News Of The Weird-78

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

(NOTE: Chuck Shepherd needs to revisit the roots of “weird” and engage in two more weeks of reflection. Before he left, he picked out some golden oldies to tide you over.)

A Police Officer’s Dream Question: Vincent Morrissey’s police brutality lawsuit went to trial in New Haven, Conn., in 1997, and the alleged perp, West Haven police officer Ralph Angelo, was on the witness stand, claiming that Morrissey himself had provoked the encounter by swinging at Angelo. Morrissey’s attorney, openly skeptical of Angelo’s version of the incident, asked Angelo to demonstrate to the jury just how hard Morrissey had swung at him. Before the lawyer could clarify what he meant by “demonstrate,” Officer Angelo popped the lawyer on the chin, staggering him and forcing an immediate recess.

In Milwaukee in 1997, Gary Arthur Medrow, 53, was charged with 24 counts of impersonating a police officer in connection with his unique obsession. What Medrow does, according to police (who have arrested him various times over the last 30 years for the same thing), is telephone a woman and try to convince her to lift another person in the room and carry her or him a short distance, sometimes telling the woman that he’s a police officer and that it’s an official request.

A 49-year-old woman in Scotland passed away in 1999, only the third starvation death among the world’s alleged 5,000 disciples of Australian Ellen Greve who follow a no-food, no-water, “breatharian” diet. Greve sells her philosophy (“liberation from the drudgery of food and drink”) to Westerners in part as conferring a spiritual connection with third-world hunger.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD