Fun_People Archive
11 May
Weirdness [428] - 19Apr96

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sat, 11 May 96 01:45:24 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [428] - 19Apr96

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.428 (News of the Weird, April 19, 1996)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Recent uses of video cameras for surreptitious taping by alleged perverts:
According to a lawsuit filed by a 20-year-old woman, a Reno, Nev.,
optometrist set up one in his ladies' room (for "security" purposes, he said
in October); Mineola, N. Y., landlord Mark Pearlman was accused in February
of having a video camera behind a see-through mirror in a female tenant's
bedroom (to enforce his no-smoking policy, he said); and IRS employee Howard
Baltazar was arrested in March after carrying a running video camera in a
gym bag through an Oakland, Calif., men's shower room. (Police determined
that Baltazar committed no crime except eavesdropping via the audio portion
of the tape.) [Reno Gazette-Journal, Oct95]  [N. Y. Times, 2-13-96] [San
Francisco Chronicle, 3-6-96]

* James Hogue, 36, was arrested in February as he tried again to pass
himself off as a Princeton University student, less than five months after
his release from prison on a charge of passing himself off as a different
Princeton student.  (In 1990, he studied and ran on the track team as Alexi
Indris-Santana until he was exposed by a former high-school classmate.)
[New York Times- AP, 2-25-96]

* In February, Diane Currey, 45, was sentenced to nine years in prison after
pleading guilty to more than 200 counts of grand theft in Largo, Fla.  She
had embezzled $350,000 from a doctors' office over a seven-year period, then
retired to Missouri, where she might have escaped detection forever.
However, her replacement in Florida died a year later, and doctors asked
Currey to return.  She agreed and immediately began embezzling again, but
was soon caught. [St. Petersburg Times, 2-21-96]

* In November, the U. S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida appeals court
ruling that, while a local police department could purchase an allegedly
obscene film and use it as evidence in filing criminal charges, it could
not use as evidence a film it had rented and copied.  The Florida court had
ruled that the police had violated federal copyright law as described in
the "FBI Warning" that appears on rented tapes. [Washington Times, 11-28-95]

* For the second straight year, a Canadian Football League team wasted a
valuable draft pick on a defensive end who, unbeknownst to the team, had
died in the off-season.  The Montreal Alouettes' James Eggink had passed
away from cancer; last year, the Ottawa Rough Riders' Derrell Robertson had
been killed in a car crash. [Washington Post, 3-15-96]

* In January, the Los Angeles Times reported that an unidentified man asked
Alberto Ramirez for directions in a Chatsworth, Calif., 7-Eleven, and after
Ramirez complied, the man began yelling racial epithets and throwing
products from the shelves at Ramirez.  The man followed Ramirez outside and
threw a knife at him, missing.  Then, apparently out of items to toss, he
began throwing the money that was in his pocket.  After the man drove off
in his truck, Ramirez and other bystanders eventually turned over $2,333 to
the police. [L. A. Times, 1-13-96]

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

© 1996 Peter Langston