xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Charles Edward Jones was convicted in February of robbing a Wachovia Bank in Miami with the key evidence being a DNA match to two gold teeth that were knocked out of his mouth when he stepped into a street during his getaway and was hit by a school lunch van. Compounding his lack of clear getaway thinking was the fact that he had just fired his gun into his pants as he tried to stuff it into his waistband.
In Washington, D.C., in February, Ronald T. Stephenson, 20, was convicted of murder in an out-of-control June 2000 robbery. The key police evidence was a videotape of Stephenson subsequently confessing to the crime in a visit to the home of his partner, Dwight Walker (who had, unbeknownst to Stephenson, become an informant). On the tape, Stephenson is heard to tell Walker that there is no way the police can get him for the murder unless, for example, they somehow caught him admitting on videotape that he did it.
Timothy Baker was back in jail in Waco, Texas, in January, hours after he had escaped while being held for aggravated robbery. His getaway had taken him to Baylor University, where he broke into a building in order to find a change of clothes from his orange jumpsuit. The building was the Fine Arts Center, where Baker raided a costume closet. He apparently thought he would be inconspicuous if he changed into a 19th-century green wool costume (with rubber galoshes) that made him look like a “leprechaun,” said the sheriff later, after Baker was spotted on the street and re-arrested. Said the chairman of the theater department, “He just really stood out.”
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