xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

A jury in Nacogdoches, Texas, convicted Jerry Don Hartless in January of killing his former best friend, Billy Bob Wallace, during a group drinking bout one night along the Angelina River. According to testimony, Hartless believed that Wallace had stolen his boat motor but couldn't prove it. Then, that night, the group discussed a recent Jerry Springer show featuring a black man claiming to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and the alcohol-fueled Hartless insinuated that Wallace's girlfriend, who was there, craved sex with black men. (All the drinking group were white.) When Wallace objected, Hartless shot him. A witness to the shooting was Wallace's adult son, Wild Bill Wallace (which is his actual birth name).

Northern Ireland's chief constable told reporters in January that the meticulously executed December robbery of Belfast's Northern Bank earned the thieves (who the constable believes are Irish Republican Army members) the equivalent of about US$50 million, but that because of a peculiarity of the U.K. banking system, Northern Bank can, and will, legally cancel and replace all the currency that was taken, rendering the stash, in the constable's words, "the largest theft of waste paper in the history of Northern Ireland." If the robbers hadn't taken so much money, the cancellation might not have been a worthwhile option.

Tammy Jean Warner was charged in February with negligent homicide in the 2004 death of her husband, Michael, who suffered acute alcohol poisoning (0.47 blood-alcohol level) caused by having ingested three liters of sherry wine, allegedly provided by Tammy via enema. The Lake Jackson, Texas, widow told reporters that she was only trying to help Michael (who she said had been addicted to enemas since childhood) and that he also did enemas with coffee, "castile soap, Ivory soap. He had enema recipes. I'm sure that's the way he wanted to go out (die) because he loved his enemas."
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD