In Santa Fe, N.M., in March, after police recovered $46,000 worth of jewelry near an abandoned safe in a ravine, they concluded that burglars had stolen the 180-pound safe from a nearby home, taken it down the road and tried mightily to break it open, but failed, finally just pushing it down the ravine, at which point (unknown to them, because they had left) it finally burst open. [Albuquerque Journal, 3-25-04]

Junior-lightweight boxer Nate Campbell, a heavy favorite to beat Robbie Peden in Temecula, Calif., in March, controlled the fight and began to taunt Peden in the fifth round, even dropping his hands to his side, daring Peden to hit him; Peden then immediately knocked Campbell out with one punch.

Four months after the universally followed gubernatorial recall election in California, Ken Blodgett, the president of the Ochoco West Sanitary District Board (Crook County, Ore.), was recalled by the voters (39 votes to 29), with the main issue Blodgett's having stopped payment on a $14.03 invoice for office supplies, which Blodgett said was not properly authorized. [Bend Bulletin, 3-1-04]

A 46-year-old man became the most recent to fall to his death on the side of a highway after stopping his car in the dark and searching for a place to urinate (but falling 300 feet off a cliff) (Columbia, Calif., March).

Police in Sandwich, Mass., are so far stumped why Daniel L. Kelleher, 48, was found covered head-to-toe with roofing tar, lying in a water-filled bathtub in a room at the Sandwich Motor Lodge on Nov. 11. Kelleher, a carpenter, apparently purchased the tar and caulking guns, and he had rented the same room a week earlier and left tar in the bathroom, but he has refused to answer detectives' questions. [Mashpee (Mass.) Enterprise, 11-14-03]

Jason Cody Jones, 27, was arrested in Florence, Colo., in November and charged with suspicion of theft in connection with $110,000 missing this year from J.P. McGill's casino, where Jones was a security guard. Jones called attention to himself by purchasing a motorcycle with 300 $20 bills and a pickup truck with a similar array of small bills, and for spending $35,000 during a six-month period this year while having earned only $6,400. [TheDenverChannel.com-AP, 11-10-03]

Waiting for a rush-hour bus in East St. Louis, Ill., Emanual Fleming tried to use a pay phone but received a busy signal, then stuck his right middle finger into the coin-return slot but couldn't get it out. With his free hand, he called 911, and ambulance personnel had to take both Fleming and the telephone to the hospital, where, three hours after he got stuck, doctors numbed the finger and worked it out of the slot. [Belleville News-Democrat, 11-18-03]

A bank robber who had forgotten to cut eye holes in his mask (and who kept lifting it to peek out) nonetheless escaped with his loot but not before banging into a steel door frame on his way out (Modesto, Calif.).

The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune reported in November that a City of Oakland building inspector's employee, fired in February 2002, took a government car (with logo) with her when she left and that no one noticed it was missing for 18 months, until the ex-employee had accumulated $1,500 in traffic tickets. At that point, the owner of the car was called to get the car out of the impound lot. [Oakland Tribune, 11-9-03]

And passenger Ivette Jones, who said she was traumatized in the October Staten Island ferry collision and couldn't sleep because she was so distraught, filed a $200 million lawsuit against New York City, $80 million more than claimed by a woman who lost both legs in the accident. [Associated Press, 11-21-03]

Rap as a Second Language: In a June copyright infringement case, British High Court judge Kim Lewison ruled against the composer of the 2001 song "Burnin'," explaining that he could not help Lewison because he did not know what certain lyrics meant (such as "shizzle my nizzle"). The lyrics, said the judge, although written in a form of English, were "for practical purposes a foreign language" and therefore, he could not be sure whether the borrowed use of the lyrics impugned them.

June 2003, Pearl Lynne Smith, 47, allegedly shot her husband to death in their home in Eldon, Oklahoma after an argument over who should feed the couple's goats.

