Lead Story
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
According to the prosecutor in a case tried in September in Lewes, England, 42-year-old David Churchward told police after his arrest that the marijuana he’d been growing–he was caught, naked, allegedly tending to 638 plants–was for his wife, who had difficulty sleeping. Also in September, Reuters reported that a 55-year-old woman facing drug charges in Lobez, Poland, told police her marijuana crop was for her cow, which had been “skittish and unruly” before she started putting pot in its feed.
In August at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court in London, Andrew Curzon, a 19-year-old law student and member of an old aristocratic family, pleaded guilty to forgery charges for having tried to cash his 70-year-old neighbor’s $220,000 pension-fund check, which was delivered to him by mistake. According to his lawyer Curzon suffers from the mental disorder dyspraxia, which renders him unable “to engage in logical thinking.”
Charmers
In July 30-year-old Donald Bilby, serving time in a New Jersey prison for auto theft, pleaded guilty to hoax charges for sending letters last year to FBI and CIA offices, two banks, and a post office in which he threatened to set off bombs and spread anthrax unless he received $20,000. The letters–some of which contained a white, powdery substance (which turned out to be harmless) and a piece of paper marked “anthrax”–were signed with his name and inmate number so the extorted money could be deposited in his jail account. In August 19-year-old Abdullah Date was apprehended in Brooklyn; apparently angry over a previous drug arrest, he had allegedly sent an envelope to police at the 73rd Precinct containing a white, powdery (and harmless) substance and a taunting, obscenity-filled letter that included the sentence “Ha ha thought it was anthrax.” The letter ended “Catch me if you can” and supplied both Date’s name and return address. Also in August the Associated Press reported that according to an affidavit, 25-year-old Leon Matter had admitted to sending an envelope containing a white, powdery (harmless) substance to the FBI office in Sandusky, Ohio, then asking friends to tell the feds he’d done it. Matter, who had been indicted on child porn charges in June, reportedly told agents that he feared for his safety in prison and wanted to get arrested for something less inflammatory.
