News of the Weird

-- The Futile (and Dangerous) Getaway

If the cops are coming, you look for the most efficient escape route. But being intense about avoiding arrest on a relatively minor charge (here, possession of a stolen credit card) put Christopher Bobby, 25, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in even more peril. He estimated that his best escape route at 1:30 a.m. was the Red River. He leaped from the squad car, tore his clothes off and jumped in. The water was quite cold (October), and he was somewhat inebriated to begin with, and after a few minutes, reached the admirable conclusion that his safest bet was to swim back to the cops waiting on the shore.

[National Post-CP, 10-18- 99]

-- Taking Your Wallet with You

It could be the cardinal notion of robbery: You won't have occasion for your wallet while you're robbing the bank or the convenience store, so why take it? (What -- you think you'll need to buy something during the heist?) But hardly a month goes by without one such report. Abdullah Yuzon, 29, was arrested in New Britain, Pa., in August after leaving his wallet (with photo ID, no less) in the Wawa store he had just robbed.

[McDonald County (Mo.) Press-AP, 8-25-99]

-- When "Breaking and Entering" Becomes "Breaking and Staying There"

In 2000, many burglars will go to some trouble to get into buildings they don't belong in by coming through an outside vent, certain that it will be easy enough to traverse the length of the vent and plop down inside. Almost as many will get stuck in the vent and still be there when the cops arrive. Just one of the many recent ones was the guy who was discovered in an overhead vent at Ruby's Pizzeria in Deerfield Beach, Fla., in September. Furthermore, when the cops arrived, he thought he'd beat the rap by just refusing to come down, but cops went to the roof and poured grease down the vent until he slid down enough that they could pull him out.

[National Post, 9-9-99]

-- The Bank Robber With Bad Handwriting

In the movie "Take the Money and Run," Woody Allen got great mileage out of the robber embroiled in a dispute with the teller over whether his note read "I have a gun" or "I have a gub." Life imitates art. A robber walked into a National Bank of Canada in Pickering, Ontario, in September and presented his note, and a teller responded by giving him a single $50 bill, whereupon our guy said that wasn't what the note demanded, so he walked out. He did the same thing two more times that day and as far as we know, his bank-robbery income is still zero. We still don't know what the note actually said.

[Toronto Sun, 9-15-99]

-- The Lost Art of Checking Out Your Target

Two teen-age boys, ages 17 and 18, were arrested in Farmington Hills, Mich., in October after trying to open a nondescript car parked along Nine Mile-Haggerty Road, allegedly looking for easy ones to break into. They failed to notice there was a man inside. (How could they miss that? He happened to be an undercover officer so he wasn't in uniform, but they didn't even see the guy at all.) I imagine cops fantasize about just sitting around and having criminals walk right up to them, all fresh and ready to arrest.

[Detroit News, 10-21-99]

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

-- According to London's Daily Telegraph, U.K.-funded research revealed in January indicates that within 10 years, countries could require car manufacturers to install $300 electronic governors that would use satellite technology to control the maximum speed that cars could travel, varying it depending on amount of traffic, highway design and driving conditions.

Convicted murderer William "Cody" Neal, at his sentencing hearing in Golden, Colo., in September: "I (accept) responsibility for the (murder). If I lose my life, I can live with that." And an unnamed woman, when police in Appleton, Wis., came in December to remove her children because of a complaint that she had given her 11-year-old daughter a "swirlie" (holding her head in

a flushing toilet): "I haven't had a vacation in 13 years. Go ahead and take them."

-- At a meeting of African leaders in Tripoli in September, Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy unveiled a prototype of the car of the future that he said he had personally engineered in his spare time: the low-slung, five-passenger "Rocket of the Jamahiriya," featuring bottle-shaped front and rear ends to deflect collisions and make it the world's safest car. Libya would produce 50,000 cars a year priced in the "upper-middle-class" range.

