‘Willie Tarpley Jr. knew this much about his ex-wife’s new boyfriend: The man was a convicted sex offender and Tarpley didn’t want his children anywhere near him.
So Saturday night at about 8, Tarpley, 46, drove to his old house, grabbed one of his samurai swords, a katana, out of the garage and threatened to use the 42-inch blade to cut off the boyfriend’s head.
The boyfriend, Lee Alexander, 25, of Indian Lakes Estates near Lake Wales, tried to flee, but hit Tarpley’s Corvette in the driveway. That’s when Tarpley reached into the open car window and plunged his sword into Alexander’s body, Hillsborough County sheriff’s spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.’
It gets stranger.
‘Japanese police arrested a 17-year-old boy today on suspicion of murdering his mother after he turned up at a police station carrying a severed human head in a bag.
Police in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture, 200km north of Tokyo, said they arrested the teenager, a student at a local high school, after officers found a beheaded body in the apartment where he lived.
The boy told police he killed his mother last night while she was asleep, Kyodo news agency said.’
‘Police in Verona Beach, N.Y., say a six-year-old died while reaching for scissors on top of a refrigerator when she fell from a chair and the blades stabbed her in the neck.
The girl apparently wanted the scissors to cut off gum that was stuck in her hair.
Police said she was standing on a wheeled, office-style chair when it moved and she lost her balance Friday night. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.’
‘WENN is reporting that Mr. T, Dick Benedict, and Dwight Schultz will appear on British export ‘Most Haunted’ in a ghost-chasing attempt to contact the soul of George Peppard. Honestly, Mr. T., are you that desperate to get back on the air? This grizzly train-wreck makes ‘Celebrity Boxing’ seem classy.
Possibly the funniest/saddest portion of this pathetic cash grab is the extremely documented and extremely tumultuous relationship between George Peppard and Mr. T. Peppard, a surly and cantankerous old man, hated Mr. T. with the passion and vigor known only to Satan and Pastor Fred Phelps. I wonder how he feels about his over-the-hill arch nemesis using his soul for monetary reward.’
‘No film comes to Seattle with greater baggage this year than “Zoo,” Robinson Devor’s strangely elegant examination of the infamous incident outside Enumclaw in 2005.
Surely you know at least the general details: A Seattle man died of internal injuries after having sex with a horse at a rural farm, which was later found to be the site of regular gatherings of zoophiles, or, as they call themselves in this film, zoos. The incident, news of which spread like fire on a dry field (it was this newspaper’s most-read online story that year), had consequences: numerous jokes and snickers, and a quickly passed antibestiality law in this state.
If everyone who read or e-mailed news of the story goes to see “Zoo” in theaters, it would be a box-office hit. But that seems unlikely for this unique and very odd film, a semidocumentary that uses voice-over and dreamy, dimly lit re-enactments — and which seems crafted for an audience who may not exist.’
Followup to Mr Hands.
One of these kids is not like the other ..
(2.1meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a study presented by a 17-year-old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday.
The study tested the effect of the portable music devices on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. Electrical interference was detected half of the time when the iPod was held just 2 inches from the patient’s chest for 5 to 10 seconds.
The study did not examine any portable music devices other than iPods, which are made by Apple Inc.
In some cases, the iPods caused interference when held 18 inches from the chest. Interfering with the telemetry equipment caused the device to misread the heart’s pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether.’
This is a review of nuclear criticality accidents made in 2000 by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
There’s 158 pages of cool technical stuff.
(3.7meg PDF)
One guy lost an arm and died. The other lost both legs and survived.
No close up gore or anything, so safe for work.
(6.7meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Riot police have been sent to a remote mountainous village in Papua New Guinea after a gun battle between police and members of a cult involved in human sacrifices, local media reported Wednesday. [..]
Black magic is widespread in Papua New Guinea, a jungle-clad, mountainous South Pacific island nation where some villages only encountered Western civilization in the 1930s. Women suspected of being witches are often hanged or burnt to death. [..]
Morobe’s chief police inspector, Augustine Wampe, said suspicions of cult activity started in April when a child was kidnapped and police were attacked trying to rescue the child. [..]
“Gunfire was exchanged and one of the policemen was injured in the leg with an arrow. Another policeman fell over a cliff.”
Police reinforcements were attacked and forced to retreat. The villagers then went on a rampage killing one man and chopping up his body and burning houses, Wampe said.’
‘More than 7,000 – including rock star Pete Townshend – were said to have downloaded child-porn images from a U.S. website.
But an investigation has found that many of those charged as part of the police inquiry codenamed Operation Ore were innocent and their card details had been used illegally.
