Weird News: Volume Eight
BRAIN DEAD?
- Havard University and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass, have established a center to analyse tissue from the brains of people who die after having suffered from mental illnesses. However, physicians have encountered trouble getting mentally ill patients to agree to donate their brains. Asked one physician, "How do you ask someone to donate his brain to science who thinks their brain is under the control of radio waves from Mars?"
JUDGE 'EM ON THEIR OWN STANDINGS
- Steven L. Johnson, 40, sentenced to two years in prison in Brookings, SD, for drunk driving, explained to the judge, "I enjoyed drinking while driving. It's one of the most pleasurable habits I've had."
- The title of Dr. June Stephenson's new book (Diemer/Smith, $20) on why crime is essentially a male pursuit, running $300 billion a year: Men Are Not Cost Effective.
- According to Salt Lake City police, a 27 year old woman called 911 because her husband refused to have sex with her. By the time the police arrived, the nearly nude woman had begun beating her husband, who offered as his reason for lack of desire an exciting Utah Jazz basketball game on TV.
- Coshocton, Ohio, high-school band director Charles Carothers, denying allegations that he sat two female students on his lap and fondled them: "I don't allow anyone to sit on my lap unless it's my daughter or my wife."
- John Hurst, a disoriented man taken to a mental health center after he was discovered propping a ladder up to the second floor of the Kennedy family estate in Palm Beach: "I'm looking for my wife. I think she may be up there." **shit, why not? You know them Kennedy's!!**
- John F. Thanos, asked his sentencing preference after he had been found guilty for a 1990 murder, had the choice, said the judge, of the death penalty or "life in prison without the possibility of parole." Thanos, failing to capture all the details of the second choice, replied that he'd take the "life in prison with the possibility of escape." The judge gave him the first one.
PARENTS FROM HELL
- Donna Clark, 26, and Paul Kramer, 31, faced various charges in Merchantville, NJ, when Clark allegedly grabbed $216 worth of film and walked out a drugstore. The couple's names were provided by their 6 year old son, who was in the store at the time but who was forgotten by the couple as they were making their get-away.
- According to police in Knoxville, Tenn, Bobby Rose, 36, trying to avoid arrest for a traffic violation, threw his 2 year old child at the feet of the officers to slow them down as he made his get-away.
- Georgia state Rep. Henrietta Canty went on a hunger strike to protest the arrest of her son, who was jailed for failing to make court ordered child support payments.
- Tammie Guthrie, 28, was indicted for manslaughter in Baton Rouge, La. Police said that she allowed her one year old to drown in a bath tub while whe was in an adjacent room having sex with a 15 year old boy.
REAL WEIRD
- Milwaukee mayoral candidate Gregory Gracz, president of the local firefighters union, was accused of having exposed himself to a young female firefighter in an incident at a convention. Gracz denied the charge, but Mellisa Fojtik staked her credibility on her knowledge that Gracz has a distinctive mole on his penis. Pojtik said also that one of Gracz's colleagues told her that they were "musketeers" - that he, Gracz, and others had "crossed penises" in a show of solidarity.
MORE STUPID PEOPLE
- David Thomas Soloman, 35, at the Clermont, Fla, police station to file charges against his wife for hitting him, allegedly became fixated on a bag of marijuana (confiscated in another case) on Detective Danny Cheatham's desk and, according to Cheatham, "literally begged me for it and stated he wouldn't tell anyone where he got it." Cheatham then set up a hidden microphone in another room, sold the drugs to Soloman there for six bucks and then arrested him.
OH MOMMY!!??!!
- Paul Arbitelle, 17, was charged with the attempted murder of his mother in Danbury, Conn. He threw a hatchet at her because she failed to properly toast the bagel for the sandwich she had made for him.