In June, a judge in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, rejected the request of a 15-year-old boy, on trial for beating another teenager to death, for a jury composed entirely of teenagers. At the other end of the spectrum, a 13-year-old boy, on trial in April in Inverness, Fla., for fondling a classmate, demanded that he be tried as an adult in front of an adult jury. (He was quickly convicted). [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 7-1-03] [St. Petersburg Times, 4-4-03]

The Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune reported in August that the local superintendent of schools, Wilfredo T. Laboy, had recently failed (for the third time) the basic English proficiency test required of all teachers in the state. (English is Laboy's second language.) The state education commissioner said that Laboy was doing "an excellent job" but that he was still going to have to pass the test (a test which Laboy called "stupid"). [Boston Globe-AP, 8-4-03]

The family of teenager Amy Woods, who was left brain-damaged when hit by a car seven years ago in Springfield, Mass., will finally get to trial in their lawsuit, which names not only the driver who hit her but also a driver who didn't. Roger O'Neil, a repairman for the NYNEX telephone company, had just stopped on a residential street and courteously motioned Woods and a friend to cross in front of him, but as soon as Woods cleared O'Neil's van, a less courteous driver smashed into her. Woods' family said that if a driver wants to be courteous, he must be responsible for knowing that crossing the street would be safe. [Boston Globe, 6-22-03] WTF!?!?!

D'Oh: When a pair of bald eagles at Kentucky's game farm in Frankfort produced an extremely rare (for in-captivity eagles) egg in April, officials destroyed it because to allow it to hatch would have violated their federal permit; a federal official said the Kentucky officials should have just shipped it to them.

Among the memorable recent local government meetings: In Shutesbury, Mass., seating at the town meeting was divided into those wearing perfume or aftershave, those who never do, and those who never do but forgot and wore some that day (May).

In Chelmsford, Mass., the town council was split on whether to open the meeting with a Pledge of Allegiance and spent nearly an hour debating such issues as whether the meeting might already be "open" and thus could not "open" with the Pledge (April).

The Speaker of the New Zealand House ruled in May that, though laptop computers are forbidden in the chamber, one member could bring in his carburetor and work on it, as long he didn't make noise.

And the Green Party in Granada, Spain, for the country's May elections, offered a comprehensive platform that included issuing "sex vouchers" to give adults under age 25 local hotel-room discounts to encourage couples' intimacy (and safe sex and contraception) because most people that age still live with their parents.

In Easton, Pa., in June, Richard James Clader, 38, was sentenced to at least seven months in prison for a series of episodes on state roads 22 and 33 in which eventually 27 people contacted authorities to report that a motorist (identified as Clader) had driven nude, with the horn blasting, while vigorously masturbating.Clader told the judge that he believes his behavior stemmed from feeling neglected as a child and later by his wife, but said he is making substantial progress.

In Racine, Wis., in January, city and state officials knocked on Angie Anderson's door to inform her that they were about to capture a sickly owl in a tree in her yard, but she explained that the reason it appeared immobile was that it was a fake owl, purchased two years earlier from Wal-Mart for $14.99.

And a consciousness-raising stunt by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals hit a snag in March at the Palm Springs Middle School in Hialeah, Fla., when PETA was informed that its sign in Spanish on its life-size cow prop, reading "Echar la Leche" (translation of their slogan, "Dump Dairy") was also slang for "ejaculate."

A 36-year-old woman drowned in a fast-moving river after jumping in to rescue her golden retriever, which paddled ashore with relative ease while rescue efforts for the woman were under way (Kyoto, Japan, June).

A 26-year-old man was killed after he asked his uncle to stab him in the chest to see if a bulletproof vest would protect him (Lakewood, Colo., June).

A veteran skydiver accidentally crashed into a veteran hangglider at about 4,000 feet, killing both men (Brackley, England, June).

And career criminal Gary Cowan, whose latest sentence was up, confessed to three more crimes with the hope he would be allowed to stay in prison to finish a restaurant management course (Cambridge, England).

