Japan's Tatsuhiko Kawata agreed to wed his mistress. On the night
before the ceremony was to take place, he splashed oil on the floor of the
wedding venue, in a resort hotel in Hokuto, and started a fire. When he didn't
show up for the wedding, his mistress rang him, whereupon he told her that he'd
not invited any guests. The woman cancelled the wedding, which prompted the hotel
to link the fire with the couple.
Kawata later explained to the police that 'I started the fire
because I didn't want to break up with my wife ... and I didn't want to split with
my mistress either'.
Dr. Richard Batista says he is tired of custody negotiations with his ex-wife and that he is demanding that she return the kidney he gave her. Batista, 49, said he would settle for $1.5 million, alternatively. He says that he had no regrets about the kidney donation, which he described as 'as if I could put my arm around Jesus Christ', and adds that 'to this day I would still do it again'.
From Bakersfield, California, we have Angelo Vidal Mendoza, Sr., a
34-year-old man who decided to bite out one of his son's eyes and
badly mutilate the other. After rendering the boy blind, he then
rolled his wheelchair out of his flat and attacked his own legs with an axe. The
child later explained to the police that 'my daddy ate my eyes'.
A report later said that the elder Mendoza was showing signs of being
under the influence of PCP. Both he and the child's mother had
pleaded no contest to child endangerment charges related to PCP use in
2006, and a warrant had gone out on the mother last year for failing to
complete a drugs-related programme.
After ending a long-term relationship, Janet Cunliffe moved back to England to move in with her 29-year-old daughter, Jane. To cure her depression, Janet decided to undergo surgery to look like Jane, explaining: 'Why shouldn't I? She's good-looking. [...] I love her look and she's part of me. So why not?', while her daughter was against the surgery at first. The two now put on identical clothes and make-up before going out for the evening.
The Baltimore Sun reports that Harold Montaize Alford was unhappy with his girlfriend for communicating with a male on the Facebook social networking site. Alford, 22, woke her at her home and began attacking her. Her nephew, 27-year-old Adam Couther, intervened. For his trouble, he was fatally stabbed in the neck with the knife attachment of a bottle opener. Later, Alford stressed his innocence and explained that he had seen something fly through the air just before Couther began bleeding. He has been arrested anyway.
Mainichi Shimbun reports that 58-year-old Masako Iwase woke to her son asking her: 'Who cancelled the Internet?'. It was her husband who had terminated the family's ISP contract, but son Takayuki decided to stab her too with a kitchen knife. In total, he stabbed five members of his family, then set light to his futon. The 30-year-old Takayuki later told the police: 'I thought the house should be burnt down and I wanted to kill my family'.
In Ohio, about 150 people attended a birthday party for a
three-year-old girl. All were invited guests, but that didn't stop
the eruption of a brawl that involved half of the guests - of
those not involved, half were children. Elmwood Place Police Chief
William Pesking said that officers 'actually had to wait until they got
backup there in order to make entry because there were so many people
throwing bottles and chairs'. At least five of the 15 people injured
were hospitalised. The girl's princess-themed birthday cake was one
of the few things to survive unharmed.
The fight apparently started because of a long-standing disagreement
between the birthday girl's father and her mother's boyfriend.
And starting a family in a manner qualifying her for these pages is a Japanese woman - if you don't know what to do with the bodies of your dead babies, be aware that you might end up getting caught if you leave their frozen corpses in a shopping trolley outside a supermarket. Atsuko Fujiwara, a 49-year-old resident of Aichi Prefecture, along with her son and eldest daughter, are accused of making just such a drop-off. In a search of Fujiwara's home, a third dead baby of hers was found, this one in a rubbish bin on the balcony.
After separating, Turkey's Ramazan and Emine Çalçoban continued to
argue with each other, by mobile phone. In August 2007, the
24-year-old Ramazan decided to send a message to Emine: 'you
change the topic whenever you run out of arguments'. Faulty
localisation meant that Emine's mobile phone didn't interpret it that
way: because an 'i' appeared with one rather than two dots over it,
Emine read: 'you change the topic whenever they are fucking you'.
The 20-year-old woman showed the message to her father, who rang
Ramazan to yell at him for treating her like a prostitute. Arriving
at the family's home to apologise, Ramazan was greeted by Emine, her
sisters, her father, and several knives. Ramazan removed a knife from
his chest and turned it back on Emine. He fled, she bled to death,
and Ramazan later hanged himself in jail. Now, Emine's family members
facing trial.
According to Nebraska's /Lincoln Journal Star/, a 19-year-old woman and her 30-year-old boyfriend had begun arguing when the woman decided that she didn't want her name associated with him. She tried to slice the tattoo of her name off his neck. According to police captain Anthony Butler, the boyfriend suffered only minor injuries, mainly scratches.
Arkansas media report on the death of two-year-old Harley Davidson.
The girl's mother, Kristy Davidson, claims that she was at work
when her 26-year-old boyfriend, Jesse Holloman, arrived to tell her
that something had happened to the baby. She said that she raced back
to his mobile home and found that all of the food from the fridge had
been removed, to make space inside for the baby girl.
Holloman, by contrast, claims that he'd fed Harley half a bottle of
the antibiotic Amoxicillin, killing the child and placing the body in
the fridge because Kristy had told him to do so. He said she'd asked
him to kill the dog also but that he couldn't find it.
Holloman has been charged with first-degree murder.
In other dead baby news, Rhonda Coshatt was checking up on dozing niece
Lyndsey Fiddler when she heard Fiddler's washing machine make
clunking noises at the end of its cycle. Coshatt discovered Fiddler's
10-day-old baby, Maggie Trammel, entangled with the laundry within.
In a call to emergency services, Coshatt is heard to say to Fiddler:
'No, I did not kill your baby. You did.'
According to court documents, the mother had been using
methamphetamine, amphetamines, benzodiazepine, and opiates. An arrest
for drug use while she was pregnant led Fiddler's family to try to get
her children taken into care. Now, her remaining two boys have been.
Britain's The Sun ran an article about beautician Kerry Campbell,
who hopes daughter Britney will become a star - 'a model, actress, or
singer' - thanks in part to the Botox injections that Kerry lovingly
administers every three months. Eight-year-old Britney also receives
monthly full-body waxes and says that she looks forward to a 'boob and
nose job soon, so that I can be a star'.
Public criticism was swift for Kerry, who now lives in the US. She
decided to appear on national television to clear her name. Britney
appeared alongside her, stressing that she no longer 'cries that much'
when given the injections and that it's worthwhile not to have
wrinkles appear when she smiles. For her part, Kerry stressed that
'I'm not the only one who does it'. She is, however, the one who's
called enough attention to herself that her star-to-be has now been
taken into care.
Justin Beynen, an 18-year-old man arrested for car-theft-, traffic-,
breach-of-probation-, and drug-dealing-related offences, asked the
courts to extend his sentence from six to nine months so that he could
spend more time with his cellmate, step-father Jason Hastings.
Hastings had been given a nine-month sentence after selling cocaine to
undercover police officers a few times.
Taking into consideration that Beynen would have nowhere to live
until his cellmate's release, Ontario Court Justice Normand Glaude
accepted the request, though pointing out that the courts are not a
social agency.
Brittni Nicole Colleps taught English at a high school in Texas. She
has now resigned, however, in connection with the orgy she held at her
home with five male students. She'd had an ongoing relationship with
at least one of the boys.
While all of them were at least 18 years of age, Colleps still
faces up to 10 years in prison under Texas law since they were her
students. As for the publicity surrounding the case, her husband,
serving with the US military, said: 'I hope that you will not pass
judgement on her because you do not know all of the facts or details
according to this situation' at a press conference.
In other automotive news, New York bar bouncer Ricaury Peña struck his
23-year-old girlfriend, a waitress at the bar, with a Honda Pilot SUV
in response to her attempt to get into the SUV with him after work.
Apparently intoxicated, he left her semi-naked and bleeding in the
street. She was soon hospitalised with critical head injuries. Five
hours later, the 28-year-old Peņa flipped the vehicle and was rushed
to hospital with critical injuries of his own.
When his wife, Rosa Estevez - the owner of the SUV - arrived there to
be by his side, it didn't take her long to learn of the earlier
incident and declare the marriage to be over: 'We don't have a
relationship now, only a daughter [...] He's my husband - he's
supposed to be not cheating.'
