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LEAD STORY
Most Competent Criminal:
Jeffrey "Roofman" Manchester, 33, was finally recaptured after six
months of inspired police-dodging in Charlotte, N.C., after having
smuggled himself out of a previously escape-proof prison nearby.
According to a January profile in the San Francisco Chronicle,
Manchester (a handsome, athletic, personable man who got his nickname
from a multistate series of ceiling-entry burglaries) built an ingenious
home behind a cubbyhole at a Toys-R-Us, then at an abandoned Circuit
City next door, outfitting both digs with various conveniences, such as
a protective surveillance camera. The dashing Manchester volunteered at
a church, befriending the pastor and dating a parishioner, who
eventually helped police capture him. Said a police sergeant, "(W)e can
learn a lot from him." [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-11-05]
Male Flies and Male Monkeys
Are Just Dogs
In articles in
recent issues of Current Biology, researchers separately studying the
dance fly and the rhesus macaque monkey concluded that males will be
males. The male dance fly was found by a team from the University of
Western Australia to sometimes present a female with worthless tokens
for the opportunity to mate with her, but by the time she discovered
their worth, he had already hit and run. A team from Duke University
found that the male monkey will forgo his own rewards (juice) in
exchange for being permitted to view pictures of female monkeys'
bottoms. [Discovery-Animal Planet, 1-11-05] [LiveScience.com, 1-28-05]
America's Real Gun Problem
(all new)
The following
people accidentally shot themselves recently: Joey Lujan, 22, shot
himself in the head trying to show that his gun wasn't loaded (Rialto,
Calif., December). Abran Godoy, 20, shot himself while tucking his gun
into his waistband after a robbery (King City, Calif., November). A
20-year-old man shot himself in a femoral artery while showing off for
friends (Salt Lake City, November). Latie Whitley, 34, shot himself in
the face while allegedly robbing a delicatessen (New York City,
December). Jeffrey Wagner, 22, shot himself while tucking his gun into
his waistband after showing it to a friend (Dayton, Ohio, January).
Lance Cole, 24, won $2,500 in damages from the police after an officer
kicked him in the groin two days after he had shot himself in the
genitals (St. Louis, Mo., January). [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
(Ontario, Calif.), 12-27-04] [Monterey Herald, 11-18-04] [Deseret
Morning News, 11-20-04] [Newsday, 11-27-04] [WHIO-TV (Dayton), 1-4-05]
[St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1-25-05]
News That Sounds Like a Joke
(1) According
to a January Associated Press dispatch, an outfit called Rent-a-Priest
supplies independent Catholic clergy to perform mass and communion on
board cruise ships, even though the reason some are independent is that
they're no longer in good standing. (The U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops said it has begun to screen out unqualified candidates for
cruise line jobs.) (2) In a January CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, in answer
to the question whether President Bush is a "uniter" or a "divider,"
exactly 49 percent of Americans said he was a uniter, and exactly 49
percent said he was a divider. [St. Petersburg Times-AP, 1-17-05] [CNN,
1-19-05]
Compelling Explanations
Farmington Hills, Mich., elementary school teacher Nancy Seaman, 52,
on trial for murdering her husband, said it was self-defense, even
though a reported autopsy said he had been stabbed 21 times and struck
with a hatchet 15 times. (She was convicted in December.) And University
of Virginia student Andrew Alston, on trial for fatally stabbing a
firefighter after a night of bar-hopping, said the victim had actually
inadvertently stabbed himself during aikido horseplay (even though there
were 18 stab wounds, spread among the heart, arms, back, shoulder and
face). (Alston was convicted of manslaughter in November.) [WEWS-TV
(Cleveland), 12-14-04] [The Daily Progress (Charlottesville), 11-9-04]
Ms. Sandu Florenta, 18, a Romanian, was arrested for shoplifting at
a Tesco store in Wrexham, Wales, in December with "four packs of frozen
lamb, three fresh chickens, three packs of stock cubes, finger chillies,
a packet of burgers, garlic, peppers, socks and underwear, plus almost
five pounds of oranges and apples" in a special sack under her robes.
