Fun_People Archive
16 Feb
Weirdness [417] - Stupid, criminal tricks

Date: Fri, 16 Feb 96 12:21:50 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [417] - Stupid, criminal tricks

Excerpted-from:	WEIRDNUZ.417 (News of the Weird, February 2, 1996)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Johnny Lee Nichols, 25, was arrested in Rogers, Ark., in October and
accused of knocking on doors of several homes around 3 a.m. and asking if
anyone was interested in exchanging drugs or sex for some dynamite he had
in his car. [Northwest Arkansas Times-AP, 10-8-95]

* A bomb threat that forced a Royal Jordanian Airlines plane to land in
Iceland in November en route to Chicago was discovered to have been made by
a Chicago woman who was merely trying to prevent her mother-in-law, a
passenger on the plane, from visiting her.  And a former USAir flight
attendant was sentenced to eight months in prison in May for making a bomb
threat to force a landing so she could rest her ailing knee. [Washington
Times-Reuters, 11-11-95; Greensboro News Record, May95]

* In Little Rock, Ark., in August, Donterio Beasley, 19, called a police
station to say that he was stranded and needed a ride downtown, but the
dispatcher told him that was against policy.  A few minutes later, Beasley
called back to report a suspicious person loitering around a phone booth
and gave a description of himself, believing that police would come, give
him a ride downtown for questioning, then release him.  He was charged with
making a false alarm. [Dallas Morning News-AP, 8-7-95]

* Therisa Frasure, 22, and a 16-year-old accomplice were indicted in July
for the murder of an elderly woman in Cincinnati, Ohio.  According to a
sheriff's detective, the two women needed to rob the woman to buy bus
tickets to Nashville, Tenn., where they intended to commandeer the Grand
Ole Opry hall and take hostages so that they could demand a personal meeting
with singer Reba McEntire.  (According to a McEntire representative, the
women had never requested a meeting in the conventional way.) [Cincinnati
Enquirer, 7-22-95]

* Police in Ft. Worth, Tex., arrested a man in December just after he robbed
a NationsBank branch.  Cops were waiting because a bank customer had walked
next door to police headquarters to summon them after becoming suspicious
that a man was waiting in a bank line wearing a ski mask. [St.  Petersburg
Times, 12-14-95]

* Juan Morales, 18, and Juan Mendoza, 18, were arrested as they robbed a
Coastal Mart convenience store in Weslaco, Tex., in November.  Police had
been tipped off to the crime because the cashier on duty the day before
reported that the two men had threatened to "come back and rob you" the next
day. [Valley Morning Star, 11-30-95]

* Mark Mays, 30, was arrested and charged with attempted robbery of Chet's
Restaurant in Toledo, Ohio, in July.  He had walked in at 12:40 a.m., armed
with a Rambo-style knife, and demanded money from the cashier.  Mays was
subdued by the only three customers in Chet's at the time--on-duty police
officers (who were in plain clothes but whose service radios--blaring out
police calls throughout the episode--should have deterred any robber).
[Toledo Blade, 7-3-95]

* In October, Richard S. King, 36, pleaded guilty to making threatening and
obscene phone calls to two boys who were his son's Little League teammates
in Blue Springs, Mo., to get them to reconsider plans to quit the team.
According to prosecutors, King called the boys several times during a
business trip to China, threatened to kill one kid and his parents and to
commit sodomy on the whole family. [Independence Examiner, 10-26- 95]

* In January in Fremont, Calif., a carjacker described as 5-foot- 8, about
170 lbs., yanked Cecilia Laus, 54, out of her car and drove off, leaving
the woman shaken and also bewildered, since the car was a 1976 AMC Pacer.
[San Jose Mercury News, 1-13- 96]

Copyright 1996, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers.  No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.

© 1996 Peter Langston