News of the Weird

Municipal employee George Pavlovsky stalked through his shop in April, drunk, carrying a loaded, sawed-off shotgun (sending colleagues fleeing in fear), and looking for the two supervisors who had recently passed him up for promotion. As a result, he was fired by the city (Moncton, New Brunswick) and went to jail in November, but he said through his union (Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 51) that he wants his job back when he gets out, and the union has filed a wrongful-firing grievance on his behalf. Several of his colleagues are still on stress leave from witnessing the incident.

Prof. Trevor Cox (University of Salford in England) and fellow acoustics researchers concluded that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, a duck's quack does have an echo (September). And biologist Nette Levermann (Copenhagen's Zoological Museum), whose team monitored 100 walruses near Greenland, concluded that the animals use their right flippers more than their left (October). And an aerodynamics expert at Britain's Open University, aided by an Oxford engineering student, designed and machine-tested a beer coaster to produce the ideal model and conditions for winning at the British pub game of coaster-flipping (November).

-- According to the arresting officer, Devikia Donise Garnett, 20, was calm when he stopped her for speeding in Hampton, Va., in November. However, after accepting the ticket, she quickly developed second thoughts and lit out after the officer, slamming her car into the back of his cruiser, then stopping and accelerating again, smacking the car three more times. After the officer avoided her fifth pass, Garnett spun around and headed straight for him, but he managed to pin her car before it struck his.

-- After Norm and Darlene Scott's Montana farm burned in 1996, they collected $75,000 from Mountain West Farm Bureau insurance but weren't satisfied and demanded more, finally getting another $52,500 in 1999. However, they wanted still more money and sued the company, claiming it was dealing with them in bad faith. In November 2003, a jury in Helena not only rejected the claim for more money but found that it was the Scotts who had started the fire (a finding that probably never would have been made had the Scotts quietly accepted the first $127,500). (The statute of limitations prevents criminal charges against them, but the insurance company will sue to get its money back.)

-- Toni Lynn Lycan, 44, in a shouting war with a downstairs neighbor over his loud music, stomped up and down on the floor, eventually breaking both her legs about four inches below the knee (Vancouver, Wash., October). And deer hunter Jeffrey Souza slipped while building his tree stand and, dangling by his feet, broke both ankles (Lakeville, Mass., November).

-- In September, Rouse Co., a developer and landlord of shopping malls, acknowledged that it had somehow forgotten to renew the lease on its own headquarters in Columbia, Md., a blunder that will probably more than double its rent, perhaps costing as much as $11 million.

-- In October, imprisoned child molester Kevin Kinder, 31, scheduled for a routine court hearing, was temporarily placed in a holding cell in Tampa, Fla., with 60 other prisoners, among them a 22-year-old man who immediately recognized Kinder as the man who had molested him when he was 11. The man started punching Kinder and knocked out a tooth before he was restrained.

-- Recently Arrested on Sex Charges: The vice chairman of a Louisville, Ky., anti-pornography group (for patronizing a prostitute, November); a retired New Jersey Superior Court judge whose job was to administer Megan's Law for Camden County (for possession of child pornography, August); and a politically conservative Richmond, Texas, radio-show host who is regularly critical of lax moral standards (for indecent exposure to a child, November).

Once again in October, panic spread through some African cities about black-magic men who could, with a mere touch, make penises shrink or disappear. In alleged incidents in Khartoum, Sudan, and Banjul, Gambia, these sorcerers would shake men's hands and then extort money in exchange for removing the evil spirits they had just incited. As word spread and fears heightened, vigilantes would chase down the suspected sorcerers and beat them up or kill them. (Academics who study this folklore refer to the communities' hysteria as "genital retraction syndrome.")

James Perry, with four DUI arrests in Florida, feared rejection if he tried to get a driver's license in his new home state of Connecticut and so pretended to be Robert Kowalski (the name of his neighbor in Florida), but a routine computer check revealed "Robert Kowalski" to be a Michigan sex offender, unregistered in Connecticut (Clinton, Conn., September). And Mr. Chance Copp, 15, who was on probation for arson and who feared testing positive for marijuana, submitted the urine of a relative, instead, only to find out later that that urine tested positive for cocaine (Chillicothe, Ohio, November).

The city of Bartow, Fla., amid complaints about stray chickens, repealed a 1922 ordinance that made it illegal to kill, capture or "annoy" birds (August). And the 10th annual cockroach races (and "tractor"-pull) were held at the Indiana State Fair in August, with separate events for American roaches (on an oval track) and the stronger Madagascar hissing cockroaches (on a straightaway). And among the less-publicized charges against the Russian oil giant Yukos (whose chairman, Russia's richest man, was arrested in October) was that a farm it owns in Siberia was illegally allowing rabbits to mate "unsystematically."

