one day on his author's car windshield, he said. The publisher is dentist and Harvard-degreed health educator Leonard Horowitz, who told the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review in July that he used to calm his root-canal patients with holistic techniques rather than anesthesia.

-- In an August Providence Journal profile, 47-year-old substitute teacher Herb Gardner of Smithfield, R.I., described his 30-year obsession with the late actress Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Charles Manson family in Los Angeles in 1969 at the age of 26. With his wife's support and inspired by his collection of Tate posters, videos and other memorabilia, Gardner spends his time energetically pointing out to all who will listen that Tate was not a Hollywood swinger but a gentle and charitable person and that one reason he was put on Earth was to defend her honor.

-- According to a May Reuters dispatch, the city-supported Icelandic Phallological Museum in Reykjavik is closing in on its goal of housing at least one sample penis from every mammal native to Iceland. Only "man" and one species of whale are missing, and curator Sigurdur Hjartarson has solved the first problem with a letter from an 83-year-old former Lothario promising his organ upon his death (in an erect state if doctors can act quickly enough). Some whale species, though, have only the tips displayed because the entire organs are too long (10 feet) or too heavy (more than 100 pounds).

-- In June, the Tokyo firm Epoch introduced the Plantone, an egg-shaped, battery-operated, $55 appliance that, when wired to a plant's leaves, checks its emotional state and reports that to the caretaker in a series of lights and sounds.

-- In an April feature just after the air war over Yugoslavia began, the Boston Globe profiled a group of Watertown, Mass., residents who met daily to engage in an "advanced" form of Transcendental Meditation to send brain waves of calmness halfway around the world to dissipate the stresses that caused the war. Said one participant (described as a "financial writer"), "We're undermining warlike tendencies." The meditation failed for 80 days, but on June 21, NATO ended its bombing campaign.

People recently formally diagnosed with "psychogenic fugue" -- temporarily abandoning one's current reality and falling into a substitute -- which of course informally describes most people reported in News of the Weird: Tim Carpenter, 44, former publisher of Christian books, pled guilty in Springfield, Mo., in July to causing a false police report; in December 1998, he had walked away from his home and job in Springfield and was found the next week working in Memphis, Tenn. And Dan Ristau, 50, was convicted of trespassing in Geneseo, Ill., in June for going to an acquaintance's home in the middle of the night and sitting on her bed because he said he needed to talk to her.

Latest woman to continue to propose everlasting matrimonial bliss with a man who earlier attempted to kill her: Hong Kong waiter Ms. Au Wing-sze, 18, who in August vowed to marry Tang Kwok-wai even though he had just been convicted of tossing her over an 18th-floor balcony and stomping her hands as she clung to the railing. (She hung on long enough for a downstairs neighbor to pull her to safety.) Said Au's lawyer, "If anything, (the incident) has only strengthened (their) relationship."

Virgil A. Henderson, convicted in Minneapolis in March (victim had been dogging Henderson to take a bath and change clothes); Brian N. Wright and Rantone D. Howard, charged in Independence, Mo., in April (victim crashed a party and drank beer without permission); James Gatling Jr., convicted in Newport News, Va., in February (wanted to buy victim's Porsche but felt victim humiliated him by insinuating Gatling was unworthy of a Porsche).

A nun was charged with lying to police about being robbed in order to cover for $20,000 of church money she had naively donated to a scam artist (Santa Monica, Calif.). A deli named a burger for college student Shaun Reilly in honor of his periodically scarfing down six 8-ounce cheeseburgers and five pounds of fries at one sitting (Brighton, Mass.). A 39-year-old man was arrested for burglary after being found inside a church, passed out from communion wine (San Diego). A high-ranking Canadian pro-gun lobbyist was cited by police when his gun accidentally fired a round through his wall and into a neighbor's apartment (Regina, Saskatchewan). Iran's supreme leader decreed that the punishment for politically opposing the death penalty would be the death penalty.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- According to a Chicago Tribune dispatch from Rome, it is a well-known August ritual that animal shelters are flooded with abandoned dogs and cats, exactly coinciding with the peak time for Italian vacation departures. What's worse, wrote the Tribune, citing press reports in Rome, is the uptick in the number of disabled parents who are dropped off at hospital emergency rooms by the same departing vacationers.

In June, according to police, former master bank robber Stephen Reid, 49, who had gone straight since 1987 (having written a best-selling novel and married an acclaimed poet), unexpectedly returned to his craft by robbing a Royal Bank branch in Victoria, British Columbia; however, he and his partner were arrested after a brief chase and shootout. And in April, Forrest Silva Tucker, 78, who was so brilliant that he once escaped from California's San Quentin Prison on a jerry-built river float, was arrested and charged with robbing a Republic Security Bank in Jupiter, Fla.; however, his car crashed into a tree after a brief chase.

