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Weird and/or silly
Crafty_Dog:
Man Burns Life Savings, Fails Suicide Bid
Tue December 2, 2003 10:31 AM ET
PARIS (Reuters) - A Frenchman who burned his life savings to a cinder before swallowing two bottles of pills is facing life with an empty bank account after neighbors foiled his suicide attempt.
The man, in his 40s, has been recovering in a psychiatric hospital since late October when neighbors in the southwestern town of Bordeaux saw smoke coming from his house and called the emergency services, the daily Liberation reported on Tuesday.
The man, who lived alone, had cleared out his bank balance of 240,000 euros ($288,500) and set fire to the pile of 500 euro notes in his bath before swallowing the pills, hoping to leave nothing behind after his death.
However, he was now eager to start a new life, his lawyer Dominique Remy told the newspaper. "He is not dangerous. It's just that he's destroyed all his worth," he said.
Crafty_Dog:
Cannibal Confesses in Shocking Trial
Wed Dec 3, 3:06 PM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By David Crossland
KASSEL, Germany (Reuters) - A German confessed on Wednesday to killing and eating a willing victim in a case that could make legal history, telling a shocked courtroom the experience was "like taking communion" in a religious service.
At the start of his murder trial in Kassel, central Germany, Armin Meiwes, 42, offered a full account of the killing that has gained him worldwide notoriety as "The Cannibal of Rotenburg" after the town where he lived.
Meiwes said there were "hundreds, thousands" of people seeking to fulfil their desires to eat humans or be eaten via Internet advertisements in forums called "Cannibal Cafe," "Guy Cannibals" and "Torturenet."
In testimony so frank it drew gasps from the public gallery, Meiwes said he had kept his victim's skull and plastic bags of flesh in his freezer. He ate about 44 pounds of the flesh, defrosting it bit by bit.
"With every piece of flesh I ate I remembered him," Meiwes, a self-assured and well-spoken computer repair man, told the judge. "It was like taking communion."
The killing took place in March 2001. Meiwes was arrested in December 2002 after police received a tip-off from someone who had seen one of his Internet adverts seeking a slaughter victim.
The trial is expected to last until the end of January and some 40 witnesses will be called, including some of Meiwes's Internet contacts.
The gaunt, bespectacled defendant said that during his upbringing alone with a dominant mother he had longed for a little brother he could make "part of me."
He told how he made contact online with a 43-year-old Berlin computer specialist identified only as Bernd-Juergen B.
He invited him to his elegant half-timbered home near Kassel and killed him with a kitchen knife in a "slaughtering room" he had built containing meat hooks, a cage and a butcher's table.
"He told me he had had the desire since he was a child to be slaughtered and eaten," Meiwes said. "He was very intelligent and I didn't see any sign that he was disturbed." Meiwes filmed the killing and the video tape may be shown to the court.
Defense lawyers have said the film shows Meiwes cutting off the victim's penis at the latter's request.
"It was important to him that his member be cut off and that he witness it," Meiwes said.
"He screamed terribly and jumped around the table but after a while he said he was surprised it didn't hurt and was very pleased that the wound bled so strongly," he added.
"It gave him pleasure."
MURDER OR EUTHANASIA?
Eventually the victim lost consciousness and Meiwes killed him with a knife. He hung up the corpse and cut it up, filming the process.
Prosecutors, who charged Meiwes with murder after a psychiatrist declared him fit to stand trial, are seeking a life sentence.
They concede the victim wanted to be killed but argue he was incapable of rational thought.
Meiwes's lawyer has pleaded for him to be convicted of "killing on request," a form of illegal euthanasia which carries a maximum five years sentence.
Legal experts say the charge of full murder may not stick given that the video film shows the victim to be willing. The case could reach the Federal Constitutional Court, Arthur Kreuzer of Giessen University's Institute for Criminology said this week.
Meiwes said he became obsessed with wanting a younger brother -- "someone to be part of me."
Using the pseudonym "Franky," he posted Internet ads saying: "If you are 18-25 you are my boy" or "Come to me I'll eat your delicious flesh."
Some 430 people responded to his e-mails within a year.
Crafty_Dog:
Dog robs gas station
A hungry bull terrier with a sweet tooth left his home to make a night raid on a gas station. The Statoil outlet's security cameras recorded the dog's stealthy hunt for his favorite type of chocolate, and a security guard busted the pooch without incident, newspaper Adressavisen reports.
Conan arrives around dawn, looking for something to satisfy his habit.
PHOTO: Adresseavisen
Conan makes a thorough search - he won't settle for just anything.
PHOTO: Adresseavisen
Is that the chocolate covered rice crisp?
PHOTO: Adresseavisen
Terrier Conan, aged 7, ended up behind bars and according to his owner the dog is a repeat offender.
"He is incredibly fond of food in general and sweets in particular. He has run off a few times before, and he always heads for food stores," owner Liss-Hege Jeremiassen told Adresseavisen.
