News of the Weird

-- In May, a 19-year-old mentally ill patient walked away from the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs, and authorities warned that he was potentially dangerous. Twelve hours later, the patient, Terry Crazy, was picked up along Interstate 90. According to hospital spokeswoman Connie Worl, "Mr. Crazy was brought back ... without incident."

-- Males, Especially, Should Not Read This Item: In June, an 11-year-old boy in Grimsby, England, standing on a chair holding a snooker cue stick as if riding a pogo stick, with the tip at the juncture of his legs, slipped and fell to the floor, incurring perhaps the most serious injury possible under the circumstances (although he is recuperating satisfactorily). Scrotal repair was necessary, as was abdominal surgery, to fix the rupture caused by the protruding tip of the stick.

According to her lawyer, Teren Basel's 2 1/2-year divorce battle with wealthy husband Peter Basel was "a trip to a concentration camp that she survived by the skin of her teeth" (Bolton, Mass., January). And Catholic Cardinal Thomas Winning, describing the "bombard(ment)" of Scotland by gay-rights advocates, likened it to "the dark days of World War II" (Edinburgh, Scotland, January). And San Carlos, Calif., tavern owner Al Tolbert, reluctantly enforcing the state's clean-air-in-bars law, decorated his no-smoking signs with swastikas; said Tolbert, "It appears a bunch of (Adolf Hitler's) adherents are running (the California government)" (January).

-- In February, voters in Holland, Mich., rejected a ballot initiative to restrict Internet access on local public library computers so as to keep pornography from minors. The initiative was led by Irvin Bos, 59, who told reporters that he became a pornography foe at age 12 when he found a sexually explicit book on the side of a road and sneaked looks at it in the family barn, and that within six months, lightning had hit the barn, demolishing it. Said Bos, "I just knew (that my pornography) had caused that barn to burn down."

-- Disabled Springfield, Mass., police officer Charles Peck, 55, asked the city council last year for higher benefits based on his 1982 squad car crash that ended his career. Peck was hurt so severely that he was declared dead at the scene (only to be resuscitated at the hospital), and his latest petition demands benefits equal to his full salary, which is an amount available only to surviving spouses of deceased officers. Thus, Peck appears to be claiming that since he was declared dead in 1982, he actually is his own survivor. At press time, the Springfield city council had not decided.

-- Dennis Ferrer, 56, was arrested in Chalmette, La., in March and charged with stealing from the donation box at Our Lady of Prompt Succor Catholic Church. Ferrer had on him three thin rods with a sticky substance on one end, and $381, but said he was not stealing the money, but rather freeing it because the church was run by communists.

-- Pedophile Pediatricians: Dr. David Mark Stier, 42, pled guilty in Charlotte, N.C., in March to having sex with an underage teen-ager. (Though a pediatrician, said his lawyer, Stier in reality "had no idea the age of this child.") And in Alexandria, Va., in February, Dr. Jonathan L. Weinstein, 32, was sentenced to a year in prison for possession of child pornography. (According to his lawyer, Weinstein got no personal pleasure from the pornography, but was merely a pack rat who accumulated things; said the lawyer, Weinstein still has "Froot Loops that date from 1995," "chocolate pudding from 1983," "guitar strings," and "his teen-aged T-shirts."

-- In April, Ontario Justice Peter Harris dismissed charges against a woman accused of prostitution when she told him that she was just out that night hitchhiking, which Harris thought was too "innocuous" an activity to permit a conviction. However, the woman had been asked "How much?" by an undercover police officer and had answered "Forty dollars," but Judge Harris said she might have meant only how much she would pay for a ride.

-- In April, alleged Mafia boss Vincenzo Curcio broke out of the high-security Vallette prison in Turin, Italy, by patiently sawing through the bars with dental floss. (The prison, built in the 1970s, had installed bars of abnormally soft iron.) And the month before, Texas inmate Antonio Lara used a makeshift dental-floss-like substance to saw his way out of his cell at the Coffield facility near Palestine, Texas, allegedly in order to kill rival Roland Rios in another cell.

-- Prospective bride and groom Dorrell Mainer, 38, and Kevin Rainey, 41, were arrested in Brooklyn, N.Y., and charged with attempting on June 7 to rob a Chase Manhattan Bank (a robbery they had to abort when a teller delayed getting the money). The couple had scheduled a huge wedding for June 10 with out-of-town guests, intending to pay for it with a tax refund, but when IRS denied the refund, according to police, the bank robbery was the best way the couple knew to pay the caterers and avoid disappointing their relatives.

According to a University of Cologne archaeologist, addressing a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, in April, nearly all prehistoric sites along the Nile valley have been spoiled by land and building projects, and now tourists are destroying Egypt's Western Desert sites. One of the most ruinous tactics, he said, is tourists' pouring water over 9,000-year-old paintings so they can see the features more clearly.

