xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
A well-to-do couple (the husband owns a surveying company) were convicted in Manchester (England) Crown Court in October of creating an elaborate scheme to avoid two camera-detected speeding tickets and were fined the equivalent of about $20,000, almost 200 times the cost of the tickets. Stewart and Cathryn Bromley had offered an alibi, explaining that the driver of their car was a (fictitious) Bulgarian friend, and Cathryn made up a postcard “from” the man “to” the Bromleys that incriminated him, and then actually traveled 1,400 miles to Bulgaria to mail it with an authentic postmark.
Robert and Viki Warren were sentenced to six and five years in prison, respectively, in September in Charlotte, N.C., for fraudulently collecting more than $9 million in federal crop insurance payouts by having their employees saturate a tomato field with ice cubes and then beat the plants to make them appear weather-damaged.
Britain’s Ann Summers lingerie store chain said in October that it has begun to install customer-activated peepholes in changing rooms so that women could show off for their companions (some of whom previously regarded accompanying a woman shopping for clothes as boring).
Archie W. Roth, 68, was indicted for murder in Yorktown, Va., in May for killing his wife; he said he was angry because the couple had been living in the home for “several years” but still hadn’t unpacked.
(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
