xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

In October, Crystal, Minn., police Sgt. Robin Erkenbrack, summoned to the local VFW hall by a report of a medical emergency, arrived to find an Elvis impersonator, who worked a show at the hall that night, ostensibly in the middle of a seizure, just as another impersonator (portraying the late comedian John Belushi) jumped into a car that did not belong to him and sped off. As Elvis’ “seizures” stopped, and frightened onlookers gathered, Elvis suddenly leaped to his feet and broke into “Viva Las Vegas!” while Erkenbrack chased “Belushi” to a nearby airfield, where he stopped him. Said Erkenbrack later, “Every time you think you’ve seen it all, there’s something else.”

Gary Arthur Medrow, 60, first made News of the Weird in our inaugural year, 1988, but his criminal record (mostly for impersonating police officers) goes back at least 10 years before that. Medrow’s preferred scene is to call someone (usually a woman) on the telephone, pretend to be a police officer on an investigation, and ask her to try to lift up another person in the room and carry him or her into another room. He was charged again in New Berlin, Wis., in September.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD