NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again

Fire investigators said Bryan M. Herzog, 54, intentionally set fire to a home in Virginia Beach, Va., owned by his ex-girlfriend to punish her. She managed to jump out of a window to safety, but Herzog died in the blaze from smoke inhalation and burns. (Norfolk’s WTKR-TV)

Phantom of the Attic

A woman who broke up with her boyfriend 12 years ago discovered the 44-year-old man living in the attic of her home in Rock Hill, N.C. Identifying herself only as Tracy, she said she was using her laptop one night but couldn’t shake the feeling that “something just ain’t right.” She heard strange noises and noticed insulation falling from the ceiling. Later, she saw nails in the ceiling fall to the floor and thought “there was some poltergeist stuff going on.”

She called her nephew, who went into the attic and found the man, recently released from prison, sleeping inside a heating unit. The nephew noticed the man was able to peek at Tracy through an air vent and that cups containing feces and urine were all over the attic. After he was discovered, the man offered no explanation but climbed out of the attic and walked away with a smile. Tracy called police, but he was gone when they arrived. (Charlotte Observer)

Sex Is Its Own Punishment

Police arrested April Dawn Peters, 31, in Newport, Tenn., after they said she hit a 51-year-old man on the head at least five times with a hammer while they were having sex. Sgt. Steve Johnson reported that Peters had also been having sex with the hammer. (The Newport Plain Talk)

David and Mindi Rice, both 29, spent the evening at their home in Pasco County, Fla., injecting themselves with prescription drugs and having sex with a 24-year-old woman, according to sheriff’s deputies. They all fell asleep. When Mindi Rice awoke during the night, she found her husband having sex with their friend, but without her. She grabbed a loaded revolver, threatened to kill the woman and fired a round into the ceiling. David Rice grabbed the gun and threatened to kill his wife, firing a bullet that missed her head. Meanwhile, the younger woman called 911 and fled. 

When deputies arrived, the Rices refused to come outside, so a SWAT team was assembled. After a two-hour standoff, the couple came outside, but the husband fought with deputies who shocked him with a Taser and ran back inside. Negotiators finally talked him into surrendering. In addition to filing multiple charges, deputies found that Mindi Rice was on probation for stealing a credit card in 2011 so she could use it to bail her husband out of jail. (Tampa Bay Times)

When Guns Are Outlawed 

Police reported a 28-year-old woman in Bellingham, Wash., hit her 31-year-old boyfriend on the top of his head with a glass bong. (The Bellingham Herald)

A New Zealand court sentenced Phillip Russell, 46, to six months in jail for striking his wife in the chest with an ostrich egg because her pet pig ran amok and damaged his power saw. (Agence France-Presse)

Police accused Keith Paro, 34, of battering his girlfriend with a 4-foot python during a domestic altercation in West Springfield, Mass. (Springfield’s The Republican)

Polygamy Follies 

When Nigerian businessman Uroko Onoja returned from drinking at a bar in Ogbadibo, he had sex with the youngest of his six wives, Odachi Onoja. The other five wives entered the bedroom armed with knives and sticks, and demanded he have sex with them, too. He had sex with four of them before he stopped breathing. “I tried to resuscitate him,” Odachi Onoja said, “but when the other wives saw what had happened, they all ran off laughing into the forest, leaving me with the corpse.” Okpe Odoh, the village head, confirmed the incident had been reported to police. (New York’s Daily News)

Infernal Triangles 

Candice Lee, 37, and her husband had an open marriage and invited her former lover, Shakir Muilam, 45, to live with them at their home in Monroe County, Fla. after he was diagnosed with cancer. Sheriff’s deputies said that when she began having a relationship with a new boyfriend, Muilam objected. She explained to the deputies that she grabbed a .22-caliber rifle and shot him in the thigh. (Miami Herald)

When Nashville police pulled Michael McCarrell over for failing to use his turn signal, they found a 17-year-old girl sandwiched between him and his wife in the front seat. The couple explained they met the girl on a dating website and picked her up in Kentucky so Amanda McCarrell, 27, could have sex with her. Although the couple insisted they didn’t realize the girl was under 18, police charged them with sexual exploitation of a minor. (Nashville’s The Tennessean)

