xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Psychiatrist Charles Gould, 69, was scheduled for a disciplinary tribunal after allegedly belting a patient with a frying pan and a wine bottle when the patient said Gould should retire because he was “past his sell-by date” (Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, April).
Catholic high school theology teacher R. Scott Jones, 44, was fired for passing out joke valentines to students reading, “I hate you, I wish you would die” (Phoenix, March).
Fletcher Vrendenburgh, director of the New York City government’s customer-service office, was fired for posting a Web site essay on how “dumb,” “whining” and “stupid” he thought New Yorkers and city workers are (December).
What Goes Around, Comes Around: Lisandro Mateo, 16, and Justine Hayes-Hurley, 18, were charged with criminal mischief in Central Islip, N.Y., in March after vandalizing a car. The car belongs to Winston Hill, 20, who both girls thought was their exclusive boyfriend until they began innocently discussing their love lives at school and realized they were both talking about the same man, at which point they decided to touch up Hill’s windshield and paint job with hedge clippers.
Heredity theory got a boost in March when CNN reported that Mr. Shirl Mitchell, 83, the father of accused Elizabeth Smart abductor Brian Mitchell, blamed himself for the way Brian turned out. Shirl said he showed Brian sexually explicit photos at age 7, which perhaps provoked Brian’s arrest years later for indecently exposing himself to a 3-year-old girl. Shirl also described himself as a voyeur and the author of a two-thick-volume personal theology that is sexually explicit, dealing largely with diet and reproduction (and having nothing to do with Brian’s own tract that authorities found when they arrested him for the abduction).
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