Prominent Columbia, S.C., surgeon Harry J. Metropol, appearing before a state legislative committee in April to argue that doctors shouldn't have to pay so much money in malpractice awards and insurance premiums, minimized the harm suffered by a woman (not Metropol's patient) who lost both breasts because of an error in cancer diagnosis. "She did not lose her life," Metropol said, sunnily, "and with plastic surgery, she'll have breast reconstruction better than she did before. It won't be National Geographic, hanging to her knees. It'll be nice, firm breasts."

An international organization of gay men who raise money for charities through drag shows came to the rescue of straight high school girls by providing loaners for those who could not afford gowns for prom night (Houston).

Police blamed a traffic accident on truck driver Brian Anderson, who they said lost control on Interstate 75 while making himself a bologna sandwich (Burt Township, Mich.).

A motorcyclist was killed on Interstate 95 when he crashed into a cow that had wandered out through a hole in a fence made by trespassers looking to get high from the mushrooms that grow on cow patties (Hobe Sound, Fla.).

Gary Lee Owens, 42, was arrested on drug charges in Stilwell, Kan., in April, even though police weren't looking for drugs when they knocked on his door. The police had received a tip that two fugitives were hiding at that address, and since Owens knew nothing about that, he matter-of-factly gave them permission to search the house but then added the restriction "everywhere but the garage." The police naturally decided that that comment was worth a search warrant, and later found the remains of a suspected methamphetamine lab.

The Philippine Star reported that George Mamaril, perhaps overreacting to his wife, Evelyn's, suspicion of infidelity, severed his penis on Feb. 22, wrapped it in newspaper, and tossed it through the window of her parents' house, where she was staying, with a note reading (in Filipino), "So you will not suspect I am courting another girl."

Authorities in Lincolnshire, England, are trying to identify the 60-ish-year-old woman who was admitted to Lincoln County Hospital in December, suffering from amnesia but insisting she is Barry Manilow. The only things she was carrying were several Manilow albums.

Boston City Councilman Felix Arroyo, who opposes war in Iraq, announced in January that he was going on a hunger strike to protest U.S. policy. Arroyo said he would begin a liquid-only regimen, but then limited that to daylight hours (thus allowing himself dinner and, theoretically, breakfast), and later qualified that to mean that he would only adhere to this hardship diet on the second and fourth Fridays of each month.

Convicted sex abuser Daniel Ray Erickson (who once "purchased" a 5-year-old girl whom he then molested) petitioned a judge in Brooksville, Fla., in December to have his photo removed from Florida's sex offender Web site. "How," he asked, "can a guy get married and become a good, stable citizen if they're putting your picture there?" (Indeed, he said, his previous girlfriend had left him when she found out he was on the Web site.)

In Holmes County, Miss., in October, Mr. Chocwe Lumumba, Esq., earned an acquittal for his client, former policeman Eddie Myers, having convinced the jury that it was self-defense when Myers killed his sister-in-law (who was the assistant police chief). Myers told the jury that, yes, he grabbed two .40-caliber handguns and fired 36 shots, hitting the woman 14 times, and yes, the victim's own handgun was found by emergency workers still strapped inside its holster, but it was still self-defense.

Kenneth Hawthorn, a Jehovah's Witness proselytizer, filed a lawsuit in Adelaide, Australia, against a couple whose ram attacked him, battering him to the ground, as he approached the couple's door. (The parties settled the lawsuit in January.) (Bonus detail: The ram, since deceased, was named Shit for Brains.)

In December, Robert John Cusack, 45, was sentenced to 57 days in jail for a June smuggling caper on a flight to Los Angeles. He had four endangered songbirds and 50 illegal orchids in his luggage, and when one bird flew off down an airport corridor during an inspection, the agent asked if Cusack had anything else. "Yes," he said. "I've got monkeys in my pants" (actually, two endangered pygmy monkeys from Thailand, which Cusack dug down for and handed over).