-- A private company, leasing land rights from the Israeli government, plans to build a $6.6 million entertainment complex in Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee to include an 80-yard-long platform just below the water's surface to allow visitors to re-create Christ's walk on water (at $5 a head). However, according to a December Austin American-Statesman report, Roman Catholic priest and Holy Land scholar Jerome Murphy-O'Connor predicted the walkway would be used only by "drunk tourists, not serious pilgrims."

-- A September Deutsch Presse-Agentur report profiled Mr. Rainer Thoenes, 33, from the German village of Kalkar, who earns a nice living as a hairdresser for cows being readied for cattle shows. "The trick," said Thoenes, "is to highlight the cow's strong points (straight back, slim legs, plump udders) and hide the weak ones," but Thoenes's professional standards prevent him from supplying artificial parts such as more attractive tails.

-- In a December profile, the Village Voice touted the hand-carved potato dildoes of California artist Pommela de Terre, who said spuds are more sensual than carrots or cucumbers, than clay or Play-Doh, or than candles or commercial dildoes. De Terre adds lemon juice to prevent color change and olive oil for flexibility and said she's never had a potato break during use.

-- A November Associated Press report on Jacksonville, Fla., stabbing victim Michael Hill, 44, showed him progressing slowly after the April 1998 incident in which a neighbor mistakenly jammed an 8-inch, serrated blade all the way into the top of his skull. Doctors pulled it out without major damage, and Hill now takes pain and seizure medication and still has trouble with emotions and short-term memory. Hill's sister, at whose house Hill was staying when stabbed, believes the attack was intended for her husband.

-- A Palm Bay, Fla., engineer renewed his call in September for testing his theory that bombarding developing hurricanes with nuclear weapons would disrupt their circular wind flow and cause them to dissipate, saving lives and curbing property damage. Henry Payne first made the claim in 1997, but a federal weather official said too many bombs would be needed, resulting in serious nuclear fallout even if the bombardment took place far from land.

-- Recent Addictions: Daisy Hales pled guilty in Haymarket, South Yorkshire, England, in September to stealing books to feed her habit of eating paper. And researchers told a conference in Los Angeles in October that more men than women suffer from "body dysmorphic disorder" -- people who imagine themselves horribly ugly and deal with it by radical plastic surgery and peculiar disguises. And Canada's National Post reported in October on polydipsia ("self-induced water intoxication"), which causes addicts to guzzle water to the point of getting high (at which point it becomes life-threatening), including some who furtively drink from toilet tanks.

Subtenants Stuart and Susan Levy were at last fined $8,000 in December by a New York appeals court, but not before they had refused to move from their rented Manhattan apartment for 11 years after being given their 30-day notice to vacate by the tenant, who said in March 1985 that she needed to move back in. Because of the Levys' delay tactics, it took seven years for the principal tenant even to get a formal ruling that the Levys had to move. After that, the Levys stalled for four more years by claiming that the principal tenant should pay all of their legal fees for the 11-year battle.

Just before hurricane season in 1998, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told his "700 Club" TV audience that the city of Orlando, Fla., should not have sponsored that year's "Gay Days" festival, that touting homosexuality would cause God to visit hurricanes and tornadoes upon the city. (In fact, 1998's first hurricane hit Robertson's headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va.) In November 1999, the supreme Islamic leader in Afghanistan said that if Americans did not "cease hostility against the Taliban," the United States would suffer earthquakes and storms, and in fact took credit for September's Hurricane Floyd.

In unrelated incidents, Jesus Gutierrez, 17, was arrested in Springfield, Ore., in October, and Lawrence Eaddy was arrested in Charlotte, N.C., in July, both charged with carjackings rendered unsuccessful because the perpetrators realized too late that they couldn't drive cars with stick shifts. And the man who robbed the First American Bank in Columbia, Tenn., in December managed enough luck to escape; his getaway plans had been set back when he ran out to the stolen car he had left idling, only to discover that he had locked the key inside.