About 40 percent of U.S. elementary schools have eliminated recess over the last 20 years (according to a September story in New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Fla.), so that schools could squeeze in more classroom time. In addition to the problem of overweight students, Florida school psychologist Marvin Silverman referred to children's "chemical need" for recess, pointing out that even psychiatric institutions give recess to help with "mood and movement." A complicating factor is that in some schools, playground equipment has already been removed because of safety concerns and fear of lawsuits.

Prominent author and filmmaker Timothy Treadwell, much of whose work was devoted to his love of brown bears and a campaign to make people more tolerant of them, was killed and partially eaten by bears in October near Kaflia Bay, in southern Alaska. Treadwell carried no weapons in the wild, and according to friends, was unmoved by brown bears' ferocity. He told one friend, "I would be honored to end up in bear scat."

"Thousands" rioted in Sierra Leone when a prominent pair of Nigerian dwarf comedians no-showed a performance and promoters tried to substitute two local dwarfs (Freetown, Sierra Leone). A brother and sister who had thrown away a winning, $10.5 million Illinois Lotto ticket recovered it, only because their garbage had remained uncollected due to a nine-day sanitation workers' strike (Chicago). And Dog-Plus K-9 Water went on sale in Australia (for about US$2.10) in flavors like "bacon and beef" because, said the inventor, "dogs get bored with plain water."

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

Enraged that his computer was virtually disabled by e-mail spam earlier this year, Charles Booher, 44, of Sunnyvale, Calif., allegedly repeatedly threatened employees of the spammer with torture (castration with a power drill and an ice pick) and murder (using a gun and anthrax spores). He was arrested in November and admitted to the Reuters news agency that he had "sort of lost (his) cool" at the bombardment of penis-lengthening ads from DM Contact Management. DM's president blamed a rival company for stealing DM's e-mail address and said such companies give a bad name to the penis-enlargement business.

(1) "Patrol Car Hit by Flying Outhouse" (an October Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about Wisconsin trooper Rich Vanko's squad car being smashed when a truck carrying portable toilets lost one along Interstate 90); (2) "Shatner Frozen Horse-Semen Suit Dismissed" (a July Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader story about William Shatner's ex-wife's accusation that she was being denied divorce-settlement-mandated access to a breeding stallion for her own farm).

Prof. Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University said recently that, hoaxes aside, there is enough legitimate evidence of Bigfoot to warrant a comprehensive scientific investigation of his existence, once and for all. (National Geographic reported in October that a Texas fingerprint expert, as well as noted chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall, have said they are certain of Bigfoot's existence.) And Provo, Utah, explorer Steve Currey is organizing a July 2005 expedition to the North Pole (cost: $21,000 per person) to find the so-called polar "opening" to the hollow center of the Earth, supposedly the kingdom of God where the biblical 10 Lost Tribes reside.

-- A scheduled guest on the Dr. Phil TV program filed a lawsuit in November, claiming it was the show's producers' fault that she had an anxiety attack in her quarters right before the show and tried to climb out a second-story window. She fell and shattered her leg so badly that it had to be amputated. And "Wheel of Fortune" contestant Will Wright, 38, filed a lawsuit in October against Pat Sajak for hurting Wright's back by jumping onto and bear-hugging him to celebrate Wright's having just won $48,000 during a 2000 show.

-- Gary Moses and Rannon Fletcher, both 17-year-old inmates at the Iberia Parish (La.) jail, filed separate lawsuits in October against jail officials, for $1.5 million and $650,000, respectively, because they were allowed to buy cigarettes at the commissary even though they are underage.

-- Former Australian inmate Craig Ballard won a settlement of his lawsuit in September for the equivalent of about US$70,000 against the Grafton Correctional Centre in New South Wales for head injuries that occurred when he fell out of a bunk bed. Ballard was in prison for a vicious assault against a woman.

-- Fear of Lawyers: The Dollywood amusement park in Tennessee announced the end of free passes for the blind and the crippled after someone complained of discrimination against people with other disabilities, who still had to pay (October). And the town of Mosgiel, New Zealand, barred children from sitting on Santa's knee this year because of the risk of future molestation complaints. And the Royal British Legion announced it will no longer give out poppy pins to donors on Remembrance Day (for military veterans) because of fear that people might stick themselves and sue. (November).

