News of the Weird

-- In August, the school district in Columbus, Ga., assigned aides to alter textbook photos of Emanuel Leutze's famous "Washington Crossing the Delaware" painting because some grown-ups thought parts of Washington's pocket watch, dangling against his thigh, might appear to fifth-graders to be the Founding Father's penis. The aides located matching paint and spent two weeks touching up 2,300 textbooks. Officials in Cobb County (Atlanta's northern suburbs) merely snipped the page from its textbooks.

In April in Alberton, Prince Edward Island, Judge Ralph Thompson gave drunk driver Dennis Joseph Peters, 45, only a suspended sentence for his fourth conviction, citing Peters' medical claim that he should not be jailed because he gets claustrophobic. And jailers in Quebec City sent drug trafficker Michel Racine, 57, home in July because the jail did not have furniture big enough to accommodate the 450-pound man. And in August, jailers in Independence, Iowa, released four Amish men who were serving time for vandalism, concerned that the lockup's modern conveniences (TV, running water) would corrupt the prisoners.

-- Cox News Service reported in August that Florida state-agency DNA paternity tests on child-support-resisting men found that 36 percent of 1,025 "fathers" in four counties were not the fathers after all. However, Florida courts are split on whether even a negative DNA test will relieve men of support responsibilities once they voluntarily begin paying.

-- According to police in Honolulu, Denny Usui, 28, at first told investigating officers in July that his grandmother wasn't home, but when they insisted on looking around, he became progressively more helpful: "Oh, I don't know, she might be here." Then, "Yeah, OK, she's in the shower." Then, "Oh, go inside; my grandma's bathroom is inside her room." Then, "Oh, I think she's dead. She's in the shower." And finally (but probably too late), "I don't want to say anything else until I speak to my attorney because this is a felony and I never committed a murder before."

-- According to a June Los Angeles Times report, about 40 violent male offenders (including murderers) at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility near Sacramento, Calif., are thriving in a program that teaches the rehabilitative effects of sewing. The tough guys stitch, knit and crochet booties and blankets for premature babies and to achieve what one teen (an armed robber) called sewing's "calming" effect.

-- In July, a British Army helicopter, helping on an archaeological dig near Red Deer, Alberta, experienced a wild swinging of its cargo and was forced to jettison it in order to stabilize the chopper. The cargo was a large package of dinosaur bones said to be 68 million years old, which was smashed into splinters. Said the pilot, "I'm very sorry."

-- Firefighters in Nixa, Mo., failed to make it to a burning house in a cul-de-sac in May in time to save it. The problem, said the fire chief, was that too many people were attending a crowded yard sale in a nearby house and were reluctant to move their cars to allow the engines to pass. And, said the chief, "When we were pulling out the hoses, they were tripping over them to get a look."

-- More than 63,000 people visited the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., in July and August to see the rare (considered by some botanists as their holy grail), huge Sumatran titan arum plant blossom to produce the world's largest flower. It is also possibly the world's most putrid, resembling rotting flesh and luring not bees but dung beetles. Coincidentally during the run, renowned botanist Bastiaan J.D. Meeuse passed away in Kirkland, Wash., at age 83; he was best known for his work with the large voodoo lilly, which produces half-pound flowers that generate their own heat and a stench comparable to the titan arum's.

-- Food in the News: Yogurt developed for the Russian space program, using bacteria from cosmonauts' saliva to bolster the immune system, will go on sale to the public soon, according to an August report in New Scientist magazine. And in May, Eiichi Urata, 59, was rescued after being lost for 15 days on a 7,700-foot peak in the Japanese mountains near Nagano; for the last 14 days, he had nothing to eat except two jumbo squeeze-tubes of mayonnaise, which he daubed on ice to make snow cones.

In Almaty, Kazakhstan, three employees of a psychiatric hospital were charged after bringing home seven prostitutes and killing and eating them in gourmet, ravioli-type dishes. And India's national news agency reported in August that a 3-year-old girl had been sacrificed to a Hindu goddess in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, in order to bring prosperity to the village, but that no arrests had yet been made.

