[460] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.343 (News of the Weird, September 2, 1994)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Mon Sep 19 09:32:27 1994
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 09:27:42 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 1994 16:15:22 -0600 (MDT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN%ARIES@VAXF.Colorado.EDU>
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.343 (News of the Weird, September 2, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* In July, a 32-year-old woman who works in the wardrobe department at
Universal Studios in Hollywood got lost while driving on the lot and found
herself following a tram. The tram, carrying visitors, proceeded down
the middle of the "Red Sea" attraction, in which the waters are
mechanically "parted" for the tram. However, at the instant the tram
completes the trip, the water is released, and the woman was thus trapped
in the middle of the "sea" for about an hour until firefighters rescued
her. [L. A. Times, 7-10-94]
News of the Judgment-Impaired
* Reuters News Service reported in August that prisons in Romania are
experiencing a wave of inmates' hammering nails into their skulls in order
to be transferred from overcrowded cells to prison hospitals. Nails that
go an inch deep or less are removed without surgery, but several men have
driven the nails into their brains. [Rocky Mountain News-Reuter, 8-6-94]
* In July, the town council in Peru, Vt., ordered Roland Williams out of
his house for a month while authorities cleaned the place up. Williams
had been purchasing large quantities of dog food and cola every day to
feed the hundreds of rats that had been gathering on his property. And
in New York City, officials reported in May that a woman feeding cereal
to rats in her apartment and singing to them had also relinquished her
bed to them while she slept in a chair. [[Berkshire Eagle-Bennington
Banner, 7-29-94; Boston Globe, May94]]
* In March, suspected drug dealer Anthony Mason, 21, took off running from
police in Durham, N. C., as they attempted to question him. Mason was
wearing fashionably droopy sweat pants, and during the chase, they slipped
down his legs, sending him sprawling, making for an easy arrest. [Durham
Herald-Sun, 3-5-94]
* Police in Coldwater, Ontario, suspected that it was potential thieves
who placed the bomb that exploded inside the night deposit box at the
Toronto-Dominion Bank in June. However, Constable Doug Langlois said he
doubted the culprits got any of the money because the blast sent the
several thousand dollars flying through the air and brought neighbors out
quickly to fight for whatever money had not been burned or shredded by
the explosion. [Orlando Sentinel, 6-7-94]
* In Morristown, N. J., in June, police arrested Stanley Robinson, 34,
for drug possession. Robinson had stopped his car to allow a parade, with
police escorts, to pass. About a dozen officers were standing in front
of Robinson's car when he decided to pass the time by counting the ten
vials of cocaine he had with him. [Morristown Daily Record, 6-26-94]
* Jill Mayfield, 21, accepted the marriage proposal of Doyle Kelley, 35,
in Joplin, Mo., in June. It would be Kelley's third marriage; Joplin
police have charges pending against him for strangling his first wife and
drowning the second in a bathtub. And in April, Lillian Elease Lewis,
42, married Lucien Samuel Sherrod, Jr., in Nashville, Tenn., despite
Sherrod's present incarceration on charges that he killed his second wife
and an indictment against him for attempted murder of his first wife.
[Neosho Daily News-AP, 6-27-94; The Tennessean, 4-13-94]
* In May 1993, Eric Jason Fann, then 21, was in jail in Kansas awaiting
extradition to serve time in Texas for burglary. According to his later
confession, Fann so feared Texas prisons that he deliberately threatened
to kill President Clinton--figuring that such a threat would get him a
federal prison sentence instead of the Texas time. In July 1994, he was
convicted and indeed sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, but the
sentence is to start at the end of his Texas sentence. [K. C. Star,
7-6-94]
* Robbery suspect Phillip Christopher Hines, 23, was shot by police in
Odenton, Md., in January inside the grocery store he was accused of
robbing. According to police, Hines charged at them while yelling "Bang!
Bang!" [Baltimore Sun, 1-23-94]
* In July, officials at California Polytechnic Institute at San Luis
Obispo set up a video camera to find out who was responsible for a rash
of vending machine breakins on campus. One man was caught on tape and
arrested, and the police seized his truck. The Los Angeles Times reported
that the man later paid the impound fee on the truck with 924 quarters.
[L. A. Times, 7-22-94]
* Kissimmee, Fla., high school history teacher John Blumberg was suspended
for five days recently for poor judgment for staging a re-enactment for
his class on the assassination of President Kennedy. Blumberg took the
class out into a field and had a student fire his father's rifle, which
was the same model as the one used by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, three
times at a target as far away as Kennedy was from Oswald, to demonstrate
Oswald's firing pattern. [Daytona Beach News-Journal, 8-1-94]
* Customs officials, aided by drug-sniffing dogs, arrested Mary Gray, 43,
of Chicago at O'Hare Airport in June as she returned from Jamaica with 27
pounds of marijuana in her suitcase. She said she thought the marijuana
would be undetectable because it was sprinkled with a "magic voodoo
potion" that she had bought from a witch doctor in Jamaica. [Chicago Sun-
Times, 6-10-94]
The Weirdo-American Community
* In April in Rochester, N. Y., Jeffrey Watkins, 24, was convicted of
breaking into five mausoleums and of stealing the skull of a woman who
died in 1933. Watkins, who refers to himself as "The Grinch," wrote in
a confession that he had slept with remains inside coffins: "I'm a walker
of both sides. What I mean is good and evil. I feel safe with the dead,
and I can trust them. I need their company to make me peaceful inside."
[Cortland Standard-AP, 4-27-94]
Least Justifiable Homicide
* On July 16, a 21-year-old man was fatally stabbed in the chest in a New
York City subway train. Witnesses said he was stabbed because he was
apparently victorious in a staring contest with the man who killed him.
[New York Times, 7-17-94]
Copyright 1994, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights
reserved. Released for the personal use of readers.
No commercial use may be made of the material or of the
name News of the Weird.
