Fun_People Archive
1 Mar
news of the weird 

Date: Mon,  1 Mar 93 22:06:09 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: news of the weird

 From: <pep@research.att.com>
 From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
 From: Bill Wisner <wisner@mica.berkeley.edu>

On Nov. 18, a man wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled tightly over
his head and a mask covering all but his eyes pounded on the front door
of Security Federal Savings Bank in Durham, N.C., scaring employees
inside.  After several loud attempts to push open the door, which is a
"pull" door, he fled.  Durham police say precisely the same thing happened
at another bank on Oct. 22.
--
A state appeals court in Santa Ana upheld a lower court by granting Sheryle
Ulyate an increase in child support payments from her ex-husband for their
15-year-old daughter, from $2,000 a month to $6,000 a month.  Ulyate said
the girl's monthly expenses included $2,000 for clothing, $300 for jewelry,
and $1,600 for entertainment, and she asked for $15,000 a month.  The
ex-husband made a fortune selling mini-blinds.
--
In July, a Jackson Center, Pa., woman reported that someone used a ladder
to climb into the second story of her home and that all that was missing
was $10 worth of diapers, despite the presence of jewelry and antiques in
the same room.
--
Police in Key West, Fla., were called to a house in September to quell a
loud argument in which a 28-year-old woman was accusing her female friend,
29, of attempting to steal her "strap-on deluxe model" vibrator, which she
said was valued at $90.
--
Antonio Castro Jr., 45, and his wife pleaded guilty to defrauding the
supermarket tabloids the Globe, the Star and the National Enquirer by
selling them 547 phony tips on celebrity gossip over a four-year period.
--
Ronald Melvin Gower, 31, was arrested in Princeton, Ky., after he tried to
rob a bank with a toy gun.  One teller refused to hand over money, and as
the robber tried to persuade her, another employee, carrying a Polaroid
camera to take a picture of a car later in the day, snapped the robber's
picture.  Gower allegedly backed away, said he was just kidding, and asked
for change of a $100.  (Gower was wearing a rolled-up stocking under his
cap, but had forgotten to pull it over his face as a mask.)
--
The robbery of an Office Depot store in Lennox, just after closing, was
aborted when the robber, after locking workers inside, walked out the back
door to tell accomplices it was OK to come inside.  The door locked behind
him.
--
A man wearing a wig and glue-on mustache and sideburns tried to rob a Seattle
check-cashing store in November, presenting a clerk with a hand-written note.
The note, said the clerk, "was just a bunch of gibberish.  I didn't even try
to read it; it was just ridiculous."  The man declined a request for clearer
instructions and left, swearing.
--
David D. Cousins, 22, was arrested for bank robbery in Quincy, Ill., in
November, after being tricked by the bank's executive vice president, Louis
McClelland, into surrendering after a six-hour standoff.  McClelland had
faked a heart attack and told Cousins that if he died, the robbery would be
too gruesome to be acceptable for movie rights, but that if he got medical
treatment, he could help Cousins sell the story so they could both achieve fame
and fortune.  Shortly afterward, Cousins surrendered.
--
A 42-year-old man was found not guilty by reason of insanity in Gainesville,
Fla., in January on charges that he set fire to 22 churches in Florida,
Colorado and Tennessee in a 10-month period.  The man said he set the fires
as punishment because he thought church computers were sending him signals
to become gay.
--
Recent prices for the Kremlovka hospital in Moscow (formerly the main
facility for members of the Politburo and the Supreme Soviet): the equivalent
of $2 a day for a room, $100 for a gall bladder operation, 15 cents per
tooth for dental fillings.
--
The Tass news agency reported in December that Olga Frankevich, who fled
Soviet security police in 1947 during the Stalinist purge, surfaced from
a house in western Ukraine, where she had been hiding under a bed for 45
years.  Her slightly bolder sister roamed the house but never left it.
--
A 40-year-old man in Taylor, Mich., dropped dead of a heart attack minutes
after bowling his first-ever perfect "300" game (12 strikes in a row).
--
Researchers at Auburn State University and Wayne State University surveyed
49 metropolitan areas and found that the more country and western radio
music, the higher the suicide rate.
[=] © 1993 Peter Langston []