In November, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Susan Winfield ordered no jail time (just drug treatment and probation) to a 25-year-old man who has 33 burglary arrests and seven convictions, including a gun count, plus previous failed probations and failed drug rehabs. And in Melfort, Saskatchewan, Dean Edmondson, 26, a white man, was sentenced to only house arrest in September after a conviction for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old aboriginal girl, whom Justice Fred Kovach found was perhaps "the aggressor."

In August, residents learned that the county librarian in Concrete, Wash., offered her spare-time services as the S&M dominatrix Lady Jane Grey in nearby Bellingham. Despite her credentials and passion as a librarian, her contract was not renewed in November. And in August, Shannon Williams, 37, a teacher for the Berkeley (Calif.) Unified School District, was arrested for misdemeanor prostitution. Williams, who was previously scheduled to be on a leave of absence this school year, said in September she would challenge the prostitution law as unconstitutional.

Just as the towns of Kennesaw, Ga., and Virgin, Utah, had done, the 50-home village of Geuda Springs, Kan., through its town council, voted in November to require every household to own a working firearm, for "emergency management." (Later, the mayor vetoed the ordinance, but it will be reconsidered in February.) And for the second time in 12 months, news broke in November that a python had crushed and swallowed a human. (Unlike the devouring of a small boy in Lamontville, South Africa, in 2002, the body of 38-year-old Basanti Tripura, of the Rangaman district in Bangladesh, was downed only to the waist before villagers killed the snake.)

Officials in Lakeville, Ind., weren't certain, but it appeared that a cause of a fatal Oct. 10 car crash on U.S. 31 might have been that Dale Brenon, 50 (a private detective who survived in critical condition), was working on his laptop computer while driving. (The driver of the other car was killed.) A police spokesman said the computer was thrown clear of the collision but was turned on, and a program was running.

In October, former Massachusetts day-care center proprietor Gerald Amirault, who is believed to be the last person still imprisoned on the basis of now widely discredited, fantastical, heavily coached, child-sex-abuse testimony from the 1980s, finally won parole and will be freed in April. Officials have long refused to cut him slack because of his defiant, 18-year insistence that he never molested a single child. He noted that his sociology textbook for an in-prison college course mentioned his own case as an example of that era's hysteria-driven prosecutions of accused child molesters.

As part of a hazing ritual for a new Ku Klux Klan member near Johnson City, Tenn., in November, several Klansmen would shoot the man with paintball guns while another simultaneously rapid-fired a 9mm pistol overhead to make the pledge believe he was being shot with a real gun. According to police, one of the bullets, fired straight up in the air by Klansman Gregory Allen Freeman, 45, came down through the skull of Klansman Jeffery S. Murr, 24, who was hospitalized in critical condition. Freeman was arrested.

A 19-year-old intoxicated backseat passenger was convicted of drunken driving because he reached to adjust a stereo control and accidentally bumped the idling car's gearshift into "drive" (with a police officer watching nearby) (Tinn, Norway). An 18-year-old woman, wielding a putty knife, allegedly robbed a neighbor during the time she was awaiting trial for robbing a convenience store wielding an ice-cream scoop (Harrisburg, Pa.). Jeweler H. Stern introduced luxury Brazilian flip-flops adorned with diamonds and gold, at about the equivalent of US$22,000 (Sao Paulo).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

The man convicted of blowing up the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people, lives in relative luxury in a private four-room suite in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison, according to a November report in Britain's News of the World. Abdelbaset al Megrahi, serving a minimum 27-year sentence, has a color TV, VCR, stereo, personal computer, kitchen, floral curtains, framed art and unlimited telephone access. A prison official said the man must be isolated because of the nature of his crime, but that Barlinnie had a limited choice of such facilities.

Britain's Industrial Christian Fellowship of religious scholars complained in September that people's prayers go disproportionately for teachers and nurses and said it would distribute a set of prayers for the underblessed financial sector under the heading "When did you last pray for your stockbroker?" And in November, the Saudi government set new restrictions on the export of sand, fearing that increased needs of its neighbors (in the reconstruction of Iraq and in Bahrain's reclamation projects into the Persian Gulf) will create a shortage.

Joseph Tomaino of Neptune, N.J., won $3 million from a jury because a side effect of penile surgery was an erection that lasted for three days, which an appeals court later found did not interfere with most of his daily activities. (The trial judge, who wanted to give Tomaino even more money, had the case taken away from him by the appeals court in November.) And passenger Ivette Jones, who said she was traumatized in the October Staten Island ferry collision and couldn't sleep because she was so distraught, filed a $200 million lawsuit against New York City, $80 million more than claimed by a woman who lost both legs in the accident.

