Wow! Just when you think NY has gotten too swanky for wily crimes:

Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests

By BRUCE LAMBERT and CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: January 9, 2008

Even for the once-notorious Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, it may have been a first: Two men were arrested on Tuesday after pushing a corpse, seated in an office chair, along the sidewalk to a check-cashing store to cash the dead man’s Social Security check, the police said.

When Virgilio Cintron, 66, died at his apartment at 436 West 52nd Street recently, his roommate and a friend saw an opportunity to cash his $355 check, the police said.

They did not go about it the easy way, the police said, choosing a ruse that resembled the plot of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” a film about two young men who prop up their dead employer to pretend that he is alive.

“Hell’s Kitchen has a rich history,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, “but this is one for the books.”

There was no sign of foul play in Mr. Cintron’s death, he added.

The roommate, James P. O’Hare, and his friend, David J. Dalaia, both 65 and unemployed, placed Mr. Cintron’s body in the chair and wheeled it around the corner, south along Ninth Avenue on Tuesday afternoon, the police said. The men parked the chair with the corpse in front of Pay-O-Matic at 763 Ninth Avenue, a check-cashing business that Mr. Cintron had patronized.

They went inside to present the check, but a clerk said Mr. Cintron would have to cash it himself, and asked where he was, the police said.

“He is outside,” Mr. O’Hare said, indicating the body in the chair, according to Mr. Browne.

The two men started to bring the chair inside, but it was too late.

Their sidewalk procession had already attracted the stares of passers-by who were startled by the sight of the body flopping from side to side as the two men tried to prop it up, the police said. The late Mr. Cintron was dressed in a faded black T-shirt and blue-and-white sneakers. His pants were pulled up part of the way, and his midsection was covered by a jacket, the police said. While the two men were inside the check-cashing office, a small crowd had gathered around the chair. A detective, Travis Rapp, eating a late lunch at a nearby Empanada Mama saw the crowd and notified the Midtown North station house.

Source

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — A Scottsdale man inadvertently shot himself in the buttocks Thursday morning. Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Clark said Daniel Leatherman, 26, heard a disturbance outside his apartment and saw a man he knew fighting with a cab driver. Leatherman told police that the man, Cody Nunn, 25, had assaulted him in the past, so he grabbed his gun and went outside. Leatherman told police that he accidentally dropped the gun while hiding it behind his back and shot himself in the derriere. Nunn and Leatherman’s friends took him to a local hospital. When police arrived, Clark said Nunn was drunk and disruptive. He was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Leatherman was released from the hospital later Thursday. There were no phone listings for Leatherman or Nunn*.

*Well of course not! Can you imagine the calls they got when they were listed?

Not only did everyone know it, but a woman (not a detective or journalist) googled “John,” “Anne,” and “Panama” and came up with a dated photo from 2006 that she sent to cops and the Daily Mirror:

The amateur Google sleuth who found the image said she decided to search because she was certain everyone must have an online trace - even those who want to disappear.

“I’m a skeptic. Nobody can simply vanish in this day and age, there has to be something, some sign,” she told the Daily Mirror.

“I’d like to nominate them for ‘World’s Dumbest Awards’,” she added.

“Not only were they photographed, but the date was actually on the picture. It was just too good to be true.”

The photo showing the couple together, smiling side by side, was taken when they stayed in an apartment rented through the firm Move to Panama.

I hope she gets her own show: Mom Detective!

Source

I love this story because there’s so much wrong with it! I’m waiting for the Lifetime Movie: “My Dead Husband’s Canoe Amnesia”? “Canoe to the Panama Canal”? And his name? Darwin!

Family of missing canoeist go into hiding

The family of the “back-from-the-dead” canoeist John Darwin were in hiding as the mystery into his disappearance deepened. The 57-year-old former prison officer walked into a police station in London on Saturday, five years after he was presumed dead at sea in a canoeing accident in Hartlepool, and claimed he knew nothing of what had happened to him.

Mr Darwin’s wife, Anne, who sold the family home and emigrated to Panama in September, is being traced by authorities but removed her details from websites. She is known to have an active internet connection in Panama City. Their two sons, Mark, 31, and Anthony, 29, are believed to be with their father at a house in Basingstoke.

They have declined offers from police to stage a press conference or release a statement.

Meanwhile Mr Darwin’s brother and father said they have still not heard from him - more than 48 hours since he went to police and told them: “I think I am a missing person”.

Speculation grew in the neighbourhood of Mr and Mrs Darwin’s last home, in Seaton Carew, Hartlepool.

Councillor David Young said: “It’s very strange.”

Cleveland Police have been drawing up a list of key questions they want to put to Mr Darwin to piece together the past five years before they question him.

It is not known if Mr Darwin’s life had been insured or if any money was claimed.

Police will check any life insurance policies and examine financial, phone and email records as part of their investigation.

Details of Mrs Darwin’s known address in Panama have also been passed to police and it is understood that Foreign Office officials are trying to contact her.

She sold two properties this year, the first for £160,000 and the second — the family home — for £295,000.

Mr Darwin’s aunt Margaret Burns, 80, revealed how he boasted he owned 17 houses and “would be a millionaire by the time he was 50″.

Mr Darwin, a science teacher (!) for 18 years who went on to work for a bank and as a prison officer, had gone canoeing in high winds when he was reported missing. His disappearance sparked a huge search.

