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* In Kansas City, Missouri, officials were checking videotapes to find who won a $10,000 slot machine jackpot and walked off without it. * In 1972, an ambitious, but not noticeably well educated man in Argentina was arrested after trying to hijack a bus to Cuba. * Police in Doylestown, Pa., arrested Alfons Kessler, 47, in March for attempting to murder his girlfriend's husband. It was Kessler's fifth attempt at the man. He had been unsuccessful using a gun, a truck, a Molotov cocktail and a crossbow, and this time was unsuccessful using a pipe bomb. * A New Jersey woman sued her son after he won 2 million dollars on the lottery ticket. The woman says that she and her son had pooled 20 dollars a month each for lottery tickets for more than a decade. Mom claims Sonny called her the day after the winning number was announced to say that "we" won the 2 million... but called back the next day to say that the winning ticket happened to be one that he had bought with his own money. * In Virginia, a janitor went to great lenghts to avoid I.D. in a 7-Eleven robbery, using a ski mask and rental car for the occasion. But he also wore his work uniform, which said "Cedar Woods Apartments" and had his name, Dwayne, stitched across the front. * Dave Feuerstein sued the British supermarket chain Tesco because on of its promotions offered so many bargains that he hurt his back carrying off the discounted merchandise. "Offers like this are too good to refuse," said Feuerstein, who make several trips to the store over a three-day period to redeem more than 300 coupons. "Tesco should have been more considerate and make it impossible to do what I did. If Tesco hadn't had this offer I wouldn't have hurt my back. * In April, 1995, a gunman in Columbia, Tenessee, announced a bank robbery, but the bank had closed the previous August. "He walked in here and said, 'Give me your money,' and I laughed," said Lea Ables, who works for the insurance company that moved into the office. "I didn't think he was serious at first. He then sort of looked funny and asked, 'This ain't a bank anymore?'" He left after robbing two workers of $127. * In the trial of six men charged with attempting Britain's biggest cash robbery, prosecuting lawyer Guy Boney told the court that the gang forced an armored car carrying $18.2 million to be driven to a wooded area, then used high-powered torches to open it. But Boney noted, the torches also set off "a horrendously expensive bonfire" that turned up to $2.4 million into ashes and caused the men to flee. * The attorney for Howard "Wing Ding" Jones, accused of selling drugs, sought to lower his client's bail from $150,000 insisting in a Norristown, Pennsylvania, courtroom that Jones was not a risk to flee. At that very moment, Jones bolted from the courtroom and sprinted out the front door. Police captured him 50 minutes later and returned him to the courtroom, where his bail was raised to $500,000. *In February, two boys, ages 15 and 14, were released from court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a hearing befor Judge Larry Seidlin for stealing a car, which according to police, was the 25th car theft committed by the boys in two years. According to police, the boys walked out of the courthouse, realized they had no bus fare home, and promptly swiped number 26, which they crashed into a fence 45 minutes later. * In Rhode Island, cops were sure they had the right guy when the suspect in a string of coin machine thefts paid his $400 bail entirely in quarters. * Texas authorities, respinding to a store robbery, seized a man who was fleeing naked. He said he'd stripped after the job because he figured his clothes would make him identifiable. * Swedish business consultant Ulf Trolle labored for 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker eonfused the copier with the shredder. * After an 11-hour standoff in South River, New Jersey, police finally persuaded three family members to come out of their apartment lined entirely with aluminum foil. The family told police that the foil was to keep out "moonbeams and rays from the outer planets.." |
* Gary Blantz, 29, was arrested for kidnapping a bar owner near Lancaster,
Pa., in February. Police reported later that Blantz shot himself in the
foot with hes .45-caliber revolver to show the victim what would happen
to him if he were disobedient.
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email: chip@rubberchickenforthesoul.com