Simon Bunce, who was accused of using the Texas-based Landslide website, said he was certain his personal information had been used fraudulently. Police found no evidence on his computer but his credit card details were found on the site.
“Thirty-nine people committed suicide after being accused of what I was accused of,” he said. “I reacted in a different way. I investigated it diligently and I established I was the victim of credit card fraud.”‘
‘Texas State University’s plan to build the nation’s largest “body farm” of cadavers is on hold after the school scrapped its proposed site amid concerns that buzzards could endanger nearby planes.
The university will now scout a new location for what will be only the third body farm in the nation. The school had hoped to begin burying bodies later this year.
By burying cadavers and studying human decomposition, researchers aim to help police better solve questions like time and manner of death at crime scenes.’
‘Angered that a beloved member of his squad had been killed in an explosion, a US Marine urinated on one of the 24 dead Iraqi civilians killed by his unit in Haditha, the Marine testified.
Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, who has immunity from prosecution after murder charges against him were dismissed, also said he watched his squad leader shoot down five Iraqi civilians trying to surrender.
In dramatic testimony in a pre-trial hearing for one of the seven Marines charged in the November 2005 Haditha killings and alleged cover-up, Dela Cruz described his bitterness after a roadside bomb ripped Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, known as T J, into two bloody pieces.
“I know it was a bad thing what I’ve done, but I done it because I was angry T J was dead and I pissed on one Iraqi’s head,” said an unemotional Dela Cruz in a military courtroom in Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego, California.’
‘Groups of elderly Australians are reportedly setting up backyard laboratories to manufacture an illegal euthanasia drug so they can kill themselves when they have had enough of life.
One group has already succeeded in producing the drug nembutal, which is used by vets to put down animals, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Monday night.
At least four other backyard factories were planned for major cities across the country, with a total of some 800 elderly people prepared to become involved in producing the drug.
Dozens of older Australians were also engaged in illegally importing nembutal from the Mexican border town of Tijuana, close to the US city of San Diego, according to the report.’
‘A 48-year-old man has died while dancing, trying to outdo a rival with an acrobatic move while “battle dancing,” police said.
Robert Stitt and his rival were competing in a parking lot on Main Street Monday night when he tried a forward flip and landed on his head.
“It was just two guys dancing. Everybody was laughing,” Stitt’s friend John Boxley said.
Boxley said James Brown was on the radio and Stitt wanted to outdo a rival dancer, who had flipped in the air.
Police said the victim went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead a short time at a local hospital.’
Looks like he got served.
‘The parents of a baby that died of starvation after being fed a vegan diet have been found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and first degree cruelty to children.
Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31, will get an automatic life sentence for the death of their 6-week-old infant, Crown. After being fed a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice, he weighed only 3 1/2 pounds when he died. [..]
Prosecutors said it was a chilling case of murder by starvation, a painful and prolonged death. Attorneys representing Sanders and Thomas told jurors the first-time parents did the best they could while adhering to their vegan lifestyle. Vegans typically live free of animal products.
“They’re not vegans, they’re baby killers,” Fulton prosecutor Mike Carlson told the jury Tuesday during his closing arguments.’
‘By Day 2 in the blazing Utah desert, Dave Buschow was in bad shape. Pale, wracked by cramps, his speech slurred, the 29-year-old New Jersey man was desperate for water and hallucinating so badly he mistook a tree for a person.
After going roughly 10 hours without a drink in the 100-degree heat, he finally dropped dead of thirst, face down in the dirt, less than 100 yards from the goal: a cave with a pool of water.
But Buschow was no solitary soul, lost and alone in the desert. He and 11 other hikers from various walks of life were being led by expert guides on a wilderness-survival adventure designed to test their physical and mental toughness.
And the guides, it turned out, were carrying emergency water on that torrid summer day.’
‘A Jewish girl away from home at college prank calls her parents and tells them she started dating an Italian guy. The father threatens to kill the guy and the mothers comments are priceless.’
(16meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Local artist and drag performer Jojo Baby thinks he’s fairly open minded, but what he saw inside a Wicker Park apartment this week blew him away.
Baby was at eBay seller Brian Sloan’s apartment to buy vintage mannequins for his studio, where he creates dolls and puppets.
But instead, Baby said he saw human skulls boiling inside Sloan’s apartment. [..]
Sloan has a law degree but makes a living selling various items on the Internet — including a batch of vintage mannequins that were on the steps of his back porch. Sloan said the skulls are imported legally, but police still confiscated them.’
‘A man in the German city of Cologne fatally stabbed his elderly father before cutting off his own head with an electric chainsaw, police said today.
The headless body of the 24-year-old offender was found when police raced to an the apartment yesterday after an emergency call, apparently from the dying father, had been broken off in mid-sentence, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.
