xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In Fostoria, Ohio, thieves broke in and carried off a safe in the office of a local organization that serves the poor (Fostoria Bureau of Concern), but director Susan Simpkins said that not only was the safe empty but the bureau had decided to junk it a while back and was looking for someone to haul it away.
Thanh Nhat Le, 51, was arrested in Dorchester, Mass., in April, when he tried to cash a check he wrote to himself for $7,550 on his account at a Sovereign Bank. He had opened the account two weeks earlier, handing over $171 in small bills. He was certain that he had plenty of money in his account, though, because in the interim, he had also mailed the bank three checks for deposit: one for $250,000, one for $2 million, and one for $4 billion.
In February, at least 59 worshipers were killed in a fire in a mosque in Tehran, Iran, when a worshiper’s veil ignited from a kerosene stove.
In Springfield, Mass., in April, Thomas P. Budnick became the most recent man who was convicted at a trial in which he had persuaded the judge to let him act as his own lawyer, to then argue with a straight face on appeal that his conviction should be overturned because his trial lawyer was incompetent. (The decision is pending.)
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD