[157] in Humor
HUMOR: News of teh Weird
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Thu Mar 31 13:45:38 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 94 13:40:11 EST
From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
The following are selections from the New of the Weird
I've gotten them from
bostic@vangogh.cs.berkeley.edu (Keith Bostic)
wisner@privateidaho.EBay.Sun.COM (Bill Wisner)
(Bill posts this to the eniac mailing list)
* The Atlanta Constitution reported that "U-John, King
Priest of the Universal Sovereign" filed a $10 trillion
lawsuit in U. S. District Court in Atlanta in April
against 36 Bible-based religions for years of "fraud,
breach of duty, global disruption of peace, slander,
blasphemy, and wanton greed." [Atlanta Constitution, 5-
18-93]
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* Among those arrested in New Haven, Conn., during a
marijuana-selling sweep last year: 25-year-old
Victorious Sweat. [New Haven Register, 6-12-92]
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* The chief Republican fundraiser in a Democrat-
Republican squabble in Oklahoma about whether a state
Museum of Natural History will be built in Tulsa or
Norman is named E. Z. Million. [Daily Oklahoman, May93]
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* Fernando Rivera, 28, was arrested in July in New York
City after he allegedly attempted to rob an elderly
woman in line at a bank. Police surmised that Rivera
went to that bank because he failed to acquire the
$1,000 he had expected from robbing another bank: He
had left off a zero in the holdup note, and the teller
had dutifully given him only $100. [Manhattan Spirit,
7-22-93]
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* Four people were arrested in Sacramento, Calif., in
January after they kidnaped a woman and threatened to
kill her unless she entered her bank and withdrew money
for them while they waited outside in a truck. Once
inside the bank, the woman merely notified the security
guard, who called police, who came and arrested the
men. [Sacramento Union, 1-23-93]
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* Christopher White, 22, was arrested in Boothwyn, Pa.,
in July and charged with burglary after police were
summoned to the offices of a housing development in the
middle of the night by a 911 operator. Police said
White had attempted to dial a 900-sex service from the
office but had inadvertently dialed 911, whose
equipment automatically records the number from the
calling telephone. [[Warren Tribune-Chronicle, Jul93]]
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* Toronto police in June were trying to trace a
thumbprint they thought would identify the person who
burglarized the offices of Hayden Communications. The
burglar made off with $75, but while in the office
apparently took time out to play with Leslie Hayden's
container of Silly Putty, in which the thumbprint was
left. [Globe and Mail, 6-24-93]
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* Former President Jimmy Carter persuaded singer
Michael Jackson to stage a concert in Atlanta in May to
encourage children to get vaccinations. Carter said
the immunization rate for children under age 5 in
Atlanta is 50%, compared to about 80% in Bangladesh.
[Washington Times, 2-17-93]
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* The Chicago Tribune reported in June that lawyers for
William L. Carlson, 19, who is serving a 90-year
sentence in Illinois for killing his parents, were
optimistic that Carlson would be awarded the parents'
$700,000 estate. In a plea bargain, Carlson confessed
to killing only his father, who died first. At the
moment of his death, the father's estate passed to the
mother, whose beneficiary is William, who technically
has not been convicted of killing her. [Chicago
Tribune, 6-27-93]
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* The U. S. Treasury Department's Historical
Association announced it is raising money this year by
offering for sale Internal Revenue Service gift
ornaments, for $11, that commemorate the 80th
anniversary of the 16th amendment, which authorized the
income tax. The ornaments are "24-carat, gold
finished, three-dimensional" models of a 1913 income
tax form. [Rock Island Argus-AP, 5-8-93]
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* In a July article on Northern Ireland's aggressive
tourist industry, Newsweek reported that despite its
long-running, bloody civil war the country has a crime
rate that is one-fourth that of Sweden and a murder
rate one-fifteenth that of Washington, D. C. [Newsweek,
7-26-93]
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* The Syracuse Herald-Journal reported in January that
its telephone hotline, featuring excerpts of
Presidential debates last fall, was successful except
for one glitch: Ross Perot's voice sometimes hit a
pitch that mimicked a certain telephone tone that
automatically shut down the system. [Editor &
Publisher, 1-9-93]
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* Albert Leroy Rozier was arrested in Yazoo City,
Miss., in August, after he and a colleague broke out of
the county jail by stealing a gun and overpowering a
guard. Rozier was arrested the next day when he
stopped by the local unemployment office to pick up the
check he had been expecting just before he was
originally arrested. [Baton Rouge Saturday Advocate-AP,
8-7-93]
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* Among the winners in Russia's local elections in
April was billionaire Kirsan Hyumzhinov, elected