A woman arrived at a Scottsdale, Arizona, home for an interview for a job as a professional assistant and found her two potential employers - Vanessa Klein, 24, and Steven C. Lester, 60 - dead on the front porch. The woman rang the police, who reported that both had died from gunshot wounds. The double shooting is still under investigation, but initial reports are that Lester shot girlfriend Klein and then killed himself.
Someone in Success Village, Connecticut, waved down local police
officers in order to report that a mother was feeding beer to her
children in a public park. Approaching the scene, they noticed an
empty 40-ounce bottle of Steel Reserve beer on the ground and a baby
bottle containing a dark liquid. Witnesses reported that mother
Juliette Dunn, 29, had ordered her four-year-old son to chug the
beer and he had complied, whereupon she called him an alcoholic.
In addition to beer, Dunn's 10-month-old daughter was found to have
cocaine in her system. Police are now looking after Dunn, as well as
her 33-year-old companion, Lisa Jefferson. Dunn claims that it is
Jefferson who gives the boy a bottle of beer each day.
In 2000, Canada's Shirley Anderson, now 73, was awarded 10 Canadian
dollars a month in support from each of her adult children under the
British Columbia Family Relations Act, which deems adults responsible
for supporting their ill, aged, or impoverished parents. One of
her sons, 47-year-old Ken Anderson, refused to pay the higher sum she
insisted upon - CN$ 750 per month - so she initiated a lawsuit.
He has explained to the court that she hadn't provided financial
documents backing up her assertions and has also pointed out that he'd
had to quit school at age 15 when his parents abandoned him, leaving
him to fend for himself when they moved house with his younger brother.
He says: 'I'm done paying her and if the court awards her more money,
after she's used government money to go after us for the last 12
years, I won't pay a cent.'
South Carolina's Susan Hendricks decided to collect some insurance
money. After making this decision, the 48-year-old woman reported
that her son had shot himself in the head at the family home.
However, she didn't think she would get enough money from his life
insurance policy alone, so she killed her other son, her ex-husband,
and her stepmother - all with the same gun. Prosecutor Walk Wilkins
said: 'We see greed involved in a majority of the cases we prosecute.
However, I don't think we've seen greed rise to the level of a
quadruple homicide.'
According to Pickens County Assistant Sheriff Tim Morgan, she may
have been responsible also for the fatal shooting of a man who had
entered the house without permission in 2006, but there wasn't enough
evidence at the time.
According to authorities in Colorado Springs, Kevin Gaylor booked a
date with a university student he'd 'met' on the Web site Craigslist
and then things got complicated. His girlfriend returned home for the
evening. Therefore, when the Craigslist woman arrived at his home,
Gaylor rang the emergency services to report that there was a
gun-wielding burglar trying to get in.
Instead, it was the 24-year-old Gaylor himself who was arrested, for
making a false report to authorities.
Freemon Everett Seay punished his 16-year-old daughter for trying to run away from home. The 38-year-old Washington man started by using a willow switch on her. He then engaged her in battle with wooden swords for two hours, stopping at 4am, when she could no longer stand in the armour she had been made to wear for this. The girl later sent pictures of her injuries to friends, who contacted the authorities. The Renaissance fair enthusiast was arrested, as was his wife, Julie May Seay, who works at the Loving and Learning Childcare Center.
Japan brings us the case of a 45-year-old mother who accepted money from 72-year-old male acquaintance Shoichi Koshio in a hotel room this summer and then remained in the room while he twice tried to rape her primary-school-aged daughter. Perhaps the most worrying thing about the case is that the girl was in her mother's custody at all: The two adults had been arrested previously for prostituting the woman's eldest daughter, who is in her early teens.
Macomb County, Michigan, Sheriff Anthony Wickersham said that a mother sent her 11-year-old daughter into a grocery store to do some shoplifting for her while she waited with her other children in the car park. The 29-year-old woman had given the girl a list of what to pile into the trolley, but she'd still picked up two bottles of the wrong type of detergent. So, hoping for an exchange, the mother entered the shop and explained that her daughter had bought the wrong brand. She was detained and arrested, and the state's child protection agency has become involved.