She told police that not many stores in Romania have carts, and thus,
this is how people shop. [Daily Post (North Wales), 12-8-04]
Pro boxer Hector Macho Camacho Sr. was arrested in Gulfport, Miss.,
for a Christmastime incident in which he, feeling morose, broke into the
computer store next to his office in order to get his computer (in the
shop for repairs) so he could e-mail family members, and that meant
climbing over a wall and onto ceiling panels, which gave way, sending
Camacho crashing onto several computers. Said Macho, according to
police: "I don't see myself looking too good." Later, describing his
motivation for the break-in: "I guess I ran out of ideas." [WLOX-TV
(Biloxi), 1-12-05]
Alan Johnson was arrested in Taunton, Mass., in November and charged
with burning his girlfriend's 19-month-old boy with a cigarette lighter
while baby-sitting. Johnson's explanation: The boy went into a seizure,
and Johnson, recalling his lifeguard training, thought the solution was
to raise the boy's body temperature to alleviate the seizure. [WJAR-TV
(Providence), 12-19-04]
Fetishes on Parade
Recent Sexual Obsessions: (1) surgical masks (Norman
Hutchins, 53, was convicted in Leeds, England, in January, of tricking
hospitals into sending him masks for his collection). (2) underwater
photos of strangers' legs and buttocks (U.S. Army Maj. James V. McGovern
was convicted in January of taking numerous such photos at the swimming
pool at Yongsan Garrison, South Korea). [Agence France-Presse, 1-20-05]
[Stars and Stripes, 1-20-05]
Least Competent People
Kyle Hans, 24, drove his car through the front of a
Target store in Fort Wayne, Ind., in January, down an aisle, where he
told employees he had a gun and wanted to see his estranged wife so he
could reconcile with her. When the employees informed Hans that his wife
didn't work there anymore, he got frustrated and took one of them
hostage, forcing the evacuation of the store and an eventual standoff
with police. Officers talked Hans down, got the hostage freed and
arrested him. [WISE-TV (Fort Wayne), 1-7-05]
Recurring Themes
"I don't think I've done more than two days' work in
three years," said the New York Liquor Authority's director of wholesale
services, Patricia Freund, explaining to the New York Post in December
that she is another example of how bureaucracies deal with "problem"
workers who are hard to fire. Freund was exiled to an office with no
work and no responsibilities (though continuing to draw her $82,000
salary), which she said was in retaliation for raising a stink about
Gov. George Pataki's Christian prayer breakfasts and Jesus-laden
mementoes, which she said was discriminatory toward Jewish employees,
such as her. [New York Post, 12-28-04]
Readers' Choice
Thinning the Herd: A 23-year-old woman, attempting a
handstand on a hotel balcony railing in North Fort Myers, Fla., fell to
her death but only after shouting to friends to "watch to see what I can
still do" (January). And a 21-year-old student at the University of
Nebraska Lincoln was killed when, not belted in, he was ejected from the
back seat of an SUV in a crash; the student was prominent for his
libertarian political views, including a defiant stand in the student
newspaper against mandatory seatbelt laws. (He described himself as one
of "a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to
buckle up.") (January) [CNN-AP, 1-18-05] [Lincoln Journal Star, 1-5-05]
Rodents in the News
In January, sanitation workers in Nairobi, Kenya,
finally, after 10 years of complaints, cleaned up the Wakulima Market
(the country's largest fruit and vegetable facility), dislodging an
estimated 750 tons of garbage, 38 tons of human waste, and about 6,000
rats. Also in January, Cleveland paralegal Austin Aitken filed a lawsuit
against the TV show "Fear Factor" for $2.5 million, claiming that the
episode in which contestants ate dead rats made him ill, causing him to
vomit, become dizzy, and hit his head as he ran from the room in
disgust. [Agence France-Presse, 1-4-05] [Reuters, 1-5-05]
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