president of the republic of Kalmyk. One of his
campaign promises was simply to give the equivalent of
$100 to every family in the republic. [Columbus
Dispatch-AP, Apr93]
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* Woodruff Adams II, 36, the Republican candidate for
mayor of Toledo, Ohio, in this month's combined
primary, told the press in July that he had never
registered to vote before this year because he needed
to avoid jury duty due to the obligations of his
financial consulting business. (Candidates for jury
duty come from voter registration lists.) [Cleveland
Plain Dealer-AP, 7-8-93]
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* Milton Byrd, 32, was arrested in August for the
robbery of a Purity Supreme supermarket in Boston when,
one month and a day after the robbery, he walked back
into the store to apply for a job and was recognized by
one of the employees. [Boston Globe, 8-21-93]
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* David Richardson, 19, arrested in a Gadsden, Ala.,
convenience store in August and charged with robbery,
told police that he had made no holdup demand and in
fact was only there to buy a few things. Police
entered the store to find Richardson standing in the
back, having just put a pair of pantyhose over his face
and socks over his hands and carrying a butcher knife
in his pocket. At the first sign of the police,
Richardson, still in pantyhose, grabbed an item off the
shelf and acted as if he were shopping. [Tuscaloosa
News-N. Y. Times, 8-19-93]
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* A court in Trenton, N. J., ruled in June that James
Huckfeldt would have to pay for the legal defense of
his two teenage sons because the family is too well-off
for public defenders. Huckfeldt's sons are charged
with trying to hire a hit man to kill him. [USA Today,
6-2-93]
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* Bea Bernkrant and her husband filed a lawsuit in
October against the Radisson Suite Hotel in Boca Raton,
Fla., accusing the hotel of negligence in allowing the
couple's personal towels, which they had brought to the
hotel, to be stolen from their room. [St. Petersburg
Times, 10-19-92]
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* According to a U. S. Department of Energy memo
reported by the Denver Post in December, the number of
workers it takes to change a light bulb, on a certain
vital safety system at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons
plant, is 43, requiring 1,087.1 person-hours. [Denver
Post, Dec92]
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* In August, police in Berkeley, Calif., investigating
a robbery, got a tip from a witness as to the license
plate of the getaway car, which turned out to be a
rental car. They staked out the rental car agency, and
the next day, the robbers were arrested when they
returned the car to get their deposit back. [Daily
Californian, 8-13-93]
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* In August, Judge Robert Schillberg released
shoplifter Leroy Kelley without penalty in Lynnwood,
Wash., even though Kelley had just pleaded guilty to
stealing two packs of Marlboros from a Safeway store.
Schillberg fined Kelley $1, which the judge then paid
out of his own pocket, because he believes "the store
is more culpable than [Kelley] is" for selling
cigarettes in the first place since they are such
dangerous products. [Oregonian-Seattle Times, Aug93]
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* In July, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration rescinded an earlier decision it had
made to fine a Boise, Idaho, plumbing company $8,000
for rules violations during a rescue of a construction
worker in a collapsed trench. Originally, OSHA had
cited the company because, among other things, rescue
workers had failed to go get their hard hats and put
them on before attempting the rescue. [News Release of
U. S. Senator Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, 7-19-93]
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* In July, Sacramento, Calif., police began a crackdown
on the city's homeless who were illegally camping out.
Numerous citations were written, but almost as fast as
the citations came to court, the court clerk--following
official procedures--voided them because they lacked
home addresses for the accused. [Sacramento Bee, 7-30-93]
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* James Cramer, 25, and Rudolf Warren, 24, were
arrested in August and charged with four robberies of
Buffalo, N. Y., banks. The pair came to the attention
of police when officers made a routine traffic stop of
Warren, who was alone and driving Cramer's car, and
asked for his registration papers. Warren reached into
the glove compartment and handed all the papers to the
police, inadvertently including the holdup note the two
had been using ("I have a gun. Put all the money in
the envelope quickly!"). [Buffalo News, 8-7-93]
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* Last October, in Maidenhead, England, the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals brought charges of
pet abandonment against David Sharod, who had left his
two fish--a South American sucking loach and sucking
plec--alone in their tank for three days while he was
away. It cost the government the equivalent of $12,000
to conduct a trial, and Sharod $3,000 to defend
himself. He was acquitted in June when he cited the
Society's own literature to show that fish could live
comfortably on algae in the tank for up to two weeks.