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

A sheriff’s deputy who arrested David A. Kappheim, 60, in Lake Park, Fla., after his girlfriend reported he threatened to kill her, said Kappheim admitted trying to kill his girlfriend three other times because “he was very conservative and she was a liberal.” While inside the apartment they shared, the deputy found documents suggesting that Kappheim is obsessed with Fox News and the Republican Party, and may be a danger to others. (Palm Beach Post)

Police said Holly Solomon, 28, ran over her husband in Gilbert, Ariz., blaming him for President Obama’s re-election because he didn’t vote. She told police she was just trying to scare David 

Solomon by chasing him all over a parking lot in her Jeep, but her foot slipped on the accelerator. He was hospitalized in critical condition. (Associated Press)

Nice Work If You Can Get It

With China’s 11 health ministry sperm banks unable to meet demand by childless couples, a black market for sperm is thriving. Noting that freelance donors suggest impregnation by intercourse is easier and more reliable than artificial injection, Li Shaohua, 28, the organizer of an online group of voluntary sperm donors, said couples insist on trying artificial insemination first but in the end usually resort to sex with the donor. (Indo-Asian News Service)

Love Is Blind 

Victor Cingolani, who is serving 13 years in an Argentine prison for the murder of Johana Casas, announced plans to marry the victim’s twin sister, Edith Casas, 22. Cingolani denied killing Johana, a model with whom he had a relationship, and said his relationship with her was “casual” but that he is genuinely “in love” with Edith. She maintains that Cingolani was unjustly convicted, but the twins’ mother, Marcelina del Carmen Orellana, declared her daughter is “psychologically ill.” (BBC News)

Can’t Get No Satisfaction 

After Lynette Lee told police in Clarksville, Tenn., that a man she met online raped her, she admitted lying. The investigating detective reported she said they’d been on a date and had consensual sex, but she claimed rape because “she did not enjoy it, and it was bad.” (Nashville’s WTVF-TV)

Sheriff’s deputies who arrested Jennie Scott, 50, for battering her 32-year-old boyfriend explained she attacked him because the two “were giving each other pleasure in the bedroom” and he “finished first and stopped pleasuring her.” (The Smoking Gun)

Bedtime Stories

Authorities charged Tina Berryhill Rucker, 42, with domestic violence after they said she choked a man sleeping with her in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for taking too much of the bed covers. (Associated Press)

Eric Brian Pauly, 50, pleaded guilty to shooting his girlfriend to death at their mobile home in Winfield, W.Va., because she woke him up “in the middle of the night.” (The Charleston Gazette)

Recipes for Disaster

In a recorded interrogation presented during the Los Angeles murder trial of David Viens, 49, the chef admitted boiling the body of his 39-year-old wife for four days until little was left but her skull. His motive was to hide evidence of her death. A jury convicted Viens of second-degree murder. (CBS News)

Authorities charged Frederick Hengl, 68, with murdering his wife after they found her severed head in the freezer and her body parts cooking on the stove. District Attorney Katherine Flaherty said there was no evidence of cannibalism. (Associated Press)

Modesty First

The Wreck Beach Preservation Society asked municipal officials in Vancouver, British Columbia, to ban ogling at Vancouver’s best-known nude beach. Society spokesperson Judy Williams told the Metro Vancouver environment and parks committee that party boats and jet skis have been flocking to Wreck Beach and spoiling its secluded ambiance. (CBC News)

Not Here to Talk About the Past

Physician-turned-tea-partyer Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn., easily won re-election to a second term as an avowed anti-abortion, family values candidate, despite testifying at his divorce trial that he had “sexual relationships with at least two patients, three co-workers and a drug representative” while he was married. He also admitted supporting his ex-wife’s decision to have two abortions before they wed and reportedly urged one of the patients he had sex with to get an abortion. DesJarlais has consistently supported anti-abortion legislation, scoring the National Right to Life’s coveted 100 percent rating. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

Seeing Is Believing

Women who “test drive” larger breasts before getting implants wind up choosing even bigger implants, according to a British plastic surgeon. Mark Henley, who runs East Midlands Aesthetics in Nottingham, explained the “try-before-you-buy” idea involves wearing a heavily padded bra with 10 gel-filled pads on each side for two weeks to see how they like having bigger breasts. After using the technique on 162 women, he told the annual meeting of the British Association for Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons that on average they chose implants 30 percent larger than they first planned. He theorized that the padded bras boost their confidence. (Britain’s Daily Mail)

News and Blues is compiled from the nation’s press. To contribute, submit original clippings, citing date and source, to Roland Sweet in care of The New Times.