xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In October, former Massachusetts day-care center proprietor Gerald Amirault, who is believed to be the last person still imprisoned on the basis of now widely discredited, fantastical, heavily coached, child-sex-abuse testimony from the 1980s, finally won parole and will be freed in April. Officials have long refused to cut him slack because of his defiant, 18-year insistence that he never molested a single child. He noted that his sociology textbook for an in-prison college course mentioned his own case as an example of that era’s hysteria-driven prosecutions of accused child molesters.
As part of a hazing ritual for a new Ku Klux Klan member near Johnson City, Tenn., in November, several Klansmen would shoot the man with paintball guns while another simultaneously rapid-fired a 9mm pistol overhead to make the pledge believe he was being shot with a real gun. According to police, one of the bullets, fired straight up in the air by Klansman Gregory Allen Freeman, 45, came down through the skull of Klansman Jeffery S. Murr, 24, who was hospitalized in critical condition. Freeman was arrested.
A 19-year-old intoxicated backseat passenger was convicted of drunken driving because he reached to adjust a stereo control and accidentally bumped the idling car’s gearshift into “drive” (with a police officer watching nearby) (Tinn, Norway).
An 18-year-old woman, wielding a putty knife, allegedly robbed a neighbor during the time she was awaiting trial for robbing a convenience store wielding an ice-cream scoop (Harrisburg, Pa.).
Jeweler H. Stern introduced luxury Brazilian flip-flops adorned with diamonds and gold, at about the equivalent of US$22,000 (Sao Paulo).
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