xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

NOTE: Chuck Shepherd has nearly finished his psychological rehab assignment and will be back soon with a fresh look at the news. These are the last of the golden oldies he left behind for you.

Surgeon John Ronald Brown, 77, whose medical license was revoked in 1977 but who continued to practice on the dark side, was convicted in San Diego in 1999 of second-degree murder for a botched operation that brought to light the rare malady of apotemnophilia. Those afflicted – – said to be fewer than 200 people worldwide – – get sexual gratification by having an arm or leg removed. The Internet underground had spread word of Brown’s willingness to perform the surgery without asking embarrassing questions (such as “why?”).

Within a six-week period in the summer of 1998, these events occurred:
–A juror in Judge Esmond Faulks’ court in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, eagerly asked the judge for the defendant’s date of birth so he could draw up an astrology chart to help him decide the case. (He was removed.)
— Then a 31-year-old woman in Oakley, Calif., felt a mysterious bump as she was pulling out of her driveway, and to help determine what it was, she said, she drove over it again, and then a third time. (It was her 3-year-old son, who suffered a broken leg.)
–And then, Wall Street Journal reporter James S. Hirsch, writing a story on the Boston Globe’s recent troubles with columnists making up things, noted in his story that the Globe’s corporate spokespersons had no comment on the matter, a fact which he later admitted he made up. (He was fired.)

The family of the late Russell U. Shell filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in 1998 against The Other Side nightclub in Fitchburg, Mass., charging that Mr. Shell choked to death on a miniature plastic penis that allegedly had been placed into his drink glass as a prank by an employee. (The club owner said Mr. Shell merely suffered a seizure and that the charm was found on the floor beside Mr. Shell’s body.)
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