[The State (Columbia, S. C.)-AP, 6-11-93]
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* Francis Perlmutter, who had inadvertently confessed
to murder in St. Paul, Minn., in June when he left a
message on an answering machine, told reporters who
were questioning him just after his arrest: "I don't
know what's going to happen now. This is my first
murder." [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 6-19-93]
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* Christopher Howard, 25, was arrested in Haines City,
Fla., in August after police responded to his call
reporting that a burglar was trying to break into his
house. When the officers arrived, Howard led them
around the house looking for the alleged burglar, but
apparently forgot that he had left on the dining room
table a ceramic plate containing cocaine, which the
officers soon discovered. [Lakeland Ledger, 8-5-93]
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* Reinero Torres, Jr., 53, twice this year successfully defended himself
in court in Sebring, Fla., first on a worthless-check charge and then
for assault. However, in August, on a third charge, for theft, for
which he also acted as his own lawyer, he lost. A jury convicted him
of having stolen, from the courthouse library, the books he had used in
preparing his defenses to the first two charges. [Tampa Tribune, Aug93]
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* Leona Vanatta, 66, was charged with robbing the Trans World Bank, of
which she is a regular customer, in San Fernando, Calif., in September.
She arrived at the bank expecting that her monthly Social Security funds
($242) had been direct-deposited; when informed that the funds were not
yet available, she pulled out a gun and said, "Now can I have my money?"
She took the $242, hopped on her bicycle, and started to pedal home but
was quickly apprehended. [San Jose Mercury News-L. A. Daily News,
9-6-93]
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* A federal appeals court upheld the conviction of Rodney Hamrick in
June on mailbombing charges. Hamrick ultimately confessed to the crime,
but the first piece of evidence that led investigators to him was that
he had written his return address on the bomb package. [U. S. vs.
Hamrick, 995 F.2d 1267 [4th Cir. 1993]
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* In September, Gwen Laymon said in New Orleans that her
recently-arrested son, Eric, accused in a drive-by shooting of a
12-year-old girl, could not possibly have participated in the incident.
She told reporters that, at the time of that shooting, Eric was at a
nearby housing project participating in another shooting.
[Times-Picayune, 9-2-93]
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* Timothy Ray Anderson filed a lawsuit against a McDonald's restaurant
in Milwaukee in May for injuries he suffered when a security guard shot
him in the stomach as he attempted a robbery. Wrote Anderson's lawyer
in the complaint, "The mere fact that you're holding up McDonald's with
a gun doesn't mean you give up your right to be protected from somebody
who wants to shoot you." [Milwaukee Journal, May93]
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* In August. Dorolou Swirsky, 83, told the San Francisco Chronicle she
is planning to give the city of Sunnyvale, Calif., $500,000 from her
estate to finance youth sports activities, which she views as the key
antidote to delinquency. She particularly wants the money to go toward
interscholastic lawn bowling, which she said "embraces everything that
holds a family together." [San Francisco Chronicle, 8-20-93]
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* In July, after two years of haggling with a New York art dealer, the
National Gallery of Canada announced that it had acquired, for $1.5
million, a painting entitled "No. 16" by American abstract impressionist
Mark Rothko, which consists of two white rectangles on a red background.
Its original price was over $4 million. [North Bay Nugget-CP, 7-16-93]
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* In Mebane, N. C., in August, a man reported that someone stole his
dog from his backyard but left another one in its place. Also that
month, in King, N. C., Steve Szabo reported that someone broke into
his home, took his VCR and 15 tapes, and took 34 comic books from his
collection and replaced them with 34 others. [Chapel Hill Herald,
8-12-93; King Times News, 8-11-93]
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* Two men suspected of committing armed robberies, auto thefts, and
kidnapping in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee had their photographs
nationally distributed by law enforcement agencies--and on the TV
program "America's Most Wanted"--after police in Clarksville, Ark.,
recovered snapshots the two had taken of themselves while visiting
Elvis's Graceland mansion and had left behind at the scene of one of
their crimes. [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 10-6-93]
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Copyright 1993, 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.
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