xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Howard Goldstein, 47, was charged with murdering his landlord and fellow Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Rahamin Sultan, in October in Brooklyn, N.Y., in a rent dispute, and police said that when they knocked on the door to investigate Sultan’s disappearance, Goldstein answered dressed (according to the New York Post) in a gray blouse “with a plunging neckline,” slacks, and pink high-heeled shoes, and wearing bright red lipstick and blue eye shadow “that clashed with his long beard.” A search of his room turned up pre-beard snapshots of Goldstein in an array of fashions and wigs.

Stephen Kauff, 33, was arrested in Westerville, Ohio, in December in a police Internet sex sting but told officers, when he arrived for a long-arranged meeting with an alleged “14-year-old girl” at an apartment complex, that he really wasn’t interested in sex but was just curious whether police actually do set up sex stings over the Internet. (Answer: Yes).

Ian Finlay, 28, also caught in an Internet sex sting, had denied that he had sex on his mind when he showed up for a long-arranged meeting with a “15-year-old girl” at a McDonald’s in Hempfield, Pa.; Finlay claimed that he knew “she” was a cop and wanted to outsmart the cop by pretending to be a sex predator and that he was angry at being arrested before he could reveal his “hoax.” (He was convicted in January.)
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD