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News of the Weird

Noteworthy absurdities from around the world

by Chuck Sheperd

LEAD STORIES

Scotland Yard detectives said they overestimated the number of dead in a fiery London commuter-train crash in October because some survivors had walked away quickly and left town, spontaneously deciding to start new lives. (Detectives know this because several changed their minds and returned home.) After an announcement that some bodies were burned beyond recognition, other people called investigators to say falsely that their estranged spouses were on the train, hoping for official death rulings so they could inherit marital property.

After questioning Stephanie Loudermilk at length after her 28-year-old husband Bryan's death in June, police in Okeechobee, Fla., said in October that they believe he died accidentally in a sexual stunt gone wrong. Bryan's body was found in a specially constructed pit, beneath a board, which was underneath a rear wheel of his sport utility vehicle, and police believe Bryan enjoyed erotic thrills from being driven over. Stephanie also had videotapes of herself stomping rabbits and mice ("crush videos"), which Bryan had been selling on the Internet.

In an August profile, The Wall Street Journal estimated that Las Vegas hotel magnate Robert T. Bigelow may have spent $10 million of his $600 million-to-$900 million fortune on UFO research, including an endowed university chair in "consciousness studies" and a science institute that investigates sightings. Bigelow vows to spend $500 million to build the solar system's first space hotel.

Silicon Vally Babylon

Michael David Rostoker, 41, an electronics firm CEO, was arrested in San Francisco in September, allegedly on his way to meet his 13-year-old Vietnamese paramour whom customs agents say he intended to bring home as his wife. According to the agents, Rostoker had spent $150,000 on the girl and her family, and e-mail messages to her mentioned Rostoker's "needs" to have her stay thin, learn English, and have sex with him "often." Rostoker's arrest was underreported, perhaps because of ongoing media interest in Patrick J. Naughton, 34, an executive with the high-profile Infoseek, who had been arrested a week earlier in Santa Monica, Calif., and charged with arranging on the Internet to have sex with a 13-year-old girl, who was really an undercover officer.

Government in Action

After analyzing public records referring to members of Congress, the online news service Capitol Hill Blue revealed in September that 29 current members have been accused of spousal abuse and 19 of writing bad checks, and that 71 have bad credit reports and 117 members have been involved in two or more bankrupt businesses. Included also are seven arrests for fraud, 14 for drug-related charges, eight for shoplifting and three for assault. Also, just in 1998, 84 members were stopped on suspicion of drunk driving but were released when they claimed constitutional immunity.

A special assessor for the British government offered Eddie Browning, 46, about $125,000 as compensation for the six years he spent in prison for a murder he did not commit, but in March the assessor also told Browning that the amount would be decreased by about $8,000 to pay for Browning's room and board during his incarceration, which the assessor called a "lodging fee."

Legislative Oversight: Police in Anne Arundel County, Md., told outraged citizens in August that no state law requires people to report their relatives' deaths to authorities, and thus that Richard Lee Marshall's suspicious private burial of his 3-year-old daughter was legal. And in June, the Pennsylvania legislature restored the state law against bestiality, which was accidentally repealed in 1995 when "deviate sexual intercourse" was decriminalized. (The purpose that year was to legalize gay sex, but lawmakers forgot that for decades, some states have equated gay sex with bestiality.)

Weird Crime

Computer programmer Lloyd L. Albright, 47, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in early August in a cave near Caldwell, Ohio, where he had gone to prepare for the destruction of Earth by a meteor at 4 p.m. on Aug. 11. The sheriff had pursued Albright to the cave after hearing of a car loaded with survivalist supplies, including 16 guns and loads of ammunition. Said the sheriff: "(Albright) very sincerely thought there was a meteor that was going to come and hit the Atlantic Ocean and cause a tidal wave 200 feet high."

In August in St. Paul, Minn., mortgage broker John David Searle was sentenced to seven months in jail for what one Minneapolis officer guessed was only the latest of "hundreds" of episodes of late-night peeping through women's windows. Said a St. Paul officer of Searle, who arrives at his crime scenes in luxury cars and carrying a stool and video camera, "This is almost this man's lifestyle and avocation."

Latest Fetishes: Police in London, England, announced in August they were searching for a man in his mid-20s who has been approaching women for nearly two years, grasping their hands, complimenting them on their fingers, and then attempting to chew off one or more of their nails. And in May in Milwaukee, Chad J. Hammond pleaded no contest to swiping a woman's underpants off her body at gunpoint in a convenience store.

The No. 1 Test

In July, San Antonio, Texas, probation officers caught Micah Sheehan, 37, using a fake penis and tubing to lend authenticity to the dispensing of purchased urine in his mandatory drug test. Among the schemes athletes use in such tests, according to a September Washington Post story, are hiding pouches of clean urine in the vagina or anus and squeezing it through tubes obscured by pubic hair, or in extreme cases, injecting clean urine directly into the bladder. In another September Washington Post story, South Carolina urine seller Kenneth Curtis said he now only urinates professionally: "I don't waste any of my assets. It's literally liquid gold."

Recurring Theme

The Classic Middle Name (continued): Executed for murder in Huntsville, Texas, in May: Richard Wayne Smith, and in October: Alvin Wayne Crane. Sentenced for murder in Dallas in May: David Wayne McCall. Charged with murder in Alexandria, Va., in September: Daniel Wayne Warfield. Charged with murder in Murray, Ky., in June: Jerry Wayne Walker. On the lam for murder in North Carolina in October: Christopher Wayne Lippard. Recaptured in Kettering, Ohio, in July: escaped Oklahoma murderer Michael Wayne Brown. Death sentence upheld in Montgomery, Ala., in October: Steven Wayne Hall.

Least Justifiable Homocides

Things Apparently More Precious Than Human Life: dirty clothes (34-year-old woman was shot to death by a man who wanted them, New York City, April); toilet paper (33-year-old man was shot to death after chastising a man for being stingy with it, Canonsburg, Pa., July); a shoe (a woman was shot to death after snatching it when a man took it off to remove a pebble, Columbus, Ohio, March).

Also in the Last Month...

A tire fell off a Northwest Airlines jet wheel on takeoff, smashing a car and slightly injuring a pregnant woman (Chicago). Matthew Daly, 27, was arrested for pretending to be a cop after he stopped a driver who happened to be a real cop (New York City). Nicholas G. Sober was ticketed for DUI (Allegheny Township, Pa.). The mayor of Lanjaron, Spain, whose town cemetery is full, told his people "to take utmost care of their health" until additional land is found. Just after being convicted on a gun charge, Charles Hankerson bolted to the jury box and punched a female juror in the face (Wichita, Kan.).