In 1993, News of the Weird reported on a Redmond, Wash., judge who, when his defendant broke free of bailiffs and fled, leaped off the bench himself and, robe flapping, pursued the man out of the courthouse and down the street. In April 2000, Philadelphia Judge Peter Rogers showed a similar impatience with his own bailiffs and dashed after escaping suspect John Jordan, who was making a run for it after having simply failed to appear for his previous 24 court hearings. Unlike the Redmond judge, Rogers came back empty-handed.

Dennis Sullivan, 23, was arrested in January for the robbery of what he thought was an armored car, according to Manassas, Va., police. In reality, it was a laundry truck delivering towels and mops to a Bowl America. Said a police officer, "(Sullivan, holding a sawed-off shotgun), ran up to the (driver) and said, 'Give it up.' The (driver) said, 'What?'" Sullivan grabbed a bag and ran but soon realized he had a bag of mopheads. By the time police spotted him running for his getaway car, he was no longer dangerous because his shotgun, which was snug against his arm underneath his long-sleeved shirt, had become tangled in the shirt and could not be aimed.

The government insultingly said Harold Gaulding's 1.25 acres that it confiscated for road-widening was worth $525, but a jury said it is worth $50,000 (Colbert, Ga.). A police sergeant who is also a youth league baseball coach was demoted to patrolman after traffic-ticketing an umpire who had just ejected him for arguing a call at first base (Alvin, Texas). A 29-year-old murder suspect was arrested outside the house he had been sharing with an overtrusting executive for the TV show "Cops" (Los Angeles). A rapist was sentenced to only seven years for his crime because, noted the judge, when the victim started choking, he loosened her gag and gave her a glass of water (Pontevedra, Spain). A 21-year-old woman dumped her infant off with friends on false pretenses so she could fulfill her dream by joining a traveling carnival (Buffalo, N.Y.)

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

-- The ritzy Barra da Tijuca suburb of Rio de Janeiro is preparing for the October high-society wedding of Pepezinha and Winner, which will be extravagant even though the bride and groom are dogs (shih tzu and cairn terrier). The estate of Pepezinha's owner, Vera Loyola, is just down the road from the notorious Rocinha slum, symbol of Rio's nauseating poverty. Said Loyola (who always serves her pooch on silver platters), "I believe my little Pepezinha is worth every cent."

-- According to the Massachusetts speaker of the House, the legislature's all-night session on April 13, to vote on the state budget, was more a giant "keg party" than serious deliberation, with members drifting into the chamber from various receptions and some falling asleep at their desks. At one point, according to a Boston Herald story, when the presiding officer asked the members, "Are you leaders or followers?" the members chanted "We lead!" which segued into "Toga! Toga!" One result was the giggling joy with which members voted to fund their favorite obscure projects.

In April, in the woods near Tampa, Fla., tourist Gemini Wink went off to photograph alligators, got lost, climbed a tree for safety as night approached, and decided to protect himself against falling out of the tree by duct-taping himself to a branch; rescuers found him several hours later. In March, Massachusetts officials shut down a day-care center in the town of Hudson following reports that a caretaker duct-taped an infant to a wall for amusement. And a February Associated Press report touted Harrisburg, Ill., artist Keith Drone's line of duct-tape clothing, including baseball caps, wallets, pants, belts and a bikini; said Drone, the products are "really cool looking," and, he adds, "If it breaks, just put a piece of duct tape on it."

-- Why We Have the Justice Department Antitrust Division: In January, at an open-air market in Kunming, China, an appliance dealer had a hand chopped off by a competitor who was upset that his rival was underpricing him.

-- Recent CEO Retirement Packages: Douglas Ivester, Coca-Cola, $17.8 million plus $3 million/year, who retired just after laying off 6,000 employees (February), and John B. McCoy, Bank One, $10.3 million plus $3 million/year, who retired after laying off 5,100 employees (March). On the other hand, Sidney H. Kosann, CEO of Shelby Yarn, Shelby, N.C., who reportedly earned a $300,000 salary and lives in a $500,000 home, filed in February for state unemployment compensation just after closing the company and laying off 650 people.

-- According to figures of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, cited by the London Daily Telegraph in March, hundreds of Pakistani women are deliberately burned to death each year by their husbands, either for imagined infidelity or increasingly for economic reasons, in that some Muslim men are finding it harder to maintain a two-wife household during lean times.

-- Eighty-eight orbiting satellites ($5 billion worth) were scheduled to soon be allowed to vaporize by the owners of the Iridium telephone company, which lost hope in April and May to be rescued from bankruptcy. Iridium failed to last even 16 months, due to the rapid and supposedly unanticipated improvements in digital cellular technology that made its bulky and expensive handsets useful only in remote areas. (Among users of Iridium telephones were the Chechen rebels at war with the Russian army.)

