News of the Weird
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In an incident likely to be repeated as Americans get larger, the body of a 600-pound man who was cremated at the Garner Funeral Home in Salt Lake City in October started a grease fire when leaking body fluids overheated the conventional oven.
John Leonard Young, 46, pleaded guilty in October to the now-familiar charge of using the Internet to lure an underage girl for sex, but the backstory was unusual. Though Young had bought her a plane ticket to Seattle, she decided to buy her own ticket but mistakenly booked “Washington, D.C.” When she arrived there all alone, she sought help from authorities, and Young’s plot unraveled.
Jeffrey Turpin, 41, was arrested in August in Wytheville, Va., for malicious wounding of a woman after chasing her across two farms on a tractor. According to a witness, when the woman fell, Turpin dropped the tractor’s bucket to the ground and rolled it over her, breaking her leg.
(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