News of the Weird has reported on parents too busy to arrange for sitters for their toddlers and who thus brought them along on crimes, most recently in 1998 when an Oregon woman robbed two banks with her three young daughters in the getaway car. In Paducah, Ky., in September 1999, Gloria Schoffner, 55, was arrested for prostitution in the front seat of a man's car; she had temporarily placed her 2-year-old granddaughter in the back seat while she conducted business.

In August, a 20-year-old man was electrocuted when he opened the power box on a lamppost in Newport Beach, Calif., and snipped a wire to attempt to dim the light to afford a better view of the Perseid meteor shower. And in July in New Freeport, Pa., a 19-year-old man, joking with friends about shooting himself in the head, accidentally pulled the trigger and killed himself.

A garbage-bag-wearing convenience-store robber was easily identified later by a clerk because his bag was made of transparent plastic (St. Petersburg, Fla.). A 31-year-old man had his own arm chopped off for the insurance money ($465,000) (Sao Paulo, Brazil). The Nebraska Bar Association rejected Paul Converse's application because it said he is too abusive to be a lawyer. Three teen-agers swiped a small, attractive box from Jo Ann Walker, assuming it to contain valuables when actually she had just walked her dog and had used the box for the droppings (Des Moines, Iowa). A hospital announced that a husband and wife had decided to trade roles and were undergoing sex-change operations (Szekesfehervar, Hungary).

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

-- The death of a 49-year-old woman in Scotland in September brought to three the number of no-food, no-water, "breatharian"-diet followers of Australian Ellen Greve who have died of starvation in two years. Greve claims 5,000 disciples, charges more than $2,000 (U.S.) per ticket for her seminars, and sells her philosophy ("liberation from the drudgery of food and drink") to Westerners in part to confer a spirituality on Third World hunger. Eating-disorder specialists quoted by the Times of London said, of course, that there is no scientific basis for Greve's teachings.

Sixteen people are still imprisoned for lengthy sentences entirely as a result of wildly inconsistent and heavily coached testimony from children that they were ritualistically molested years ago by adults at day-care centers in Massachusetts and North Carolina and as part of a wave of sexual abuse in Wenatchee, Wash., though appeals court decisions in August and September increased to nine the number of people subsequently released. Former Wenatchee police Det. Robert Perez continues to tour the state defending his arrests, which began with allegations by his then-10-year-old foster daughter (whom he later admitted roughing up when she tried to change her story) that dozens of adults had sex with dozens of children in dozens of places in town weekly for nearly six years.

-- In a Stettler, Alberta, courtroom in June, police describing their arrest of David Zurfluh, 18, told how Zurfluh, in the back of a squad car after being stopped for DUI, ripped a large swath from his undershorts and stuffed it in his mouth, hoping, he later said, to absorb the alcohol in his breath before taking a Breathalyzer test. Though the courtroom was in stitches, Zurfluh had the last laugh when the judge dismissed the charge after officers admitted that Zurfluh's reading was not high enough.

-- From a May police report in The Messenger (Madisonville, Ky.), concerning two trucks being driven strangely on a rural road: A man would drive one truck 100 yards, stop, walk back to a second truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the first truck, stop, walk back to the first truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the second truck, and so on. According to police, the man's brother was passed out drunk in one of the trucks so the man was driving both trucks home. (However, a blood-alcohol test showed the driver, also, to be presumed-impaired.)

-- Carol Champion, upon being given a special award by the London Tourist Board in July for outstanding work as a restroom attendant, said at a special ceremony: "I just want to thank my manager, Richard, the cleaning staff, the maintenance men, my customers, and everybody who knows me. I could not have achieved this without them."

-- Of Course! Pest control specialists cited in the newspaper feature Earth Week in June said that last year's El Nino storms caused a huge rat infestation in Southern California, and especially around Beverly Hills. And in the middle of a drought emergency, the annual Waynesburg, Pa., July 29th Rain Day festival was hit by rain for the 105th time in 126 years. And after a judge in Edmonton, Alberta, ordered a 40-year-old sex offender in July not to keep pornographic magazines at home, the man admitted he had some but said he was only reading the articles.

-- On July 1, the Dallas Better Business Bureau began charging consumers $9.50 for the privilege of listening to their complaints of being ripped off by local businesses.

