News of the Weird, July 12, 2009
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Americans Fantasize, Germans Act: Two formerly well-off
retired couples in Speyer, Germany, whose nest egg was largely
wiped out by investments in sub-prime Florida mortgages, vented
their anger by kidnaping their investment advisor, James Amburn,
in June. They took him to the vacation home of one of the couples
near the Austrian border, bound him like a mummy and beat and
tortured him over several days, fracturing two ribs, in repeated
attempts to punish him and extort his own property as partial
compensation for their losses. Police rescued him after he
managed to send a coded message by fax. [The Times (London), 6-
24-09]
Leading Economic Indicators
* People With Too Much Money: (1) A resident at 48
Commonwealth Avenue in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood paid
$300,000 in June for one outdoor, uncovered parking space,
according to the listing agent. (2) Texas accountant Randy Reeves,
50, paid $1,500 cash in April for the dentist's mold of the upper
and lower teeth of Tiny Tim, which the late singer had given to the
seller. [Boston Globe, 6-11-09] [Berkshire Eagle-Tribune (North
Andover, Mass.), 4-13-09]
* In May, the University of Washington ran a two-month campaign
of compassion to help out people hurt by the downturn in the
economy. Fans of UW's football team who lost their jobs or are
otherwise financially unable to renew their Huskies' season tickets
can tap into a special philanthropic fund. A donor's $500 tax-
deductible gift to "Dawgs Supporting Dawgs" would permit a hard-
hit fan to maintain his place on the priority season-ticket list
(though this year's seats would be in an inferior location). [Seattle
Times, 5-20-09]
Science on the Cutting Edge
* They Get Paid for This? (1) Researchers from Cleveland State
University, for a recent journal article, assessed the physical traits
of 195 female characters from the first 20 James Bond films,
revealing that more were brunette than blonde and that at least 90
percent were young, slim, and of above-average looks. (2) In June,
a branch of the National Institutes of Health awarded a $423,000
grant to the Kinsey Institute to find out why men seem to prefer not
to use condoms during sex. (ABC News, reporting the
announcement, contacted a sex-advice blogger, who revealed, free
of charge, that it's because the condom reduces sexual sensation.)
[Daily Telegraph (London), 6-7-09] [ABC News, 6-20-09]
* Anna Ryan, 42, of Blue Springs, Mo., was baffled for years why
her normal 140 pounds sometimes ballooned to as much as 260
despite her consistently rigorous diet and exercise regimen.
Finally, two years ago (according to a June 2009 dispatch in
London's Daily Mail), nocturnal tests performed by Overland Park,
Kan., physician Scott Eveloff revealed a disorder: Ryan was a
sleepwalker whose routine included as many as eight kitchen visits
a night in which she gorged herself but of which she had no
memory the next morning. [Daily Mail, 6-10-09]
* "Heyyyy, Like 'Arf-Arf,' Man": Nestor Waddell had to rush his
11-year-old Labrador mix, Jack, to the vet in May when he started
acting strange during a walk, which had taken him into some
bushes. The vet concluded that Jack had discovered and devoured
some dry, harvested marijuana. According to Waddell, "[Jack's]
eyes were kind of glossed over . . .. When he was trying to walk,
he was looking at his paw, and then looking at the ground and then
trying to get his paw to reach the ground, but was unsuccessful."
[KING-TV (Seattle), 6-10-09]
Smooth Reactions
* (1) Marcus Johnson, 33, of Wichita, Kan., was sentenced to 10
years in prison in May for an incident last year in which, angered
by a police officer's demand to lower the volume of his car radio,
Johnson immediately drove to City Hall, went up a ramp at about
45 mph, crashed through the front door, and continued on through
the building. (2) Robert Caton, 50, was arrested in Andover,
England, in May after he drove his Rolls Royce through the front
window of a Tesco store. His wife said he had been upset to find
out that the bed they had ordered did not come with a mattress.