-- Brazilian legislator Wilson Lima told reporters in April that he still thought his proposal to require clubs and bars to have three restrooms (male, female and gays/transvestites, for their own protection from homophobic men) was a good idea, even though Brazil's largest gay-rights organization said it was horrified of such a prospect.

-- A police ethics committee in Montreal reprimanded Officer Robert Royal in March after he forced a traffic-stop motorist to follow him on a high-speed chase of another car. Royal had stopped Pierre Boileau for an illegal U-turn when another officer summoned Royal to help him chase another car. Rather than let Boileau go, Royal ordered him to follow the chase, which hit about 70 mph in a 30 mph zone. After Royal caught up to the second car (turns out it was the wrong car), he finished writing Boileau's ticket and sent him on his way.

-- Four years ago, Edward Weslock left his wife and fled New York City for France with the couple's entire $4 million in cash, leaving his wife to support herself with modest jobs and eventually to be evicted from the family apartment. Since then, she has won several court orders against Weslock in the U.S. and his native Canada, but he has avoided the judgments by staying away from both countries. However, when Weslock stealthily returned, briefly, to the United States in April, Ms. Weslock found out and had him arrested. He had come back to have a new hairpiece fitted.

In April, a jury in Tyler, Texas, sentenced, as a habitual criminal (10 convictions, all relatively minor), Kenneth Payne, 29, to 16 years in prison for shoplifting a Snickers bar from a grocery store. (The incarceration cost in Texas is reportedly $13,000 per year per inmate.) And at a high school sex-education rally in Chicago in April, abstinence advocate Pat Socia told the assembled teen-agers that if they feel a sexual urge coming on, "Just eat a Snickers bar. You'll be fine!"

More Sex Crimes You'd Rather Not Know About: James Donald Ray, 39, convicted of molesting sheep (San Diego, May); Daniel Bruce House, 54, arrested for molesting a horse (Malibu, Calif., February); Jason Carl McRoberts, 19, arrested for molesting a lamb (Stewartstown, Pa., April); Roger Powell, 59, arrested for molesting a pig (Enfield, N.C., May), which he explained by pointing out that sex with his human girlfriend is undesirable because she is a "crack whore."

St. Pancras Coroner's Court in London, England, ruled in April that the 38-year-old man who plunged 10 stories to his death in Islington last August had lost his balance while on his balcony searching for a signal on his cell phone. And a 30-year-old marathon runner, who hoped to qualify for the Olympics, was killed in Las Vegas in February when he was hit by a van as he ran to catch a bus.

A 68-year-old man got too much toe while attempting to shoot a corn off his foot (Proberta, Calif.). Immigration and Naturalization Service said drug-sniffing dog purchases would be limited to two European breeds, which officials said were relentless compared to easily exhausted American breeds, such as Labradors. Police arrested a 28-year-old man who had set out to rescue a 7-year-old girl in a lake, but who, when currents increased, snatched her life preserver, saving himself but allowing her to drown (Southaven, Miss.). At a national breast-feeding technique pageant, 270 women competed for a prize of about $2,400 (Bangkok, Thailand). An art gallery visitor sat in and broke a chair, which he did not realize was part of an exhibit dating to the Ming Dynasty and which is valued at around $100,000 (but it was repairable) (Minneapolis).

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

-- In April, doctors at Washington, D.C.'s St. Elizabeths Hospital said Tomar Cooper Locker, 25, was no longer mentally ill and should be unconditionally released. Just two months earlier, Locker had been found not guilty by reason of insanity (post-traumatic stress) in the murder of boxer Reuben Bell, whom Locker had fatally shot because he thought Bell had killed Locker's girlfriend. Though Locker thus escaped penalty for murder and the wounding of five bystanders, he was sentenced to 20 to 60 months for gun-possession (but since he was jailed pre-trial for 26 months, a judge at press time was considering whether to release Locker immediately).

-- The hottest-selling item this spring for turkey hunters has been Delta Industries' male decoy that fits on top of its traditional hen decoy to give gobblers the illusion that a stranger is having his way with one of the gobbler's harem. According to a hunters' store manager in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (reported in the Cedar Rapids Gazette), the appeal to territorial jealousy is especially effective with older gobblers too wise to fall for hunters' simple mating-call lures.

Among this year's political candidates: For governor of West Virginia: Joseph Oliverio, who admitted in February that he's had 60 speeding tickets and been arrested 150 times. For Anderson County, Tenn., property assessor: Bobby E. Jones, who served time for 37 counts of making false statements to the federal government. For a seat in the Missouri General Assembly: Richard Tolbert, who recently filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy for the seventh time in three years. For Scottsdale, Ariz., City Council: Gary Tredway, on the lam for 30 years after a conviction for throwing a firecracker at firefighters during a student antiwar demonstration.

