102 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
102 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
WEIRD NEWS VOLUME 6
|
|
|
|
TAKE THE FIFTH!!
|
|
|
|
- Bruce Damon, attempting to work a plea bargain in February
|
|
to charges that he knocked off a bank in Whitman, Mass, argued to
|
|
the judge that the eight to fifteen year term suggested by the
|
|
prosecutor was way too long. First of all, Damon said, when he
|
|
robbed a bank in 1987, he only got three to five years.
|
|
Secondly, he said, citing an article from the Brockston
|
|
Enterprise newspaper, the bank had enjoyed record earnings
|
|
despite the robbery and expected to do well in 1992 also. Said
|
|
Damon, "I didn't hurt this bank at all." When the judge asked
|
|
Damon if he would rob banks again if he were free, Damon replied,
|
|
"I'd like to plead the Fifth Amendment on that." The judge
|
|
refused to accept the plea and scheduled Damon for trial.
|
|
|
|
DOES IT EVER END??
|
|
|
|
- Columbian garbage collector Oscar Hernandez claimed in March
|
|
that he was kidnaped by security guards during the Carnival in
|
|
Barranquilla and taken to a lab at the Free University of
|
|
Barranquilla, where a syndicate planned to kill him for his body
|
|
parts. A police investigation then turned up 11 bodies, and
|
|
parts of 22 others, and a report that body bounty hunters
|
|
received $200 per person. Police identified most of the victims
|
|
as being garbage collectors.
|
|
|
|
- The International Amateur Athletics Federation recently
|
|
changed its procedures to perform gender checks on female
|
|
athletes. For 25 years, the Federation had used a chromosome
|
|
smear test but decided late last year it will merely make visual
|
|
inspections. The Federation explained that the chromosome test
|
|
was "ethically unacceptable."
|
|
|
|
- The official Iran news agency announced in March that men
|
|
who left the country before 1989, and feared returning home
|
|
because they would be drafted, could buy a military exemption for
|
|
about $16,000 (representing about 30 years work at the minimum
|
|
wage in Iran). Officials promise that if a man pays and then
|
|
volunteers to serve, he'll get his money back.
|
|
|
|
- A rush-hour traffic jam in Kansas City, Mo, in March caused
|
|
when a truck carrying remaindered pornographic magazines to a
|
|
recycling center overturned on a busy street. about 2,000
|
|
magazines were scattered about, and drivers stopped their cars to
|
|
gather as many as they could before moving on.
|
|
|
|
- In February, a court in Versailles, France, overturned an
|
|
order banning dwarf tossing, permitting 3'11" Manuel Wackenheim,
|
|
24, to return to work at the Eclipse nightclub in Morsang-sur-
|
|
Orge, from which he had been banned by the mayor in October.
|
|
Though the minister of the French Interior had called such
|
|
exhibitions "an intolerable attack on human dignity," the
|
|
government finally acquiesced because the ban would deny a
|
|
"physically different" person a chance at a livelihood.
|
|
|
|
- An 81 year old woman died of severe burns in Columbia, Mo,
|
|
in December, after a 15 mile ambulance ride took too long to save
|
|
her life. The hospital's emergency helicopter was not made
|
|
available because it was being used on a public relations
|
|
assignment, with one of the crew members dressed as Santa Claus.
|
|
|
|
- The Manitoba, Canada, Natural Resources minister apologized
|
|
in February when news got out that her government had saved
|
|
$1,800 in postage by mailing a fishing survey through the US
|
|
mails rather than through Canada's. Clerks had gone to Grand
|
|
Forks, N.D. about 100 miles from the border, to mail the surveys
|
|
to several thousand US anglers who use Manitoba waters.
|
|
|
|
MON STUPID
|
|
|
|
- Paul Gamboa Taylor pled guilty in December to murdering his
|
|
wife and four others near York PA, six months earlier. He told
|
|
police he had tried to take his own life five times before
|
|
turning himself in. He had slashed both his wrists with a
|
|
hacksaw; drunk lighter fluid; plunged a knife into his chest;
|
|
filled a bathtub with water, hoping to pass out and drown; and
|
|
brought a hair dryer into the tub with him. Said Taylor, "I love
|
|
my family; that's why I plead guilty."
|
|
|
|
REAL WEIRD
|
|
|
|
- In April, Richard Dickinson, 25, was allowed out of prison
|
|
in Hobart, Australia, on an evening pass with two chaperons, to
|
|
attend a concert by his idol, Bob Dylan. Dickinson is in a
|
|
prison for the criminally insane because in 1987 he stomped his
|
|
mother to death to the tune of Dylan's song "One More Cup of
|
|
Coffee for the Road," after she told him to turn down the music.
|
|
He said he thought his mom was an evil character from the song
|
|
and even sprinkled instant coffee over her body after she died.
|
|
|
|
GAME TIME!!
|
|
|
|
- Isbrain Marquez Pacheco, 53, was indicted in March for
|
|
attempted murder of his wife of three weeks, in East Windsor, NJ.
|
|
According to police, Pacheco said he beat her with a baseball bat
|
|
after she refused his demand that she not attend a friend's baby
|
|
shower. Said Pacheco, "If I had killed her, I would have no
|
|
regret" because he was "offended by what she said to me."
|
|
Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253
|