[Wichita Eagle, 5-21-09] [Daily Telegraph, 5-21-09]
Fine Points of the Law
* In May, a court in Montreal, Quebec, ordered the Cinemas Guzzo
theater to pay a woman $10,000 (Cdn) for violating her family's
privacy during an inspection of her and her daughters' bags
(searching for video equipment that could illegally record a
movie). Employees found no equipment but did uncover the
teenage daughter's birth control pills, which the mother and the
daughter figured would have been better left unrevealed to each
other. [CTV News (Toronto), 5-25-09]
* Oops! (1) Calvin Wells beat a certain, mandatory 10-year prison
term for felony possession of cocaine because the verdict form
signed by the jury contained a typographical error. Wells had 100
grams, but the verdict form certified "ten one hundred (100)
grams," which an Ohio appeals court ruled in June could have
meant "10/100th grams," which would be a misdemeanor whose
maximum time Wells had already served. (2) Retired Florida
judge Rogers Padgett said in March that he is trying to undo an
error he made in sentencing Kenneth Young to life without chance
of parole for a series of armed robberies committed at age 14.
Padgett said he thought the Florida no-parole law for kids applied
only to murder and sexual assaults and never meant for Young,
now 23, to be forever ineligible. [Akron Beacon Journal, 6-15-09]
[St. Petersburg Times, 3-3-09]
Fetishes on Parade
* As the U.S. House of Representatives was voting on legislation
in April to expand the protections of hate-crimes law to "gender
identity" and sexual orientation, Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida
publicly ridiculed a colleague (unnamed) who apparently confused
homosexuals with fetishists. The colleague had proposed an
amendment specifying that protection of the law would not extend
to exhibitionists, pedophiles, or voyeurs, as well as
"apotemnophiliacs, asphyxophiliacs, autogynephiliacs,
coprophiliacs, klismaphiliacs," or people who practice something
called "toucherism." (The amendment failed; thus, there is for
example no enhanced penalty for assaulting a toucherist.) [South
Florida Sun-Sentinel, 5-1-09]
Least Competent Criminals
* (1) Victor Delfi was arrested and charged with robbing the
Lincoln Park Savings Bank in Chicago, having tipped off
authorities when he tried to deposit red-dye-stained money into his
own account at another bank. (2) Marlon Moore, 39, was indicted
in Miami, Fla., in June in what Internal Revenue Service said was a
series of attempts to cheat the U.S. Treasury. Using several aliases,
Moore allegedly requested bogus tax refunds in the amounts of
$5.959 trillion, $2.975 trillion, and $6 trillion. (Also, under his
own name, he asked for a tax refund of $10 million.) [Chicago
Tribune, 6-19-09] [Miami New Times, 6-15-09]
Undignified Deaths
* (1) A 34-year-old man survived a single-car rollover accident in
Nelson, Calif., in May, extricating himself and walking away, but
was struck and killed minutes later by an Amtrak train as he
crossed railroad tracks. (2) In April in Houma, La., a 23-year-old
motorist, having sideswiped a driver waiting to make a turn, drove
away without stopping and was killed minutes later when he
crashed into another car. [Sacramento Bee-AP, 5-25-09] [WWL-
TV (New Orleans), 4-10-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 1998)
* Ronnie Darnell Bell, 30, was arrested in Dallas in February 1998
and charged with attempting to rob the Federal Reserve Bank. (In
the 1995 movie "Die Hard with a Vengeance," knocking off the
New York Fed required a small army of men and truckloads of
weapons.) According to police, Bell was initially confused
because there are no tellers, and so handed a security guard his
note, reading, "This is a bank robbery of the Dallas Federal
Reserve Bank, of Dallas, Texas, give me all the money. Thank
you, Ronnie Darnell Bell." The guard pushed a silent alarm while
an oblivious Bell chatted amiably, revealing that only minutes
earlier he had tried to rob a Postal Service office but that "They
threw me out." [Dallas Morning News, 2-27-98]
Thanks This Week to Stephen Taylor, Brendan Brady, Sally
Deneen, Louise Elsea, and Derek Costello, and to the News of the
Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
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