-- Dutch researchers, writing in a December issue of British Medical Journal, reported their findings on observing couples engaged in sexual intercourse while inside MRI machines (modified so the couple would fit inside), for example, that during missionary-position sex, the penis is not straight but actually takes the shape of a boomerang.

-- Recent Language/Brain Scramblings: Wendy Hasnip, 47, told BBC Television in December that a minor stroke had given her the rare Foreign Accent Syndrome (in her case, a French accent, though she knows no words in French). Also in December, the Moscow (Russia) Times featured Willi Melnikov, 37, brain-injured by a landmine in the Soviet-Afghanistan war, who emerged from the hospital with an activated (previously dormant) facility for languages and has since become fluent in dozens and conversant in 93.

-- Researchers from Boston University and Cornell, writing in a December journal article, said they have identified the behavior that the male bat uses to elicit mates for procreation (the equivalent, said a Science News writer, of a man's slapping on aftershave). At about the same time every afternoon for a half-hour, male bats transfer urine to sacs in their wings by alternately licking the penis and the sac. Later, the bat hovers in front of females and flutters his wings to spread what one researcher called the "very sweet and spicy" scent.

-- China's Xinhua News Agency reported in March that the 13-pound cyst removed from a 28-year-old farmer in the northern province of Shaanxi actually contained the ossified fetus of his identical twin brother. Physicians at Hanzhong Medical School and Xi'an University of Medical Science said the fetus had grown for a while after the farmer's birth, then stopped, with the result that it had hair, skin, and teeth similar to an adult's but other features that resembled a fetus'.

-- In March, Christie's Auction House of New York City unloaded all of the 60 paintings created by artists that happen also to be elephants, including Sao (a former log-hauler in Thailand's timber industry), whose work was likened by Yale art historian Mia Fineman to work of Paul Gauguin for its "broad, gentle, curvy brush strokes" and "a depth and maturity." Fineman said she is writing a book on the three distinct regional styles of Thai elephant art.

-- Garbage artist Tom Deininger's one-person show opened at the Newport (R.I.) Art Museum in January, consisting of his sculptures made of discarded trash, including packaging, toys, clothes and computer parts. Deininger says fans feed him tips on particularly cool Dumpsters to raid and told the Providence Journal that he was working on a self-portrait made of cardboard boxes, with cheeks made of wads of Pokemon wrappers, teeth of Styrofoam, and a toy soldier forming a nostril.

-- According to an April San Francisco Chronicle feature, a painting by local artist Catherine Anderson had been accepted for hanging, then rejected, by the fancy Lodge at Sonoma resort set to open later this year. Anderson specializes in paintings of cows, but the Lodge declined her first piece because the cows in the field included too many posteriors, and also declined a substitute because one cow was in what a Lodge representative allegedly said was a "provocative position."

Madera, Calif., magazine publisher Kathy Masera, to a journalist investigating reports in May that Masera's office building's ventilation system was hosting several types of noxious molds, striking 26 of her 30 employees ill: "There isn't anything more frightening than sitting in a meeting and three people suddenly have blood running from their noses."

A year ago, News of the Weird reported on Reading (England) University professor Kevin Warwick's forearm implant of a transponder to allow his whereabouts to be monitored remotely. Warwick's next implant, according to an April 2000 Cox News Service report, will give him the same "sonar" system that bats and porpoises use for navigation by sending signals from the air to a microchip, which will be "tapped into" a nerve bundle that runs from Warwick's arm to his brain. Warwick believes he can train himself to detect what's in front of him even if his eyes are closed.

Edward Hall, 50, was arrested in March and charged with thefts of trailers from a Home Depot in Albuquerque. According to police, Hall took a trailer from the store's lot early in the morning, hitched it to his truck, and drove it a few miles until it came loose and crashed. He returned to the store, hitched up another, and drove it on the same route, but it, too, came loose and crashed at the site of the first crash. He returned, hitched up a third trailer, and drove it on the same route. A police officer had stopped at the previous crash site to investigate, and as Hall drove by, he accidentally bumped the squad car, provoking the officer to chase Hall down, after which he discovered the thefts.

A lawsuit by a brother and sister, both schoolteachers, to defy the government and keep their mother's corpse permanently at home, in a glass-topped freezer, was rejected (Bordeaux, France). A 52-year-old nightclub stripper filed an employment discrimination complaint over her recent firing (Brantford, Ontario). Japanese toymaker Bandai Corp., to help grow the market for its products, announced it would pay employees to have children, at $10,000 per child after their second. A theater-goer filed a lawsuit against the comic actor Dame Edna after one of the gladioli she throws to the audience at the end of her show poked him in the eye (Melbourne, Australia). A NATO elite training force of 116 Italian infantrymen landed at Kristianstad, Sweden (not a NATO country), instead of the assigned Kristiansand, Norway.

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