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Subject: News of the Weird [428] - 19Apr96
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WEIRDNUZ.428 (News of the Weird, April 19, 1996)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* Recent uses of video cameras for surreptitious taping by alleged
perverts: According to a lawsuit filed by a 20-year-old woman, a
Reno, Nev., optometrist set up one in his ladies' room (for
"security" purposes, he said in October); Mineola, N. Y.,
landlord Mark Pearlman was accused in February of having a
video camera behind a see-through mirror in a female tenant's
bedroom (to enforce his no-smoking policy, he said); and IRS
employee Howard Baltazar was arrested in March after carrying a
running video camera in a gym bag through an Oakland, Calif.,
men's shower room. (Police determined that Baltazar committed
no crime except eavesdropping via the audio portion of the tape.)
[Reno Gazette-Journal, Oct95] [N. Y. Times, 2-13-96] [San
Francisco Chronicle, 3-6-96]
JUST CAN'T STOP MYSELF
* In February, Philippe Delandtscheer, 60, was jailed in Lille,
France, for stealing a bottle of a certain anise-flavored aperitif.
Authorities believe it is the 51st time that he has been arrested for
stealing that same product. (As with Otis Campbell in Andy
Griffith's Mayberry jail, a special cell in Lille's jail is reserved
for him.) [Edmonton Journal, 2-15-96]
* Christopher Norling, 28, was jailed in Milwaukee, Wis., in
February on a charge of fraud after running up a big bill at the
Pfister Hotel by pretending to be a National Football League
official. He has a long record of similar charges. In a 1990
jailhouse interview, Norling said, "The only thing I know how to
do is con people. To be honest with you, it's probably going to
happen again." [Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2-17-96]
* James Hogue, 36, was arrested in February as he tried again to
pass himself off as a Princeton University student, less than five
months after his release from prison on a charge of passing
himself off as a different Princeton student. (In 1990, he studied
and ran on the track team as Alexi Indris-Santana until he was
exposed by a former high-school classmate.) [New York Times-
AP, 2-25-96]
* In February, Diane Currey, 45, was sentenced to nine years in
prison after pleading guilty to more than 200 counts of grand
theft in Largo, Fla. She had embezzled $350,000 from a
doctors' office over a seven-year period, then retired to Missouri,
where she might have escaped detection forever. However, her
replacement in Florida died a year later, and doctors asked
Currey to return. She agreed and immediately began embezzling
again, but was soon caught. [St. Petersburg Times, 2-21-96]
INEXPLICABLE
* In November, the U. S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida
appeals court ruling that, while a local police department could
purchase an allegedly obscene film and use it as evidence in filing
criminal charges, it could not use as evidence a film it had rented
and copied. The Florida court had ruled that the police had
violated federal copyright law as described in the "FBI Warning"
that appears on rented tapes. [Washington Times, 11-28-95]
* In Toronto, Ontario, in January, Robert Franklin Devoe, 33,
was arrested and charged with bank robbery after arousing the
suspicion of shopkeeper Zak Khan. According to police, Devoe
had stopped by during his getaway to inquire about purchasing an
electronic scale. Zhan showed him one, and Devoe proceeded to
weigh two bundles of $100 bills. That behavior, plus the gun
Devoe had in his waistband, led Zhan to notify police, and Devoe
was captured after a brief chase. [Toronto Star, 1-23-96]
* For the second straight year, a Canadian Football League team
wasted a valuable draft pick on a defensive end who,
unbeknownst to the team, had died in the off-season. The
Montreal Alouettes' James Eggink had passed away from cancer;
last year, the Ottawa Rough Riders' Derrell Robertson had been
killed in a car crash. [Washington Post, 3-15-96]
* In January, the Los Angeles Times reported that an unidentified
man asked Alberto Ramirez for directions in a Chatsworth,
Calif., 7-Eleven, and after Ramirez complied, the man began
yelling racial epithets and throwing products from the shelves at
Ramirez. The man followed Ramirez outside and threw a knife
at him, missing. Then, apparently out of items to toss, he began
throwing the money that was in his pocket. After the man drove
off in his truck, Ramirez and other bystanders eventually turned
over $2,333 to the police. [L. A. Times, 1-13-96]
* A court in Rochester, N. H., overturned the rape conviction of
Antonio Marti, 54, who had been convicted of three counts
against a teenage girl. There was evidence that Marti had
assaulted the girl "hundreds" of times beginning at age 10, but
since he was charged with only three counts, the court thought
that prosecutors' mentioning the other episodes might have
prejudiced the jury. [Boston Globe, 3-11-96]
KIDS
* Timothy Becton, 10, was charged as an adult with armed
kidnapping and assault on a sheriff's deputy in Lakeland, Fla., in
February. He aimed a shotgun at the deputy from a distance of
10 feet while using his 3-year-old niece as a shield and remained
in a standoff for about seven minutes. Sheriff's deputies had
gone to the boy's home to inquire about his truancies when he
pulled the gun and said, "I'd sooner shoot you than go to
school." [Tampa Tribune, 2-21-96]
* On February 27 near San Diego, Calif., an 11-year-old boy
who became ill at school was sent home for the day, but when he
got home, he shaved off all of his hair, put on a ski mask and a
brown, monk's-type robe, assembled his father's .22-caliber
rifle, left home, and began randomly trying to rob people he
encountered. He was captured by a security guard who was shot
in the hand as he wrested the rifle from the boy. [San Diego
Union-Tribune, 2-28-96]
* Police in Coventry, England, said that Russell Brown, 4, woke
up one night in February while burglars were in his home and
mistook them for family friends. He showed them where his
mother hid her purse and where his father's power tools were
stored and held open the front door while the thieves carried out
video equipment and other items. [Edmonton Journal-Reuters, 2-
6-96]
* Texas state Sen. Jerry Patterson, a proponent of guns for
protection who said in January he might test the Houston
Metropolitan Transit Authority's gun ban by carrying a concealed
weapon on a bus: "Then I'll go to Metro and say, 'Nah, nah,
nah, nah! Rode your bus, rode your bus!'" [Houston Chronicle,
1-3-96]
Copyright 1996, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
No commercial use may be made of the material or of the name
News of the Weird.