Florida's John Goodman is a wealthy man, and he wants to stay that
way in the wake of a wrongful-death suit related to his driving while
intoxicated. He had set up a trust fund for his children, who are
allowed to withdraw money from it once they reach age 35. The courts
are not allowed to tap into this amount for any awards of
compensation.
Therefore, Goodman, 48, has legally adopted 42-year-old girlfriend
Heather Hutchins as his third child, meaning that she is entitled to a
third of the money in the trust. She is also paid as the trust
administrator.
The trial is scheduled to begin on 27 March.
Florida's Belinda and Paul Berloni were arrested after taking their
seven-year-old grand-daughter for a ride. The way in which they did
it was a problem: according to police, they used their SUV to pull a
'small plastic Hot Wheels car' along a road at 8-15 kilometres an hour,
with the towing mechanism consisting of two dog leashes attached to
the trailer hitch. Also worthy of police note was that the girl was
wearing just a bathing suit and that both adults were intoxicated.
When asked for his driver's licence, Paul Berloni explained that he
didn't have one: it had been revoked in connection with an alcohol-
and vehicle-related offence.
US Navy submarine commander Michael Ward II, 43, told a woman that
he'd met on a dating Web site that he was a separated man who worked with special
operations. In reality, he was married, with children. When he
recognised that his lies could catch up with him, he decided to break
things off. Allegedly, he faked e-mail to her from co-worker 'Bob' stating that
Ward had died. The message went on to say 'He loved you very much'
and that Ward wanted her to have something.
When the 23-year-old pregnant woman drove to Ward's Virginia home to
pay her respects, the new owner told her that Ward hadn't died but
merely relocated to command the USS Pittsburgh. She contacted the Naval
Criminal Investigation Service, and Ward has been assigned to
administrative duties.
Russia's Alexei Bykov decided to propose marriage to his girlfriend
in an unforgettable manner. And so it was. Irina Kolokov later said: 'We'd
arranged to meet at a certain place, but when I arrived there were
mangled cars everywhere, ambulances, smoke, and carnage. Then when I
saw Alexei covered in blood lying in the road, a paramedic told me he
was dead and I just broke down in tears.'
Bykov, 30, wasn't dead. He had hired stunt men, make-up artists, and
others to stage a crash scene. When Kolokov began crying, the
fake-blood-covered Bykov jumped to his feet and proposed to her. He
explained: 'I wanted her to realise how empty her life would be
without me.' Though 'so cross I almost killed him [...] for real',
she eventually accepted.
California's Tracey Gipaya, a 51-year-old physically disabled woman, died
in hospital after being severely beaten with an extension cord and power strip.
The person responsible for the beating, and earlier ones, was arrested
at his primary school - the woman's 11-year-old son, who was her
primary caregiver. Unlike child labour laws, the charges against him
are unclear.
According to the boy's older sister, who sought guardianship over
him, the child's father was aware of the woman's condition and of who
was handling the cooking, laundry, and other chores. However, a court
has awarded him temporary custody anyway.
Responding to reports that a gunshot had been fired from a 37-year-old
woman's flat in Gothenburg, Swedish police happened upon a
full human skeleton, a box of human bones, and various CD-ROMs that
attracted their interest. One of the latter was titled 'my
necrophilia' and another 'my first experience', including photographs
that prompted prosecutor Kristina Ehrenborg-Staffas to declare that the
unemployed woman had handled the bones in a 'shameful' manner.
The accused claims that she'd bought bones online from all over the
world for historical purposes and that she is not the woman in the
photographs.
In Wisconsin, Racine County Judge Tim Boyle has ordered Corey Curtis
to stop procreating. As a condition of his probation, the 44-year-old
Curtis is not to breed until he can pay child support for the nine
children he already has, by six different women. He currently owes
the equivalent of 40,000 euros in child support, plus nearly the same
amount in interest.
Curtis said that, while judges 'make [rulings] kind of hastily', he
is going to obey this one, which the judge opines merely enforces
common sense.
In Florida, Archie Malone, 37, and his 16-year-old son Artavious
B. Malone happened to be in Tiny's Liquor at the same time.
Apparently still upset about his father having sent him to a
juvenile-detention facility some years ago, the younger Malone jostled
the elder. The father responded with a punch in the face, so his son
left the store and waited with a gun. When Archie emerged, Artavious
fired off a few rounds, none of which found its mark as his father ran
down the street.