-- Recent Rages: Donovan Moore, 43, was cited for disorderly conduct in April in Janesville, Wis., after he impatiently cut into a line of cars in a funeral procession and then made obscene gestures at the mourners. And from the Barberton (Ohio) Herald police blotter, May 27: "A 33-year-old West Virginia man drove his vehicle into a 30-year-old Barberton woman's fence, then tore her gate off its hinges. He had driven to town to try to have sex with her, but she refused, so he drove back to West Virginia."

-- Victoria Smith, 58, was arrested in March after pulling a gun on Pastor Chester Miller of the Saddle (Ark.) Baptist Church during the closing prayer because he hadn't preached from Revelations, which was important to Smith for her feud with another church member. And Wesley Free, 44, was arrested in February after firing on the congregation at the Church of the First Born in Oklahoma City, allegedly because the pastor wouldn't remove his name from the membership rolls.

-- In July, four men won $7,500 each from the city of Livermore, Calif., to settle a lawsuit over alleged police misconduct during a sting operation at the Not Too Naughty adult bookstore. According to the men's lawyer, Bruce Nickerson, police violated the privacy of his clients by spying on them while they were masturbating inside a booth in a video arcade.

-- Last year, Susan Bauer claimed she couldn't cut her grass (and thus violated an ordinance of DeForest, Wis.) because she was protecting exotic prairie plants. However, when that excuse was rejected, she filed a lawsuit in July 1999 claiming that she has a bad back and that making her mow her lawn violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.

-- In June, state regulators threatened to pull the license of Monique Dostie's home for retarded people in Lewiston, Maine, over her prohibition on residents' sexual activity and sexual materials. Dostie refused, citing her Catholic beliefs, her residents' limited abilities, and the absence of complaints from their families. The state stood firm on the sexual rights of the retarded, and in August, Dostie shut down her home and left the state.

-- In July, the Arkansas Supreme Court tossed out the DUI conviction of Michael Norris because police had administered a field sobriety test in his bedroom. Police had gone to his home on a tip just after Norris had arrived somewhat inebriated and were let into the house by Norris' mother-in-law. The court ruled that warrantless searches for DUI offenses were illegal and that the mother-in-law couldn't legally give permission for anyone to enter Norris' bedroom.

Introducing a new category, to acknowledge that if people didn't drink, there wouldn't be enough News of the Weird for a weekly column: In a June issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, two doctors affirmed that decapitated rattlesnake heads are still capable of injecting venom and that research shows that "young men," "particularly while intoxicated," disproportionately receive such bites by "voluntarily" engaging the snake's head.

In May, officials at Langara College in Vancouver, British Columbia, canceled a course on shamanism after learning that instructor Lennart Aastrup had convinced his 23 students to take off their clothes in class so they could better identify their bodies' energy patterns. Two weeks earlier, Los Angeles police had arrested elementary school teacher Wendell Smith, 46, after his fourth-grade students turned him in for stripping during class and making obscene gestures.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (35) The dog that steps on his master's gun, on the trigger, causing the gun to fire and hit the master, sometimes fatally, as happened to a 51-year-old man in the town of Bad Urach, Germany, in August. And (36) the pack of animals that breaks into a liquor storage area, drinks up, and then goes on a drunken rampage, as happened in March and April with rats (moonshine at a police station) and monkeys (liquor samples in a government testing lab) in New Delhi, India. (Authorities could tell the rats were drunk because they were attacking cats.)

Criminals Imitate the 3 Stooges: Donnell Taylor, 35, was arrested in June and charged with burglary of a Pasadena, Calif., nursing home; Taylor had opened a sliding glass door for a quick getaway, but an employee later closed it, and Taylor's subsequent crash through the door left a blood trail, which police followed to make the arrest. And a man in a ski mask and with gun drawn rushed the front door of the formerly 24-hour (but now 6 to 11) E-Z Serve store near Tallahassee, Fla., in July at 11:15 p.m.; the man slammed into the locked door, stunning himself and knocking two packets of marijuana out of his pocket before he escaped.

A 210-pound, 30-year-old honeycomb was removed from inside the walls of a home (Tucson, Ariz.). A 14-year-old disclosed he is the father of a pregnant 12-year-old girl's child (she was his 11th sex partner) and told reporters, "I think I will make a good dad" (South Yorkshire, England). Volunteer firefighters doused a blaze inside their station that did $50,000 damage to a fire truck (Chattanooga, Tenn.). Air New Zealand agreed to offer compensation to a business-class traveler from Los Angeles who looked down to find a rat nibbling at her knee. A burglar lowered himself through a restaurant's grease vent, then changed his mind but couldn't get back out because it was too slippery, and had to wait 11 hours to be rescued (Snellville, Ga.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Among the men's fashions introduced in Paris in July were a crocheted face mask (reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter) and a flower-print jacket and matching headscarf, from Belgian designer Walter Van Bierendonck; a white full skirt for men to wear over blue jeans, from Dutch designer Dries Van Noten; and, also to be worn with blue jeans and a white shirt: a formal black dorsal wing extending five feet out on each side (by a designer unidentified in an Associated Press dispatch).