Conan sneaked out the door Wednesday night and headed straight for only place open, a nearby Statoil station. The cameras picked him up sniffing around the candy shelves, poking his nose into the containers of sweets sold by loose weight, and snubbing all of these treats in search of his personal favorite, chocolate covered rice crisp. Here he stopped and devoured the contents of the container.
"When he was finished he let out this enormous burp," said Elisabeth Roel, who had the night shift at the station.
She tried to chase Conan out but the dog growled at this attempt to interrupt his chocolate raid. Roel then called the police, who turned the job over to Falken security.
"He's really a nice dog, but he doesn't have looks on his side. He spent the night next to a pit bull, but that went well. He's calm and friendly," said security guard Otto Olsen, who apprehended the hound.
Roel said she wouldn't have been worried if she had recognized Conan, but since he had escaped without his collar, she wasn't sure and wasn't about to take chances.
Crafty_Dog:
The challenge of the 'cannibal consensus'
By Clare Murphy
Armin Meiwes is, on the surface of things, an attractive, well-dressed, and seemingly amiable 42-year-old German.
He is also, by his own admission, a cannibal, who three years ago ate an engineer he had found through the internet. On Friday, a court will decide whether Mr Meiwes should spend just a couple of months behind bars or much of the rest of his life for this.
At stake is whether a person can be tried and imprisoned for murder when his victim had consented to be slaughtered.
'No death wish'
In March 2001, Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, 43, answered an advert Mr Meiwes had posted on the internet for a well-built male who was prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed. They met, and Mr Meiwes allegedly took Mr Brandes back to his home in Rotenburg, where the victim agreed to the removal of his penis, which Mr Meiwes then flamb?ed and served up to eat together.
Mr Brandes was then killed, cut up, and put in the freezer.
The act of cannibalism is not in itself a crime in Germany, meaning that particular legal avenue was closed to prosecutors. Instead they opted for a charge of sexually-driven murder, combined with a charge of "disturbing the peace of the dead" - despite the apparently consensual nature of the act. They are seeking a life sentence for the cannibal, whom they argue poses a danger to society.
The defence, for its part, says Mr Meiwes is guilty of nothing more than "killing by request" - an offence which carries a maximum sentence of five years incarceration. The defence team has sought to prove to the court that not one of the men who met the cannibal was made to go through with anything they were uncertain about.
London-based hotel worker Dirk Moller - one of dozens who allegedly replied to Mr Meiwes' adverts - was called to testify that he had even got as far as being chained to the bed and marked out for butchery before changing his mind and being released. The prosecution has conceded that Mr Brandes was an apparently willing victim. But they insist he was not of a sound mind when he accepted the offer, and moreover, they allege, Mr Meiwes was aware of this.
Mr Brandes' boyfriend has told the court that Mr Brandes, with whom he said he enjoyed a normal sex life, had no apparent desire to die.
Time for contracts
German experts say that while there may be hundreds of people with "cannibalistic tendencies" in Germany, only a tiny proportion of those would be willing to see their fantasies through to their fatal conclusion as Mr Brandes apparently did.
The kind of internet message boards where Mr Meiwes placed his own request still exist, but the real cannibals on these sites appear to be hard to find. Messages which request people for slaughter are often written off as jokes by other participants, many of whom are keen to stress that their interest in cannibalism is only a fantasy.
While Mr Meiwes received dozens of responses to his postings, he is believed to have only met four other men beside Mr Brandes, none of whom went through with the act. There are fears that should the court punish Mr Meiwes lightly in Friday's ruling, they will unwittingly encourage real cannibals. Yet if Mr Meiwes is put away for life after Friday's ruling, his defence lawyer has argued, the true horror of murder will be belittled.
Harald Ermel has said that murder "always happens against somebody's will". Should his client be convicted of little more than killing on request, Mr Ermel advises those planning similar forays into the world of cannibalism to ensure both parties draw up a contract before the act takes place.
Crafty_Dog:
Marshal leaves gun in airport bathroom
In Cleveland, passenger discovers what a forgetful air marshal left behind.
April 13, 2004: 8:36 AM EDT
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal air marshal accidentally left her gun in a restroom beyond the security checkpoints at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, officials say.
The weapon was discovered by a passenger who alerted an airline employee.
The marshal remained on the job after Thursday's incident when she visited an airport restroom and inadvertently left her gun behind, Dave Adams, spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service in Washington, said Saturday.
The restroom was beyond security checkpoints, airport spokeswoman Pat Smith said. So the risk was that someone could have discovered the gun and taken it on a flight.
"Right now we're still doing the investigation," Adams said. "It will determine what disciplinary action will be appropriate."
He declined to identify the marshal for security reasons, but said her work in the past had been "outstanding."
The United States deploys armed air marshals disguised as passengers on thousands of flights each week as part of security measures implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks that killed about 3,000 people.
Smith said the incident occurred about 4 p.m. on Thursday when the air marshal went to the restroom. While washing her hands, she placed her gun on a shelf, but forgot to take it with her when she left the room.
Soon afterward, a passenger found the gun and informed an airline employee, who removed it and told police. The gun later was returned to the marshal.
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