xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

Kaziah Hancock and Cindy Stewart are back in court in Salt Lake City after the Utah Court of Appeals granted them a new trial in July to try once again to get money from a breakaway Mormon sect headed by Jim Harmston. Hancock and Stewart had won $300,000 in 2002 after Harmston took their land in exchange for giving them a place to live and promising them a face-to-face meeting with Jesus Christ. (Harmston’s defense was that God had told him to break that promise.)

Legislation advancing $453 million for the Alaskan “bridges to nowhere” described in a News of the Weird story in April 2004 (which would connect Ketchikan, pop. 7,800, with the town’s airport, replacing a five-minute ferry boat ride with a bridge almost as big as the Golden Gate, and a two-mile-long span connecting Anchorage with a sparsely populated port) was finally passed by Congress in August 2005, as part of the 6,300 “earmark” pet projects of legislators, totaling $24 billion. The projects are back in the news as Congress considers cutting some in order to fund reconstruction on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

Former Cornelius, N.C., dentist John Hall pleaded guilty in July (an “Alford plea,” acknowledging only the sufficiency of the evidence against him) to seven counts of misdemeanor assault on female patients, specifically, squirting semen into their mouths from a syringe. The state Board of Dental Examiners had revoked his license in 2004 after finding two syringes of semen in his office with patients’ DNA (from saliva) on them. Hall’s sentence was five years’ probation, and his lawyer said he thought Hall would move to Jacksonville, Fla., and go into the flooring and tile business.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD