But it’s close enough.
The Batshit-Crazy Wingnuts at Human Events (where Ann Coulter is listed as an editor) endorse politically moribund, low-wattage, way-behind-in-the-polls actor/politician Fred Thompson for President.
Because, after all, he’s Rush Limbaugh’s guy, and Rush is a “depth guy.” I think he meant to say “fat, drug-addled” instead of “depth,” but that’s another story.
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, 2008Even 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.
Now everyone will be going, “awww … God rest his soul” - typical. In Boston, I used to work at a place where I transcribed news programs. You read that right. Every night I was not only force fed news, I had to spit it back out. I had to transcribe Dapper O’Neil’s words many, many times. From today’s Boston Globe obit:
Flamboyantly conservative, Mr. O’Neil was defined more by the enemies he made than his political views. At various times, he railed against feminists, gays, and immigrants. He made a career out of his opposition to school desegregation, affirmative action, and other government initiatives he considered social engineering.
He was the only one of 13 city councilors to vote against a local ban on assault weapons and the city’s human rights ordinance, which prohibited discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
In the process, Mr. O’Neil seemed to delight in his ability to enrage liberals, who considered him insensitive at best and a bigot at worst. But his stands on issues served to solidify his conservative political base.
In the 1970s, he lambasted “hippies” from a bullhorn on the back of a pickup truck circling Boston Common. In 1990, after viewing nude photographs at the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, he said, “This country’s going down the drain. And while there’s guys like me in it, I’ll put a stop to some of this.”
During the 1992 Dorchester Day Parade, he was captured on a home video exclaiming, “I thought I was in Saigon for Chrissakes,” while he passed through a Southeast Asian part of the city.
Freeways are DANGEROUS! Bet you didn’t know. Well, read the LA Times and find out all the grim news. Almost as good as a driver’s ed film, “No Place for Pedestrians” gets down’n'gory:
The man who said goodnight to his 53-year-old wife can’t explain how she ended up hours later walking on the Antelope Valley Freeway three miles from their home. The man who stood up in a convertible to remove his shirt probably would have waited if he knew he’d be blown onto the 15. And the 22-year-old skateboarder who decided to cross the 10 near downtown might have reconsidered had he known what awaited.
Someone’s been watching reruns of Six Feet Under, I think. I learned: if you get an accident you’re supposed to stay in your car. Don’t take any offers of help from anyone but a cop. And don’t stand up in convertibles. I have to start reading the LAT more often.
Seventeen hours later she was dead, literally cut in half. Her torso smashed through the car’s windshield and landed in the back seat. The driver kept going, got off at the next exit and discarded the body in a trash bin. When police arrested him, he was covered in blood.
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!
The Telegraph really does the best obits. Check out these juicy tidbits:
Liana’s sister, Grazia, died young in a mountaineering accident, and her mother, who claimed to be descended from Attila the Hun, spent years mourning her dead daughter by painting countless portraits of her and writing bad poetry in her memory.
They arranged to meet for lunch in Chiswick, and immediately began a clandestine affair. “I fell in love with the work,” she said later. “Anthony was never a good-looking man.”
Burgess was powerfully attracted by her dark-haired beauty, and by her passionate hatred of the Italian state and the Roman Catholic Church. He was unhappily married to his first wife, Llewela, a notoriously aggressive Welsh alcoholic, but refused to leave her for fear of offending his cousin, George Patrick Dwyer, who was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds.
When she sued the executive producers of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange for 10 per cent of the film’s profits, this money allowed the family to establish a semi-permanent home on the rue Grimaldi in Monaco. Living in a tax haven accorded with her strong belief that the earnings of writers should not be taxed under any circumstances.
Bless you, Mrs. Burgess!
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.
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 …
