xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Investigatory work by a scorned woman turned up more than 50 others who were victims of the same man, 29-year veteran U.S. Army Col. Kassem Saleh (most recently stationed in Afghanistan), who struck up e-mail romances with the women and wrote “the most intoxicating love letters” one woman had ever read while assuring her (while also assuring others) that they would soon marry. The 5-foot-10 Saleh created at least one skeptical woman, though: Saleh had claimed to be 6-foot-5, but when a first-meeting date with the woman neared, he wrote that he had shrunk about 5 inches due to repeated parachute jumps. Saleh issued a public apology to the women after The New York Times outed him.
In 1998, Barbara Downey killed her 7-year-old daughter with two execution-style shots to the back of the head, and she was committed to a state mental hospital; in March 2003, doctors concluded that she is no longer mentally ill, and she was released.
Johnnie Eugene Maxwell, 56, accused of killing his father in 2001, was freed in June after a judge in Hillsborough, N.C., concluded that a stroke had left Maxwell cognitively unable to defend himself at trial (in that he can only speak three words: yes, no and a certain cussword); Maxwell could not be sent to a mental hospital, either, because he is not currently insane or a threat to himself or others.
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