Artavious is charged with attempted murder and illegal possession
of a firearm. He claims that he heard the shots being fired at his
father but wasn't the source of the shell casings that officers
found.
In Łowicz, Poland, traffic policeman Łukasz Molovik
paid for his girlfriend, model Patrycja Pająk, to get breast implants.
Now that she has broken off her engagement to him, Molovik is suing her
for 6000 euros' worth of compensation, half the cost of the
implants. He explains that he is suffering from 'loss of use' of the
32DD assets and that he didn't buy the implants for another man's
benefit.
Pająk had dumped him because he'd begun nagging her to limit her
photo shoots and modelling work once she'd had the implants. She also
stresses that the larger breasts were his idea: 'Łukasz kept going on
about it and saying how big his ex's breasts were', and his manner at
the clinic had even led staff to ask: 'Are you getting the surgery or
is your girlfriend?'. Asked whether he had insisted on the surgery,
Molovik said: 'I do not remember - as a cop, I have a lot of things on
my mind.'
Misty VanHorn has children. However, she hoped that would be a temporary state of affairs. The 22-year-old Oklahoma woman is accused of trying to sell her children via Facebook, with an Arkansas woman taking her up on the offer: one two-year-old child and a 10-month-old for $4,000 or just the two-year-old for $1,000. The idea was to raise money to bail her boyfriend out of jail.
New York's Rahmell Pettway explained to the police that he was worried
about how his girlfriend might react to him having disappeared for two
weeks. To avoid trouble, he decided simply to fake being a victim of
kidnapping. Officers found the 36-year-old Pettway tied up in the
street. However, they also noticed that the person who'd tied him up
had done so without removing the roll of duct tape afterward -
it was hanging from Pettway's wrists, out of his reach.
He has been arrested for filing a false report. The New York
Post cites an anonymous law-enforcement source as calling Pettway
'a total moron'.
Police in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, say that Delaina Garling, 27, had been banned from the Family Dollar Store for theft. When she returned, she pepper-sprayed the staff who attempted to usher her from the building. She was then tackled, and, losing the fight, handed the can to her seven-year-old daughter, saying: 'You know what to do, baby. Spray it!' The girl reportedly did not do so.
Two law professors in Ohio are 17 years into their divorce proceedings. Much of
the case file, which has racked up more than 1,400 entries thus far, has to do
with the custody of their two children, the younger of whom is just about to
reach adulthood.
During one of the many hearings involved, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge
Leslie Ghiz said: 'It is frightening to this court that either is teaching
current law students the boundaries and ethics of our profession.'
The marriage of Christo Lassiter and Sharlene Boltz lasted seven years less
than the legal battle has so far.
Michigan's Alan Markovitz recently moved in next door to the building into which his ex-wife lives with her lover. Markovitz, who claims that this is a coincidence, recently placed a 3.6-metre-tall sculpture in his garden. The sculpture, which is illuminated at night, is of a hand with middle finger raised. Markovitz explains that it is directed at the lover, who knew Markovitz before embarking on an affair with the latter's wife, 'broke the Man Code'.
Also thirsty over the holidays was Rosie Pate of Memphis, Tennessee.
According to UPI reports, she was annoyed that her
grand-daughter wouldn't buy beer for her on New Year's Day. Pate told the
police that she slapped and scratched the younger woman and then rang
the emergency services. Police reports state that Pate asked the 911
dispatcher for 'assistance getting beer'. Despite having admitted to
doing so, she later said: 'I have lived to be 68 years old and I never dialled
no police to bring me beer.'
Pate was arrested for domestic assault and making a non-emergency 911
call.
/Diario de Avisos/ reports that three police officers responding to a New Year's Day emergency call from Tenerife found a 24-year-old man wrapped up to his neck in a blanket in a car boot. When paramedics roused him to consciousness, he said that he vaguely recalled his brother, a cousin, and a friend placing him in the car boot the previous night because he was inebriated.
According to the newspaper /al-Qabas/, a woman in Kuwait filed for
divorce after roughly a week of wedded bliss, explaining that the way her new husband eats his
peas is such a 'shocking sight' that the problem could not be solved.
