Headlines
All of the following are authentic news
reports,
provided by News of the Wierd & Wired News.
1991 -- IRS agent Charles K. Reed, 41,
was arrested
in April for lying about his state of
residence in
order to cheat Louisiana out of its 8
percent sales
tax on two cars he had purchased. He had
claimed to
live in Georgia, where the tax is 5
percent.
1991 -- In February, Tifton, Ga.,
prosecutors
arranged a makeshift witness stand to
get testimony
about stolen goods from pawnshop owner
Sylvanus
"Hambone" Smith. Since Smith weighs 900
pounds and
cannot move more than eight steps
without resting,
he was to have been transported to the
front of the
courthouse on a truck, with the jury
listening from
the lobby, because he cannot fit into
the witness
stand.
1991 -- In March, motorists in Stone
Mountain, Ga.,
reported seeing the image of Christ in a
forkful of
spaghetti on a Pizza Hut billboard. One
woman said
the image caused her to abandon plans to
quit her
church choir.
1992 -- Georgia state Rep. Henrietta
Canty went on a
hunger strike in February to protest the
arrest of
her son, who was jailed for failing to
make
court-ordered child-support payments.
1992 -- Georgia authorities apprehended
Ray Rodgers
and his two sons, aged 22 and 21, in May
as they
fled Alabama after being released on
bond. The three
are charged with attempting to kill
Rodgers' wife in
a 1990 car-bombing. According to the
Cullman County
(Ala.) sheriff, the car-bombing was the
three men's
12th unsuccessful attempt to kill the
woman.
1992 -- In Fulton County Jail in Atlanta
in
November, inmates were watching one of
their
favorite shows, "America's Most Wanted,"
when a
photo came on the screen of a man wanted
for murder
and arson. Several heads turned around
to Jessie Lee
Baker, 27, and one inmate said, "Hey,
that's you!"
Inmates notified authorities, who called
the show's
producers to report Baker's whereabouts
and put the
inmates' names in for the reward.
1992 -- Titus Howard, 37, was charged
with stabbing
a fellow rooming-house resident, Ronnie
Jackson, to
death in Atlanta in July after a quarrel
over the
grits served at breakfast.
1993 -- Richard Usher Jr., was arrested
in Decatur,
Ga., in June for bigamy when his wife
(Evelyn
Deloris) found out, via an insurance
payoff, that
another Mrs. Richard Usher Jr. (Evelyn
Nelms, whom
he had married in 1985) had just passed
away. Wrote
Detective C.E. Bolson in his report,
"The only
explanation [Usher] could offer was that
he did not
remember marrying [Evelyn Nelms].
1993 -- Henry County, Ga., jail inmate
Mackey Junior
Pope, 28, was apprehended in February
after an
escape attempt. Using a smuggled-in gun,
he got the
drop on four guards, locked them in a
cell, and then
crept along a hallway toward the front
of the
building. However, Pope had neglected to
take the
guards' walkie-talkies, and the front
desk guards
were waiting for him.
1993 -- In Atlanta in December, John
Thomas Harmon,
34, who had just been released after
serving 10
years of a 20-year sentence for kissing
or biting
women on the buttocks, was arrested and
charged in
three similar incidents (two kissing and
one
licking).
1994 -- A bill introduced in the Georgia
legislature
in January by Rep. Doug Teper of Atlanta
would
require warnings in all hotel rooms that
fornication, adultery and sodomy are
illegal in the
state. The bill also requires that the
warnings be
in Braille and "internationally
recognized symbols,"
which were not specified.
1994 -- According to a September issue
of American
Medical News, physicians at the Medical
College of
Georgia and engineers at Georgia Tech
are working to
develop a synthetic finger to enable a
person in one
site to be touched and a doctor at
another site to
feel exactly what would be felt if the
doctor were
touching him in person.
1994 -- In December the Associated Press
reported on
research conducted by Dr. James M.