-- In April in Riverside, Calif., Allen Randolph Payne, 40, was sentenced to 1,113 years in prison for molesting his three daughters over most of their adolescent and teen years. Not only did their mother, Carol Payne, side with Allen at trial, but, according to one daughter, Carol once chased her around the house with a baseball bat and a gun after finding her in bed with Allen.

-- In March, a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization conference in Italy issued a news release encouraging a growth in world food supply by increasing the rabbit population but expressed concern that governments would miss the opportunity because of their "lack of training" in getting rabbits to breed.

In August, Dubbo, Australia, magistrate David Hellpern dismissed charges against an Aboriginal man for shouting "Fuck off!" to a police officer, calling the word "extremely commonplace now," having "lost most of its punch." But in August in Colorado Springs, Colo., a state liquor control agent removed 29 signs containing the word from Leonard Carlo's tavern, e.g., a bottled-beer-only sign worded "No Fucking Tap Beer." On Oct. 7, the ACLU obtained a temporary restraining order against the liquor agency, arguing that the word was part of Carlo's "image and character." (Carlo, who named his dog Fuck You, uses the word frequently, though he told a female reporter for the Denver Rocky Mountain News that he hoped he hadn't offended her.)

News of the Weird has reported several cases of animals' DNA being crucial to criminal cases, including pets' blood and hair in human murder cases (1997 and 1998) and prime-rib DNA as important to a cattle-rustling case (1994). In July 1999, The Wall Street Journal reported that Canadian authorities will introduce a test in November to make it easier to catch tree thieves (a $50 million (U.S.)-a-year crime industry) by comparing the genetic material from stumps with that of recently cut logs.

Cops Making It Look Easy: Jason L. Miller, 19, with a warrant outstanding, was arrested again in Elgin, Ill., in May when an officer recognized him as he showed up for a police ride-along program he had signed up for. And Kent Mayes, 42, was arrested in Deridder, La., in August when he flagged down a passing car and offered to sell drugs to the occupants, even though they were narcotics officers wearing badges and guns and even though one of them had arrested Mayes several times in the past.

Angry that a neighbor's grass trimmings had flown into his yard, a man pounded the neighbor with a nail-studded board (Herndon, Va.). A murder trial was postponed when the defendant was called for jury duty that day and accidentally placed in the pool for his own trial (Ottawa, Ontario). A convicted man received additional jail time, for contempt of court, after he slit his throat in front of the judge, requiring 100 stitches (Bay Roberts, Newfoundland). A drug runner sued U.S. Customs for impatiently forcing surgical removal of seven heroin bags he had swallowed instead of waiting for them to pass naturally (New York City). A Boston traffic agency handed out leaflets during rush hour to explain re-routing problems but stopped when motorists slowing down for the leaflets caused a several-miles-long backup.

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

-- Earlier this year, Mayor Dan Gibson of Crystal Springs, Miss., decided to run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination and, with the support of his wife and son, resigned and liquidated his assets to finance the campaign, including the couple's five-bedroom antebellum home, antique furniture and two Cadillacs. He finished fourth, and the Gibsons now live in a cramped one-bedroom apartment with one used car for transportation. Gibson told the Associated Press in August that he has no regrets and agrees with the voters: "I need more maturity (before holding office)."

During the Aug. 11 eclipse: A baby born during the blackout was killed by its 31-year-old mother, who feared it was thus cursed (Strahotin, Romania). Abdel-Nasser Nuredeen was charged with killing his wife because she was too fascinated by the eclipse to make him a cup of tea (Cairo, Egypt). Bulgarian TV apologized for missing eclipse coverage because its camera crew was delayed at an erotic film shooting. A police superintendent released three prisoners under the assumption that the eclipse meant the world was ending (Picui, Brazil).

-- Latest Highway Truck Spills: 20 tons of dog and cat food on I-70 near Denver (March); 1,800 liters of caramel (which required a hazardous materials cleanup crew) in Calgary, Alberta (April); thousands of cases of Anheuser-Busch beer on I-55 in St. Louis (August); a tractor-trailer full of vodka, tequila and Scotch on Candora Avenue in Knoxville, Tenn. (June); 60 toilets being hauled on I-25 in Albuquerque (June).