Florida, after a 4-3 decision of the state Supreme Court in January, became the latest state to rule that a man who initially agrees to pay child support until age 21 cannot shed that obligation just because he subsequently proves by DNA testing that he could not be the kid's father. Cathy Anderson had told police officer Michael Anderson twice that she was sure the kid was his, after which he agreed to pay $8,000 a year in support, but after the DNA test, he claimed that her assurance constituted "fraud," a claim that the Supreme Court thus rejected. What the Hell is that about?!?

Police in New Britain, Conn., confiscated a 50-foot-long pile of stolen items in November, the result of a ritual scavenger hunt of the Canettes, New Britain High School's all-girl marching band drill team. According to The Hartford Courant, police, parents and school personnel were flabbergasted that 42 normally law-abiding girls could wantonly steal so many items in a single evening, but the girls apparently sincerely had a hard time believing that they had done anything wrong. Said one girl, who helped pull a mailbox out of the ground: "I just thought it was a custom ... kind of like a camaraderie thing (and) if the seniors said it was OK and they were in charge, then it was OK."

The town of Recklingshausen, Germany (near Cologne), which operates a zoo, found out in November that it could not summarily fire its zookeeper, even though it had caught him barbecuing and eating seven of his animals (five Tibetan mountain chickens and two sheep from Cameroons). After a labor court hearing, the town was forced to comply with German law and give the zookeeper six months' severance pay.

Australian Supreme Court Justice Barry O'Keefe rejected the challenge of a drug-possession suspect in November that his rights had been violated during his arrest. Contrary to the suspect's contention, O'Keefe said that when Rocky the police dog nuzzled the suspect's crotch, it was merely a "social gesture" that dogs habitually do, and not a sexual assault.

Michael Brown, 33, was arrested in Marked Tree, Ark., in January and charged with burglarizing the lobby of the Marked Tree Bank after security cameras caught him hauling away a clock radio, a CD player and a handful of Dum-Dum suckers, which the bank has on hand for customers' children. The next morning, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, police followed a trail of Dum-Dum wrappers down Frisco Street, across the railroad tracks, and into the mobile home park where Brown lives.

A student in Belle, West Virginia was suspended for three days for giving a classmate a cough drop. School principal Forest Mann reiterated the school's "zero-tolerance" policy...not to be confused with the "zero-intelligence" policy.

Fire investigators on Maui have determined the cause of a blaze that destroyed a $127,000 home last month - a short in the homeowner's newly installed fire prevention alarm system. "This is even worse than last year," said the distraught homeowner, "when someone broke in and stole my new security system..."

A medical student was doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. A woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. The medical student quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. The student told the mother that she better bring her daughter in to the Emergency room right away.

A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers. The first one shouted, "Nobody move!" When his partner moved, it startled the first bandit and he shot his accomplice.

An Illinois man pretending to have a gun kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines. The kidnapper then proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts.

Seems that a year ago, some Boeing employees on the field decided to steal a life raft from one of the 747s. They were successful in getting it out of the plane and home. When they took it for a float on the river, they were quite surprised by a Coast Guard helicopter coming towards them. It turned out that the chopper was homing in on the emergency locator that is automatically activated when the raft is inflated. They are no longer employed there.

A 9-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia received a one-day suspension under his elementary school's drug policy last week - for Certs! Joey Hoeffer allegedly told a classmate that the mints would make him "jump higher."

A motorist was unknowingly caught in an automated speed trap that measured his speed using radar and photographed his car. He later received in the mail a ticket for $40 and a photo of his car. Instead of payment, he sent the police department a photograph of $40. Several days later, he received a letter from the police that contained another picture of handcuffs.

A woman was reporting her car as stolen, and mentioned that there was a car phone in it. The policeman taking the report called the phone and told the guy that answered that he had read the ad in the newspaper and wanted to buy the car. They arranged to meet, and the thief was arrested.

Drug possession defendant Christopher Jansen, on trial in March in Pontiac, Michigan, said he had been searched without a warrant. The prosecutor said the officer didn't need a warrant because a "bulge" in Christopher's jacket could have been a gun. "Nonsense," said Christopher, who happened to be wearing the same jacket that day in court. He handed it over so the judge could see it. The judge discovered a packet of cocaine in the pocket and laughed so hard he required a five-minute recess to compose himself.