He scoops them up with bread rather than using a fork.
In another case, from last year, a Kuwaiti woman sought a divorce
because of toothpaste issues: 'We are always arguing. I keep telling
him that he should squeeze in the end of the tube, but he stubbornly
refuses and keeps squeezing it in the middle.'
Allegedly, 71-year-old Marshall Harmon and his 32-year-old son got into an argument near their Florida, home. Whatever the reason, the younger man mounted a riding lawnmower and started to drive off, rather slowly, with his father following, rather slowly, in his pickup truck. Pulling alongside the mower, Marshall apparently fired two shots in his son's direction, The younger man was hit in the neck and hospitalised. Speaking for the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, Sergeant Andrew Hobbs said that Marshall had probably not really intended to shoot his son.
A 26-year-old pregnant woman responded to a Craigslist advertisement
posted by Dynel Lane, a Colorado woman offering baby clothes for sale. Upon
entering Lane's home, the pregnant woman was beaten and stabbed in the
belly. Lane removed the unborn child and claimed later, to her
husband and at an area hospital, to have suffered a miscarriage.
At the hospital, the baby was pronounced dead and Lane, 34, was arrested,
with the exact charges still under discussion. The formerly pregnant
victim was found in Lane's home and responded well to surgery.
Police are on the lookout for any other women who may have responded
to Lane's advert.
According to Argentina's Crónica, a shepherd in the Balcarce region who had not been seen for some time was found dead in bed. Both José Alberto, 58, and the wig-and-lipstick-wearing scarecrow that Rodolfo Moure found with him are being examined to determine whether a third party was involved or the 15-centimetre plastic tube attached to the scarecrow's groin may have had a part to play in the death. Moure said: 'We are working on the assumption that the man died during sex with the scarecrow.'
When Victor Sena Blood-Dzraku refused to honour his promise to follow his 2009 civil wedding to Ellanora Baidoo with a traditional Ghanaian ceremony for the couple's families, the two went their separate ways without consummating the union. Baidoo, 26, wants a formal divorce, while her husband does not. He has not informed her of his address, and a private investigator proved unable to find him and serve him with divorce papers. Along with his pre-paid mobile phone number, Baidoo does have his Facebook details, so Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper has granted permission to send the summons by Facebook private message, 'repeated by plaintiff's attorney to defendant once a week for three consecutive weeks or until acknowledged'.
Meanwhile, Florida's Palm Beach Post reports on marital strife in the Bradshaw household: 84-year-old Uriel was eating mangoes in a bedroom when his 65-year-old wife walked in and noticed that he'd been placing the mango peelings on the floor. He responded to her complaints with a steak knife, stabbing her twice. She banged on the walls to alert her daughter, who lives next door, to summon the police. Uriel, who has been arrested for aggravated battery with a weapon, says that he doesn't remember stabbing his wife, though he does recall an argument about the mangoes.
In a story from last month, 18-year-old Tatyana Allen became angry at her boyfriend on a Florida beach. We don't know whether the issue was mangoes, peaches, or something else, but we do know her choice of weapon for expressing her feelings: their six-month-old child. First responders took the injured boy to a local hospital, and Allen was arrested for battery and for inflicting physical/mental injury on a child.
Holland's Alexander Pieter Cirk fell for a Chinese woman he met via
a dating app on his phone. After growing frustrated with the
distances involved, he decided to obtain a visa and air tickets to
visit her, and he sent her a photo of his flight details. When he
arrived in Changsha, however, she wasn't there to meet him, so the
41-year-old Cirk remained at the airport. Ten days later, his health
began to flag, and authorities took him to a local hospital.
According to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, a local television
station tracked down the woman, who explained that she'd thought him
joking about making the journey. She added that she hadn't been able
to reply to his post-arrival messages because she'd been scheduled to
have plastic surgery. The woman allegedly expressed hopes of
maintaining her long-distance relationship with Cirk.
Thirty-year-old Brandi Worley is an Indiana woman whose husband told her that he wanted a divorce. She didn't like the idea that he might end up with custody of her seven-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. She later summarised the resulting decision thus: 'I did not want him taking them, so I stabbed them.' As she told a 911 operator, she stabbed herself too, because she wanted to die with them. She survived; they did not.
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