-- Two Canadian astronomers admitted in June that they made a serious error the month before in their 23-page message beamed into outer space designed to inform extraterrestrials that there is intelligent life on Earth. One section was to show, via symbols, that Earthlings have mastered mathematics, but two different "equals to" symbols were used. The Dutch researcher who found the error was chagrined that aliens will now believe Earthlings "a sloppy species."

-- In June, during a British Airways flight from London to Los Angeles, a pre-recorded emergency-warning message was accidentally transmitted to the cabin, horrifying the 400 passengers, but it was quickly turned off by the captain. He knew to act quickly because it was the third straight month that such an emergency tape had come on during a British Airways flight. In the first glitch, in April, a voice on the tape actually told passengers that the plane was about to ditch into the Atlantic Ocean.

-- In April, a 34-year-old Filipino seaman had to be air-evac'd to a Port Lincoln, Australia, hospital after he accidentally swallowed his four-tooth dental plate. And in June, during an operation for bowel obstruction, surgeons recovered a set of false teeth David Flanders of Mopeth, England, had accidentally swallowed as a teen-ager. And in July, a bronchoscopy revealed that the asthma-like condition of Mike Russell, 60, of Bath, England, was caused by his four-tooth dental plate, missing since a highway collision eight years ago but which was lodged just above his right lung.

-- In Warminster, Pa., in September, inmate David Marshall Brown, 54, was freed after serving 34 years for felony murder. He was to have been released in 1980 on a plea bargain, but no one could find the paperwork, and Brown remained long after his co-pleader (who had his paperwork) was released. Brown's paperwork had been misfiled by his then-lawyer in his co-pleader's records.

-- In August, Independence County (Ark.) Sheriff Ron Webb, freshly convicted on a federal charge of sexually assaulting a female prisoner, billed the county about $140 for car mileage and meal costs during his two-day trial in Little Rock, claiming the trial was official business. (A few days later, he withdrew some of the claims.)

-- In June in North Knoxville, Tenn., just as Sharon Gilbert was delivering an order from Glenwood Sandwich Shop to Pardon's Jewelers, a well-dressed man snatched her money bag and knocked her down. The 5-foot-3 Gilbert jumped on the man, pried the money bag loose, and chased him for a ways until he got in a car and drove away. Minutes later, according to a manager of Pardon's, the still-unidentified man called, angry, to complain about how Gilbert had roughed him up.

According to a July San Jose Mercury News report from Zimbabwe, claims of demons and tiny "tokoloshi" gremlins have proliferated as the country reels into its third year of economic downturn. While ordinary criminals and mentally ill people are arrested or beaten up as witches, other parts of Zimbabwe society are thriving: The black-market demand for human body parts (for making evil potions) is up, and "traditional medicine" practitioners say business is good, as the country's down-and-outs purchase evil spirits to humble their enemies.

News of the Weird first reported on "crush videos" in February 1999, alarming readers that scantily clad women in stiletto heels were being photographed stomping insects and tiny animals to death for the viewing pleasure of foot fetishists. Two producers were arrested for animal cruelty in May in Los Angeles; another company is under investigation; and federal legislation has been introduced. Jeff Vilencia, whose Squish Productions is out of business, told USA Today in August that while he agrees on the immorality of squishing pets, "mice and rats might be a gray area."

Lovers Jose Agustin Noh and Ana Maria Camara Suarez succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning as they slept after a bout of sex in a hearse whose engine was running to keep the air-conditioning on (Campeche, Mexico, in May). And in April, truck driver Ling Yiu-hung's 1997 death was officially ruled carbon monoxide poisoning by a Hong Kong coroner; Ling had passed out and died while stuck for hours in a traffic jam.

Jealous boyfriend Rafus Garrett Jr. was charged with assaulting rival John Garrett (no relation) in a fight on Willie Garrett Road (Folsom, La.). The U.S. Forest Service apologized for charging two New Hampshire men with the crime of "maintaining (White Mountain National Forest) without a permit" because they had spent two days cleaning up a lake. Cocaine smuggler Nicole Bos, 18, won a gala, televised beauty pageant inside a Lima, Peru, women's prison. The National Postal Museum opened an exhibit honoring the five clerks who died trying to lug the mail to higher ground on the Titanic (Washington, D.C.). A bank robber was arrested later at a bar down the street when he attracted attention by buying a round with $100 bills (Sioux Falls, S.D.).

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