-- The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune reported in November that a City of Oakland building inspector's employee, fired in February 2002, took a government car (with logo) with her when she left and that no one noticed it was missing for 18 months, until the ex-employee had accumulated $1,500 in traffic tickets. At that point, the owner of the car was called to get the car out of the impound lot.

-- Angela Bridges filed a lawsuit in June against the Washington County (Ga.) Regional Medical Center and a doctor for failing to clean her wound properly. She fell into some shrubbery in her yard in 2002, cut her leg, and reported to the emergency room for cleaning and suturing. Nine months later, another physician found that a small boxwood twig, with five thriving green leaves, had broken through the sutured skin.

-- In October, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on the heated clash in the Twin Cities suburb of Eden Prairie over how much money to spend on a new historic preservation program, which the Star Tribune noted was ironic because the town was nothing more than farms until the 1950s. Said a city council member, "I think an argument can be made that the word 'historic' is being loosely used." And an August Boston Globe story deglamourized Plymouth Rock, supposedly where the first pilgrims stepped in 1620 as they disembarked near what is now Plymouth, Mass. It's just a large rock, kept in an open pen (and was named by TV's Learning Channel as one of America's 10 lamest landmarks).

-- In October, North Korea's official news agency reported that Japan had broken a promise to return five people to North Korea. The five are Japanese citizens who were kidnapped by North Korea in 1978 but released to see their families in October 2002. North Korea's position is that they were released only temporarily and must be returned to North Korea.

-- In November, the town of Bolinas, Calif., voted 314-152 to adopt the following ballot measure (the official wording): "Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful." A San Francisco Chronicle reporter attributed the town's support for it to the fact that its sponsor, artist Jane "Dakar" Blethen, is a beloved, though eccentric, local character.

-- Police in Sandwich, Mass., are so far stumped why Daniel L. Kelleher, 48, was found covered head-to-toe with roofing tar, lying in a water-filled bathtub in a room at the Sandwich Motor Lodge on Nov. 11. Kelleher, a carpenter, apparently purchased the tar and caulking guns, and he had rented the same room a week earlier and left tar in the bathroom, but he has refused to answer detectives' questions.

-- Jason Cody Jones, 27, was arrested in Florence, Colo., in November and charged with suspicion of theft in connection with $110,000 missing this year from J.P. McGill's casino, where Jones was a security guard. Jones called attention to himself by purchasing a motorcycle with 300 $20 bills and a pickup truck with a similar array of small bills, and for spending $35,000 during a six-month period this year while having earned only $6,400.

-- In October, about $450,000 worth of marijuana plants were discovered in a downtown Chicago apartment after police noted an overpowering scent that wafted the length of the building's hallway. They arrested a Navy Pier worker and five students, one of whom voluntarily answered the police knock to inadvertently reveal marijuana plants covering almost every surface in the front room (as well as one room air freshener, which an occupant had optimistically placed near the door).

In 2000, News of the Weird reported that a major plank in the platform of a Montana man running for the U.S. Senate was to encourage the space program to build and use an "elevator" to lift satellites into orbit, rather than the far more expensive rocket ships. An October 2003 Associated Press report disclosed that a dozen or more scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory so deeply believe in the elevator that they work on their own time on studying and promoting its feasibility. The elevator would be a cable shaft about 50,000 miles long, lowered to Earth from a conventional spacecraft and docked to a land station. The shaft would be made of "carbon nanotubes" (many times stronger yet lighter than steel), but the main problem is that, so far, science only knows how to make nanotubes a few feet long.

Waiting for a rush-hour bus in East St. Louis, Ill., Emanual Fleming tried to use a pay phone but received a busy signal, then stuck his right middle finger into the coin-return slot but couldn't get it out. With his free hand, he called 911, and ambulance personnel had to take both Fleming and the telephone to the hospital, where, three hours after he got stuck, doctors numbed the finger and worked it out of the slot.

A sophisticated fake-report-card scheme was busted when several students insisted on boosting their D's all the way up to A's, provoking their parents to call the principal to see why their kids weren't on the honor roll (Salem, N.H.). A 43-year-old man said he'd plead guilty in December to his fourth shoplifting conviction in two years, each one involving grocery store pork products (East St. Louis, Ill.). A bank robber who had forgotten to cut eye holes in his mask (and who kept lifting it to peek out) nonetheless escaped with his loot but not before banging into a steel door frame on his way out (Modesto, Calif.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)