Debtors Norman and Melissa Cameron said in court documents that God told them they didn't have to pay their mortgage (Hartford, Conn., August). Dean William Trammel, 22, charged with assaulting a flight attendant, said in court that God told him he didn't have to remain seated during the landing (Baltimore, January). Donald R. Delgade, 37, arrested for driving through the front door of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, said God told him to (June). Priscilla Lee Jansma, 44, arrested for killing her husband, told police, "Jesus told me it was OK to do it" (Aurora, Colo., June).

-- Driver Lamarn Williams, 27, and his three passengers were arrested in August near Washington, Pa., by a state trooper who had intended only to warn Williams for driving too fast. However, when the trooper asked the obligatory question about whether the car contained any guns or drugs, passenger Marlon Martez Lee's eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted. The trooper called for drug-sniffing dogs, and about 10 kg of cocaine (value: $1 million) was found in the trunk.

-- The "ugly robber" plaguing the Phoenix area was arrested in July in Peoria, Ariz. Karen Marie Tribby, 33, reportedly confessed to 12 robberies in which police bulletins afterward in each case described the robber as a "very ugly woman." A police spokesman justified that description by pointing out that "every victim who has seen her" has described her as "very ugly."

-- From the Police Blotter column of the State Journal-Register, Springfield, Ill., July 29: A 41-year-old man reported that another man who lives at the same residence on East Adams Street may have stolen his glass eye. Both men have glass eyes, but the alleged victim said his was missing from his pocket but that another one was left in its place. The victim admitted he "did not see the exchange."

-- Ex-Marine Stanley Heiserman, 41, pleaded guilty in Allentown, Pa., in May to six convenience-store robberies, four of which he pulled off while naked. Heiserman told police that during a previous stint at robbery, he had been identified by his clothing and was determined not to let that happen again.

-- Milestone in Ambisexual Achievement: Patricia McGrath, 65, was arrested in Philadelphia in July and charged with robbing the First Federal Bank and was suspected in at least five other bank robberies. According to police, McGrath was dressed as a man during the job but fled the scene in women's clothing. During a strip search at the police station, McGrath was revealed to possess physical characteristics of both sexes and was classified as male, though he insisted on being called Patricia and confined in the women's section. On the other hand, said the arresting detective, "I definitely have to commend his professionalism. He's pretty good at (bank robbery)."

-- The United States and Canada recently squared off aggressively over a dispute about rights to the popular walleye fish that roam rivers and lakes near the Manitoba-Minnesota border. Canada bars U.S. anglers from its side of the lakes unless they stay at Canadian resorts; President Clinton says that policy violates the North American Free Trade Agreement. Minnesotans on a U.S. peninsula attached to Manitoba have threatened to secede and join Canada in order to get better access to walleyes, but in retaliation, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura threatened to block the Canadian National railroad, whose track makes a short dip into Minnesota to get around one of the lakes.

-- In August, the Pikeville, Ky., City Commission granted permission to the McCoy family for a three-day reunion in June 2000, to which members of the Hatfield family have been invited for a McCoy-Hatfield softball game. (During the 1870s and 1880s, the two Appalachian families had one of the most notorious feuds in U.S. history, marked by 12 deaths.)

In April, Nashville, Tenn., police officer Clinton Lien was fired after superiors found out he was running an on-premises sex club for swingers in his spare time. And in May, officer Shayne Simmons was fired from the Carl Junction, Mo., police force after superiors found out he and his wife were the principals in a nude-dancing club just north of town.

Latest episode of someone stopping on the shoulder of the highway to urinate and then accidentally falling down an embankment to his death: Mr. Orlando Aros, 26, in June on Interstate 10 near Phoenix. And the latest instance of someone's emerging from a long coma by an inspirational presence in his hospital room: Tom Bendall, 19, Gloucester Royal Hospital, England, brought out of a six-month coma in April by his rugby team's holding its winning trophy in front of him.

People Who Should Have Kept a Lower Profile: Bobby Lee Allison, 26, who habitually carries a live snake around his neck, escaped from police in Tennessee (suspicion of DUI) but was arrested six hours later in Athens, Ala., when people reported seeing a guy with a snake around his neck (July). And Dorothy Joyner, 57, who evaded a warrant for burglary in Baltimore, was spotted by a police officer as she was being interviewed on TV in connection with her candidacy for mayor of Baltimore (subject of interview: crime-prevention).

A 30-year-old woman faced assault charges for kicking a catcalling man in the crotch (Toronto); cleaning ladies in Bologna, Italy, and at Dulles International Airport in Virginia cheerfully returned lost handbags containing $30,000 and $20,000 (in jewels and diamonds), respectively; a 26-year-old woman, headed home from a bar, fell off a rooftop and was wedged between two buildings for five hours (St. Catharines, Ontario); airport authorities confiscated a mysterious canister from a Yale researcher that turned out to be the semen of a 91-year-old professor, packed in dry ice and headed for an experiment in Wisconsin (New Haven, Conn.); two men stole a safe from a Swiss Chalet restaurant and spent a half-hour in the parking lot driving back and forth over it trying to get it open, but by then, police arrived (Ajax, Ontario).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)