DALLAS (Reuters Life!) - More Americans believe in a literal hell and the devil than Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to a new Harris poll released on Thursday. It is the latest survey to highlight America’s deep level of religiosity, a cultural trait that sets it apart from much of the developed world.

It also helps explain many of its political battles which Europeans find bewildering, such as efforts to have “Intelligent Design” theory — which holds life is too complex to have evolved by chance — taught in schools alongside evolution.

The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults from Nov 7 to 13 found that 82 percent of those surveyed believed in God, a figure unchanged since the question was asked in 2005.

It further found that 79 percent believed in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, while 72 percent believed that Jesus is God or the Son of God. Belief in hell and the devil was expressed by 62 percent.

Read more of the bad news here.

7 years for “losing it”?

NORRISTOWN, Pennsylvania (AP) — A former Ivy League professor pleaded guilty Monday to voluntary manslaughter for killing his wife as she wrapped Christmas presents last year.

Rafael Robb says he “lost it” during an argument with his wife.

Rafael Robb, once a tenured economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faces a prison sentence of no more than seven years for bludgeoning his wife, Ellen, on December 22. Robb, 57, said Monday that he got into an argument with his wife about a trip she was taking with their daughter and whether they would be returning in time for the daughter to return to school.

“We started a discussion about that. The discussion was tense,” Robb said. “We were both anxious about it. We both got angry. At one point, Ellen pushed me. … I just lost it.”

Ellen Robb, 49, described as a stay-at-home mother who doted on their only child, died in the kitchen of their home in Upper Merion Township, outside Philadelphia.

Detectives believed the scene had been staged to look like a burglary. The murder weapon, which Robb described as an exercise bar, was not found. The couple married in 1990 but had long been estranged, keeping separate bedrooms.

Rafael Robb apologized to his daughter and family in court Monday.

“I know she liked her mother. … And now she doesn’t have a mother,” he said, stifling tears.

To put it mildly. And with a father like you …

Patterico pees himself, a la Roger Simon, after John Cole mocks Patty’s stupid post on the hypothetical morality of waterboarding with a hypothetical kick in the balls.

Cole points out that both posts involved hypothetical, not real, physical confrontation:

Patterico- it was just a hypothetical, boss. And just like your hypothetical, neither is rooted in reality (not to mention the hypothetical never even mentioned you).

To which Pattycakes responds by making the stupidest blogging comment evar:

But there’s nothing irresponsible about talking to that crowd about committing violent acts on conservatives. I’m sure if Michelle Malkin ever did the reverse — “mocking” a liberal by talking about kicking him, while addressing an audience predisposed to think liberals are less than human — John Cole would take it in stride as just joshin’.

Of course, that would never happen. Because Michelle Malkin has far more class than John Cole ever will.

We are speechless. “Class” doesn’t even begin to describe Malkin. Calling Malkin “classy” is like calling Shaq O’Neal “bulemic” or Michael Ledeen “peacenik.”

Father of the Week:

Michigan boy, 13, charged with drunken driving
Police say dad, too drunk to drive, gave keys of truck to his son

CLIO, Michigan - A police officer checking on a truck that got stuck in the mud at a city park was startled to find a 13-year-old boy behind the wheel. The boy’s father, who was sitting in the passenger seat, told police he had had too much to drink and let his son drive. The boy had been drinking, too, police said. “(The boy) even said he didn’t want to drive because he was too drunk,” McLellan told The Flint Journal for a story published Thursday.

President of the Week:

Mugabe paid witch doctor in
‘gas from rocks’ scam

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — President Robert Mugabe has said ministers at a Cabinet meeting he agreed to pay two head of cattle and three buffaloes to a woman who claimed she could produce gasoline out of rocks, the official media reported Friday. Mugabe later ordered the woman’s arrest on fraud charges.

The Herald newspaper, a government mouthpiece, reported the woman claiming to be a tribal healer, known in the West as a witch doctor, also took large sums of money, a car and a piece of land from the nation’s highest ranking politicians, promising in return to use spells to produce diesel fuel from rocks in the bush outside the provincial town of Chinhoyi, 70 miles northwest of Harare.

Instead of invoking spirits, the woman bought diesel and piped it into the rocks, the newspaper reported.

Well, it’s really the same as this, isn’t it?

Governor of the Week:

Ga. Governor Prays for Rain at Capitol
ATLANTA - Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue stepped up to a podium outside the state Capitol on Tuesday and led a solemn crowd of several hundred people in a prayer for rain on his drought-stricken state.

“We’ve come together here simply for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm,” Perdue said after a choir provided a hymn.

Perdue also let us know just why Georgia is having this problem: it’s the damned shellfish. That’s right:

Gov. Sonny Perdue says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been allowing Georgia’s water to flow to endangered mussels and other species in Florida and thereby preventing state residents from sprinkling their yards and hosing down their cars.

“I’m telling you, when it comes to choosing between mussels and drinking water for children, I’m about fed up with this mess,” Perdue said after declaring an emergency this month as Atlanta’s main source of water dropped to what the state said was a 90-day supply.

Bitchfight of the Week, cont’d:

In his final assessment, Fabio told OK! “You have to be a low-class, scumbag to start calling a woman a name. If you’re a man, you should never. You should be a gentleman. These women were with me and as a man I defend them. He [Clooney] was lucky he ran out of the restaurant. He’s not even half a man.”

Cult of the Week:

And if a Doomsday cult threatens suicide, doesn’t everyone win?