A Canadian judge denied a work permit to an "unqualified" immigrant stripper, saying she had worked only topless in Romania while the Canadian job required full nudity. A 792-square-foot home on a 2,800-square-foot lot in Palo Alto, Calif., went on the market for $409,000 and was expected to be bid upward. Britain's nuclear agency said a Christmas kids' exhibit built by Dounreay nuclear power employees was safe despite its consisting of containers that once held radioactive waste. A 1-year-old girl, idly punching numbers on a telephone key pad, hit 911, bringing police to her home, where her father was hiding out on a parole violation (Winnipeg, Manitoba). A 20-year-old man, picked up on a bad-check charge, was re-arrested, for swiping a squad-car door knob as a "souvenir" (Crossville, Tenn.)

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

With the following examples of criminal stupidity, News of the Weird reinaugurates its association with the "Cops" folks and brings you a special weekly selection of stories (almost none of which you will find in the regular News of the Weird) to prove once again that "the best and the brightest" people go into something besides crime. Visit us here each week, catch up with the archives, and, by all means, tip us off to stories in your town that we ought to share with readers. (However, News of the Weird uses only stories that have appeared in the newspaper or on newspaper Web sites.)

Our theme this week is an old favorite with brand-new examples: If you've committed a crime and are on the run, common sense would tell you to be extra-careful not to do anything that might call attention to yourself. Well, so much for common sense. Here's what has happened recently:

-- It's not that Michael Nembhard, 28, should have felt eager to get arrested because he knew a jury would love him. After all, he is suspected of killing a teenage boy and has numerous drug charges hanging over his head. But he took off from Delaware (where he had been picked up for the murder) and was hiding out in Canada. He was on the U.S. Marshals' most-wanted list and had been featured on "America's Most Wanted." On Nov. 27, he was arrested at a rooming house in Toronto when another resident called police after Nembhard had gotten into a fight over ownership of a bag of macaroni.

[National Post, 11-30-99]

-- According to police in Albuquerque, Lowell Jones, 36, had attempted to rob clerk Bud Brinkerhoff at the Sahara Motel on June 26, but ran into equipment problems (Jones had a butcher knife, Brinkerhoff had a handgun) and fled. Brinkerhoff summoned police but was not able to absolutely identify Jones, and it looked like the case would evaporate for lack of good evidence. The next day, however, Jones telephoned to thank Brinkerhoff for not giving him up. Newly motivated, the police questioned Jones until he confessed to the robbery. Said Det. Greg Robertson, "He'd have probably gotten away clean if he hadn't made that phone call."

[Albuquerque Journal, 7-15-99]

-- Robert Lee Leach Jr., 37, wanted for the July 8 murders of two people in Nashville, Tenn., fled the state but was arrested a week later at the Friendly Tavern in Greenville, Mo. Local police had seen the stolen pickup Leach was driving, and when they walked in to the bar, Leach (an aspiring country singer who billed himself as "the next Garth Brooks") was easily spotted, as he had just stepped onstage to sing "Amazing Grace."

[The Tennessean, 7- 14-99, 7-15-99]

-- Another Tennessee man, Winston Swaggerty, 32, had an outstanding arrest warrant (failure to appear in court on a theft charge), but that didn't stop him from proceeding with his wedding, which the happy couple had decided should take place Sept. 8 on the lawn of the Newport, Tenn., courthouse. A deputy sheriff walking to work recognized the groom, handcuffed him, and led him upstairs to a cell. Said the deputy, "She (the bride) was really upset."

[Associated Press, 9-13-99]

-- Milwaukee landlord John Cammarata felt strongly about the way the building code inspector's office was being run, so he applied for the job himself. People in the office were surprised Cammarata would take the time to apply, since he himself was the subject of four arrest warrants for building code violations. When he showed up for his interview on Oct. 7, the warrants were served. (After his court appearance, he walked back to the inspector's office and asked once again if he could apply for the job, but was told no. Said one official, code inspectors must be persistent and show a lot of common sense, so Cammarata, she said, is only 50 percent qualified.)

[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10- 9-99]

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