Alf Willwacher, a senior prosecutor, said an electric chainsaw was next to the son’s body.
“We do not believe any third party was involved,” he said.’
‘A 52-year-old man was killed after getting stuck in the propeller of a ski boat Sunday afternoon on Lake Sonoma, according to authorities.
“It was pretty gruesome,” said Lt. Greg Contos of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office. [..]
Contos said another boater flagged down a sheriff’s patrol boat on the lake around 3:45 p.m. Sunday. When the patrol boat arrived at the boat, the victim was wedged underneath the propeller and already dead. The patrol boat then called additional help from the Sheriff’s Helicopter and the Army Corps of Engineers marine unit.’
You know you’re pretty well fucked when they have to call in Army engineers to get your body untangled from a propeller.
‘A British man who went on a wild spending spree after doctors said he only had a short time to live wants compensation because the diagnosis was wrong and he is now healthy — but broke.
John Brandrick, 62, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago and told that he would probably die within a year.
He quit his job, sold or gave away nearly all his possessions, stopped paying his mortgage and spent his savings dining out and going on holiday.
Brandrick was left with little more than the black suit, white shirt and red tie that he had planned to be buried in when it emerged a year later that his suspected “tumor” was no more than a non-life threatening inflammation of the pancreas.
“When they tell you you’ve got a limited time and everything, you do enjoy life,” Brandrick, from Cornwall in the west of England, told Sky television.’
‘The international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that they had received little information from mainland Chinese officials about a mysterious ailment killing pigs in southeastern China or about Chinese wheat gluten contaminated with plastic scrap, raising questions again about whether Beijing is willing to share data on global health issues.
The Chinese government, and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, next to Hong Kong, suffered heavy criticism in 2003 after concealing the SARS virus for the first four months after it first emerged in Foshan, 150 kilometers, or 95 miles, northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.
But officials in Hong Kong as well as at the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that they had received practically no information about the latest pig deaths and limited details about wheat gluten contamination.’
‘Rose, the goat that found international celebrity last year after being forced into marriage with a Sudanese man, has died after accidentally swallowing a plastic bag.
The town of Juba in southern Sudan, if not in mourning, at least has the satisfaction of having had the world in stitches as the source of one of the internet’s best-read news items. [..]
Tragedy struck last month when Rose swallowed a plastic bag as she scavenged for food scraps on the streets of Juba.
She left a male kid – goat, not human – and a grieving widower. It is not known whether she was cremated or turned into curry.’
Followup to Sudan man forced to ‘marry’ goat.
‘Scientists believe they have for the first time identified an ancient graveyard for gladiators.
Analysis of their bones and injuries has given new insight into how they lived, fought and died. [..]
“I’ve looked at quite a few hundred Roman skeletons. I’ve seen examples of head injuries, healed and unhealed. I’ve seen evidence of decapitations,” she says.
“But this (new find) is extremely significant; there’s nothing been found in the world at all like it. They’ve really dispelled quite a lot of myths about gladiators and how they fought.”‘
‘Hundreds of people are flocking to a remote village in eastern India to catch a glimpse of an old man who has spent six years lying inside his own grave waiting to die as he mourns for his wife, officials said.
Basanta Roy claims he is 103 and spends his day clearing weeds from the grave and lying in it. Belonging to a Hindu caste who bury their dead, Roy dug his grave close to his wife’s after she died in the late 1990s.
“He cleans his grave every day and waits for his death, which seems to be eluding him,” said Shyam Narayan Ram, a senior government official from Jharkhand state.’
‘A man and a woman killed themselves “for love” with a bomb that exploded in a hotel room in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan.
Local police think the pair had an adulterous affair and chose to die together rather than live apart, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The bomb went off early Thursday evening at the Jindi Hotel in Jinggu county, injuring another two people and littering the streets outside with shards of broken glass.’
‘Canoeist Dennis Bohrn and his companions were stunned when they saw a woman jump off the Perrine Bridge, her body landing near them in the Snake River. Many in the group were crying by the time they managed to reach the woman and paddle her body to shore.
So Bohrn was shocked when an officer walked up and instead of thanking or comforting the group last Sunday, wrote out a couple of $85 tickets for failing to have life jackets on board either of the two canoes.
“The body was right there,” said the 58-year-old Twin Falls resident. “A girl deputy was trying to console everybody. Then a sergeant walked up. He said, ‘I see you don’t have any life jackets so I am going to give you a citation.’ It seemed a little cold.”‘
‘[..] That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “After one hour,” he says, “we couldn’t see evidence the cells had died. We thought we’d done something wrong.” In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.
But if the cells are still alive, why can’t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that “astounding” discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn’s Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine’s newest frontiers: treating the dead.’