Oklahoma City: Dennis Newton was on trial for the armed robbery of a convenience store in a district court when he fired his lawyer. Assistant District Attorney Larry Jones said Newton, 47, was doing a fair job of defending himself until the store manager testified that Newton was the robber. Newton jumped up, accused the woman of lying and then said, "I should have blown your (expletive) head off." the defendant paused, then quickly added, "If I'd been the one that was there." The jury took 20 minutes to convict Newton and recommended a 30 year sentence.

AT&T fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked intellectual leadership". He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking intelligence.

R. C. Gaitlan, 21, walked up to two patrol officers who were showing their squad car computer equipment to children in a Detroit neighborhood. When he asked how the system worked, the officer asked him for identification. Gaitlan gave them his drivers license, they entered it into the computer, and moments later they arrested Gaitlan because information on the screen showed Gaitlan was wanted for a two year old armed robbery in St. Louis, MO.

A guy walked into a little corner store with a shotgun and demanded all the cash from the cash drawer. After the cashier put the cash in a bag, the robber saw a bottle of scotch that he wanted behind the counter on the shelf. He told the cashier to put it in the bag as well, but the cashier refused and said "Because I don't believe you are over 21." The robber said he was, but the clerk still refused to give it to him because he didn't believe him. At this point the robber took his driver's license out of his wallet and gave it to the clerk. The clerk looked it over, and agreed that the man was in fact over 21 and he put the scotch in the bag. The robber then ran from the store with his loot. The cashier promptly called the police and gave the name and address of the robber that he got off the license. They arrested the robber two hours later.

Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them, shouting please to come out and give himself up.

Two Kentucky men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off the truck. They panicked and fled, leaving the chain still attached to the machine, their bumper still attached to the chain, and their license plate still attached to the bumper.

A "tourist," supposedly on a golf holiday, stood in line at the customs counter. While making idle chatter, the customs official thought it odd that the golfer didn't know what a handicap was. The officer then asked the tourist to demonstrate his swing. He did - backwards. A substantial amount of narcotics was found in the golf bag.

Guns For Hire, an Arizona company specializing in staged gunfights for Western movies, got a call from a 47-year-old woman who wanted to have her husband shot. She was sentenced to four years in jail.

A Texan convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600 in damages rather than serve a two-year prison sentence. For payment, he provided the court a forged check. He got his prison term back, plus eight more years.

A luckless thief pleaded guilty to the attempted robbery of a convenience store in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. The thief told a passereby he was going to rob the store, gave the man a dollar, and asked him to go inside and buy a scarf to hide his identity during the crime. The bystander took the dollar, went inside the store... and called the police.

A thief in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina has learned a valuable lesson: if you're going to steal restaurant equipment, be sure to remove pictures of the original owner's grandchildren before setting the stuff up in your own restaurant. John Ubbing, owner of Giovanni's Pizzeria in Calabash, North Carolina, lost an assortment of pizza-making equipment in a March robbery. A refrigerator stolen in the heist later turned up inside the Myrtle Beach restaurant -- where cops found pictures of Ubbing's grandchildren still stuck to the side of it. The owner of the second restaurant was arrested.

During a high school break-in in Plymouth, North Carolina, two burglars found a camera in one of the classrooms and amused themselves by taking pictures of each other committing the crime. When they couldn't figure out how to get the film out of the camera, they concluded it wasn't loaded and left it behind. The men apparently didn't realize they'd been fooling around with a digital camera that stores pictures on a computer disk. Investigators downloaded the snapshots to a computer and got a complete photographic record of the break-in. The suspects were quickly arrested.

A Nevada fugitive wanted on fraud charges was arrested in Connecticut after he blew his cover by applying for a job... as a police officer. The Connecticut cops discovered the man's fugitive status during a standard background check. He had passed both the written and agility tests before being found out. Police called the man in to headquarters under the guise of getting his fingerprints, and served him with an arrest warrant instead.

Admitting his 0-4 record is not impressive "on paper," trainers announced that Lucky, a German shepherd guide dog for the blind in Wuppertal, Germany, is available for his fifth owner. Lucky led his first owner in front of a bus, killing him. Then he led the second off the end of a pier, drowning him. He nudged his third owner off a railway platform in front of an express train, killing him. And he walked his fourth owner into heavy traffic, abandoning him to be hit and killed. The new owner won't be told of Lucky's record -- the trainers say the dog might sense nervousness "and do something silly."

George Phillips of Meridian Mississippi was going up to bed when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things. He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?" and he said no. Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available. George said "Okay," hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again. "Hello. I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I've just shot all the sons of bitches!". Then he hung up. Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips residence. Of course, the police caught the burglars red-handed. One of the policemen said to George: "I thought you said that you'd shot them!" George said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"

Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.

A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head. You'd swear it was Greenville, wouldn't you?

A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.

The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in East St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.

A convict broke out of jail in Washington DC, then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.

Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.

When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.

A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.

An inmate at the San Mateo County, California, minimum-security jail decided he'd had enough of prison life and simply strolled away during work release. He got a little tired of walking after a while and stopped at a pay phone to call a friend to come pick him up. But try as he might, the convict couldn't remember his friend's phone number, so he called directory assistance to get it. Unfortunately, he accidentally dialed 911 instead of 411, then quickly hung up the phone when a dispatcher answered. The police sent out a cruiser to check on the 911 hang-up anyway and found the man still in the phone booth and still wearing his prison shirt, with the words PROPERTY OF SAN MATEO COUNTY HONOR CAMP written on it. "They could see it though the top of his jacket," Sheriff's lieutenant Larry Boss said. At least when they took the inmate back to celebrate his reunion with his prisoners, he was already dressed for the occasion.

Shortly after being made a jail trusty, inmate Ross Chadwell tried to escape the Benton County, Arkansas, Prison. He was soon captured and punished for his actions. He then filed a lawsuit against both the county and Sheriff Andy Lee, claiming civil rights violations. Chadwell accused Sheriff Lee of acting "recklessly" by making him a trusty and therefore putting him in a position that made it possible for him to attempt escape.

Randy Kraft, a convicted serial killer, filed a $60 million defamation lawsuit against Warner Books and the author of the book Angel of Darkness. Kraft, a death-row inmate convicted of the sexual torture and murder of sixteen men, claimed the book cast him in an unfair light by portraying him as a "sick, twisted" man.

A convicted criminal being escorted to jail in St. Petersburg, Florida, somehow managed to escape and go on the lam. During his escape, however, he suffered several deep cuts to his feet, but even with the loss of blood the criminal was able to vanish into thin air, and the authorities didn't have a clue as to his whereabouts. They got their break from the most unexpected of places, the local hospital. The authorities at the hospital got suspicious of their most recent patient, not because of his wounds but because of his words. When asked to fill out the standard hospital forms, on the line about the cause of the injury our escapee wrote, "Escape from jail."

A number of bank robberies are hampered because of holdup notes that include the robber's name and phone number, the lack of a weapon, an ineffective disguise, and the like, and usually these robbers don't make it out the door. But in the case of one aspiring bank robber, he didn't even make it in the door. Employees of the Durham, North Carolina, Federal Savings Bank became frightened when they saw a man in a sweatshirt with the hood pulled tightly over his face pounding loudly on the front door. Why couldn't he get in, was the door locked? Nope. The man was trying to push the door open, not having noticed the PULL sign above the handle.

A young entrepreneur in Baltimore, Maryland, looking to generate more sales, put up a sign announcing his wares on the side of a newspaper box. Two plainclothes police officers saw the unlawful advertisement and approached the man, asking if he had posted the sign. "Sure," he said. "It's the only way I can get people to stop." The sign in question offered the sale of ten-dollar bags of marijuana.