Least competent good ol' boys: In December, on their second try, six men managed to set fire to a cross in the yard of a Dade County, Ga., white woman whose daughter was dating a biracial man. But then they couldn't control the flames, which threatened an "innocent" white neighbor, provoking one of the men to call 911, leading eventually to their arrests. The county, in Georgia's northwest corner, is known as the "state of Dade" for its isolation and insularity (99.4 percent white), but Sheriff Philip Street did bring himself to denounce cross-burning as "old school."
Life imitates Christine: On Jan. 30, as Angel Eck, 20, drove her Pontiac Sunfire on I-70 toward Denver, she suddenly could not slow down. The car was locked in overdrive and climbed to 100 mph; the ignition would not disengage; and the clutch and accelerator were stuck. A half-hour later, two enterprising Denver police officers, having been alerted by cell phone and reprising a tactic from the old "CHiPs" TV show, slowed the car by allowing it to repeatedly bump the rear of their squad car until it came to a stop. A few days later, idling in the shop at Green Mountain Auto Service, the car jumped gears and pinned a mechanic against an inside wall until a colleague set the emergency brake.
Latest religious messages: Indian sadhu Lotan (aka Ludkan) Baba was reported in News of the Weird in 1995 for his 2,500-mile holy journey through the Indian countryside, traveling by lying on the ground and rolling over and over and over for the entire distance (doing from six to 13 miles a day). In September 2003 (reported in video on the CBS News website in January 2004), he set out on a 1,500-mile trip, rolling from Ratlam, India, to Lahore, Pakistan, where he said he hopes to thank President Pervez Musharraf for his India-Pakistan peace initiatives.
Bright ideas: Mile High Outfitters, a backcountry expedition organizer in Challis, Idaho, has petitioned the U.S. Forest Service for permission to install three commercial, recreational hot tubs smack in the middle of an unspoiled wilderness area, and the service is now considering the proposal (the public comment period ended early this month). Each tub would require 1,250 gallons of water, to be heated by wood-burning stove and replenished every three days in-season, even though motorized vehicles to bring the water in are not now permitted.Burnsville, Minn., according to city planner Mike Niewind, hopes to solve some garbage, energy, odor and environmental concerns all in one project by expanding its landfill, by 2007, to create an electricity-producing methane plant (to power 3,000 homes) underneath an 18-hole golf course that will be built on a pristine, manmade, 100-foot-high plateau offering scenic views of the Mississippi River Basin.
Least competent criminals: At his trial in November for stealing the equivalent of $150,000 worth of jewelry from a house, Daniel Dady, 20, offered the defense of lack of motive, in that he had just inherited the equivalent of $30,000 and did not need more. The jury found him guilty anyway, and at his sentencing in January, Judge Peter Jacobs not only sentenced him to four-and-a-half years in detention but also ordered him to hand over the inheritance to his victim as partial restitution (the judge would not have known about the inheritance had Dady not spoken up in November).
Precocious kids: An 8-year-old boy, accused of fondling four 7-year-old girls, agreed to enter sex-offender rehabilitation (Mount Clemens, Mich., December). And a 12-year-old girl, who was improperly touched by a 40-year-old man (resulting in his conviction for lewd conduct), was revealed by court investigators to have voluntarily performed oral sex on, or intercourse with, at least 40 men (Monterey, Calif., February).
Also, in the last month: Farrah Daly, 27, who told officers (upon her arrest for allegedly stealing $1 million in jewels from her employer) that she was "too cute" to go to prison, was sentenced to three years in prison (Akron, Ohio).
(Corrections: Three weeks ago, I reported that serial killer Andrew Cunanan had been a "former lover" of Gianni Versace, when in fact no such relationship has ever been established; and I reported that an owl with cataracts had been fitted with "contact" lenses, when the owl had merely been surgically provided with "artificial" lenses. I apologize for the errors.)
CHUCK SHEPHERD