Dabbs, a
psychology professor at Georgia State
University, to
determine personality by examining
hormones. Dabbs
prefers using hormones found in saliva
rather than
in blood because it is easier to get
subjects to
spit. "Dr. Spit," as Dabbs is known,
said he is a
pioneer in the field because other
researchers might
view working with spit as "unseemly."
1994 -- In a story on Elvis Week '94 in
August in
Memphis, The Commercial Appeal newspaper
reported
its selections as the two most bizarre
Elvis
collectors' memorabilia, both of which
belong to
Joni Mabe of Athens, Ga. One is a
toenail she claims
was Elvis', picked out of a carpet in
the Jungle
Room during her 1983 visit to Graceland;
the other
is a wart that was removed from Elvis'
right wrist
in 1957. She said she purchased the
wart, encased in
formaldehyde, from the operating
surgeon's estate in
1990.
1994 -- Baldwin, Ga., voters returned
ex-mayor Tommy
Lee Barrett to office in November; in a
1991 plea
bargain to theft and forgery charges, he
was forced
to resign and to promise never to run
for mayor
again.
1994 -- In April in Savannah, Ga.,
Robert Palmer,
44, was charged with burglary after
removing a
window pane and entering the home of
Joseph Palmer.
He denied any motive of mischief and
said he broke
in only to ascertain whether he was
related to
Joseph.
1994 -- Michael Antonio Davis, 24, was
arrested in
Savannah, Ga., in April while inside a
squad car
parked in front of the Precinct 1
station house.
According to an officer, who discovered
the suspect
sitting in the back of the car with a
"most
disgusted look" on his face, Davis had
entered the
car looking for guns but did not realize
that police
cars' back doors automatically lock,
from inside and
out, when closed.
1994 -- A man who robbed a 25-year-old
woman at
knifepoint in Sandy Springs, Ga., in
May, and took
cash and jewelry: "My life sucks; I'll
return this
stuff back to you."
1994 -- While the Lorena Bobbitt trial
was making
news during December and January, at
least five
instances of assaults on men's genitals
were
reported. A 55-year-old man in Wooster,
Ohio, and a
23-year-old man in Arcadia, Fla.,
removed their own
penises (with a knife and an electric
saw,
respectively) because of dissatisfaction
with their
gender. A Toronto woman shredded her
husband's with
a pair of scissors during a domestic
fight. In Los
Angeles, a man reconciled with his wife
a month
after she was charged with cutting off
his testicles
in a domestic fight. And in Jefferson,
Ga., a
35-year-old woman was charged with
ripping the skin
off her ex-boyfriend's testicles with
her bare hands
in a domestic brawl.
1994 -- In December, Atlanta attorney
Dennis Scheib
stopped by the prosecutor's office on
his way to
court to represent a new client in a
criminal case.
Just outside the office, he saw two
officers chasing
a man down the hall, and he joined in to
help. After
the three men caught the escapee and
handcuffed him,
Scheib learned the man was the client he
had been on
his way to court to represent.
1994 -- From the Atlanta leather-goods
shop B.D.
Jeffries, the store's most unusual item:
a $65
crocodile-skin tampon holder.
1994 -- Sharon Church, 24, who lives
near Atlanta,
was sentenced to 15 years in prison in
November for
an assault against a 27-year-old male
pedestrian.
After luring the man into her apartment,
she pulled
out a butcher knife, stabbed him in the
shoulder,
screamed at him to have sex with her "or
die,"
ordered him to disrobe, slashed the bed
around him
with the knife, and repeatedly performed
oral sex on
him.
1994 -- The July 1994 floods in Macon
County, Ga.,
drowned 250,000 chickens, creating,
according to the
Associated Press, "an unfathomably foul,
gag-inducing" stench that hung over the
area for
more than a week.
1995-1998
Firefly Designs
Website creations, Grahics and Business
Logo
designs
Contact: Terri Cooper--- info@fireflydesigns.com
Phone (770) 914-7487
Fax (770) 914-7487
Locust Grove Ga.
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