xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Convicted sex abuser Daniel Ray Erickson (who once “purchased” a 5-year-old girl whom he then molested) petitioned a judge in Brooksville, Fla., in December to have his photo removed from Florida’s sex offender Web site. “How,” he asked, “can a guy get married and become a good, stable citizen if they’re putting your picture there?” (Indeed, he said, his previous girlfriend had left him when she found out he was on the Web site.)
Daniel Torres was convicted of killing a man (and his pet cockatoo) after prosecutors showed that Torres’ DNA was found in the cockatoo’s beak because the bird had pecked Torres furiously to defend itself (Dallas).
Boston City Councilman Felix Arroyo, who opposes war in Iraq, announced in January that he was going on a hunger strike to protest U.S. policy. Arroyo said he would begin a liquid-only regimen, but then limited that to daylight hours (thus allowing himself dinner and, theoretically, breakfast), and later qualified that to mean that he would only adhere to this hardship diet on the second and fourth Fridays of each month.
The men of the Messiah Lutheran Church in Ripon, Calif., voted 25-17 in December to let women start voting on church matters, but that was still three votes shy of the required two-thirds majority.
Health researchers told a conference in San Antonio, Texas, in January that they had treated a well-fed college student who had come down with the old-time mariner’s disease of scurvy (absence of vitamin C in the student’s steady diet of cheese, crackers, cookies and soda).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD