Category: True Crime Tuesday

Today’s True Crime Tuesday is all about how far people will go for love, be it by putting more junk in their trunk, or by putting THEIR junk in an equine trunk.

First up is the unfortunate tale of brony Andrew Mendoza, as conveyed by The Huffington Post. (These are screenshots of the police report PDF available on the HuffPo.)

I know I usually walk you through this sort of thing, but this is a journey you must make on your own – and, besides, I’m busy arming myself against the inevitable horseman uprising.

Mr. Ed, however, isn’t the only one with “saddle sores” – as Miami New Times reports:

A Pahokee man known alternately as Calvin Butler or Tameika Butler has been charged with injecting silicon into his patients’ butts in a West Palm Beach motel and closing the wounds with Krazy Glue.

Butler victimized several would-be patients at the motel, sheriffs say. And he went so far to protect himself as stalking one man to the hospital, barging into his room in a wig and a fur coat, and screaming, “You need to remember who the #**$ is in charge!”

I wonder if Mendoza used the same line?

One victim, a woman with a young child, went to the motel four times between September and October last year, the Palm Beach Post reports, paying $200 a pop for silicon injections.

When she developed “painful nodules” over the injections, Butler told her to take “warm baths” and massage the spots. She eventually ended up with swollen lymph nodes, a chronic cough and several hospital stays.

Just how badly was Butler conducting the procedure? I don’t doubt the symptoms, but I do wonder how butt injections lead to a chronic cough.

Another man ended up at the Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center in December, where deputies found him with open sores on his ass where the injections were made.

The man, who later had to have parts of his butt surgically removed, says Butler charged him only $100 because he was a friend but told him he charged “strippers” $400 each. Furious that he’d gone to the hospital, Butler ended up berating him in his room, the sheriffs say.

Remember: Real friends don’t let friends get rented-room surgical procedures – it’s simply too much of a pain in the ass.

Today’s True Crime Tuesday takes a peek behind the police reports to reveal the difference between criminal fiction and reality.

First up, let us consider a very real car chase set off by a fellow by the name of Korrin Harmon.

In the movie version our criminal would be driving a stolen sports car, or at least a juiced Honda Civic. In reality, however, he drives a station wagon.

From PhoenixNewTimes.com:

According to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, Coolidge police initially tried to pull over 34-year-old Korrin Harmon for speeding in his station wagon around 8:20 p.m. on Saturday.

Harmon pulled over at a place called “Bob’s Service Station,” and an officer went to talk to Harmon about the speeding, but Harmon took off, and started driving through a field, according to information provided by PCSO.

“Bob’s Service Station”? I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d seen it on the big screen. Creatively, it’s barely one rung above dialing a 555 number.

At least, as far as car chases go, Harmon was courteous to his passengers.

Eventually, Harmon pulled over again and let out his three passengers. The officer who first tried to pull over Harmon detained the three passengers, while Harmon sped off again.

Several Coolidge cops started getting close to Harmon a short time later, and Harmon turned off, hitting a residential gas meter, and got lodged in a six-foot chain-link fence.

Even after this, Harmon tried to keep going, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

This, of course, is the time when our hero, Officer Broadchin, should step in and undertake an amazing maneuver/act of bravery – right?

At that time, one of the Coolidge officers tried to shoot out one of Harmon’s tires to keep him from continuing the chase, and his bullet rebounded off the metal rim, and hit another officer in the cheek.

Realizing the next ricochet might have his name on it, Korrin quickly surrendered.

So: If we can’t have a film worthy high-speed showdown, perhaps we can turn to a properly dramatic crime of passion?

As MiamiNewTimes.com reports:

Schumann, 51 of Vero Beach, and her 42-year-old husband had been going through a divorce. She hadn’t been living in their formerly shared apartment for months, but showed up late at night on December 21. [She] found her estranged hubby in bed with his new 33-year-old girlfriend and did not react well.

Schumann barged into the bedroom with a rifle and pointed it at the girlfriend while calling her a whore. She also allegedly said, “I’ll fucking kill you both.”

Now that’s a scene worthy of a Meryl Streep performance.

The husband was able to wrestle the gun away from Schumann, but during the fracas she kicked the girlfriend twice in the stomach.

A surprising turn! Spurned romance! Brutality! Streep would take an Oscar for this one – or, possibly some sort of fetish award. Whatever the case, no one can argue that she didn’t give a shit.

After being disarmed, Schumann peed on the carpet and defecated on the kitchen floor.

Having marked her territory, she dug deep to get in touch with her hate for the holiday season.

She then found yet another rifle in a downstairs closet, and went on a rampage while destroying several Christmas decorations.

Fortunately, no one (except perhaps whoever had to clean the carpets) was hurt.

In today’s True Crime Tuesday we continue to shatter the notion of women as “the weaker sex.”

First up, let us take a moment to mark the passing of one of the most unforgettable figures in True Crime: Was the lady in question a mafia boss? A serial killer? A notorious cat burglar?

No.

Via the ever fantastic AMMI comes this note on love and crime from ABCNews:

Linda Pugach, who was blinded in 1959 when her lover hired hit men to throw lye in her face […] has died, her husband said Thursday. She was 75.

Are you familiar with the tale of Linda’s blinding? Her husband almost certainly was, despite his denials.

Pugach, who hid behind dark glasses for the rest of her life, died Tuesday at the Long Island Jewish Hospital in Queens. The cause was heart failure, said her husband, Burton Pugach, who spent 14 years in prison for hiring […] thugs to attack [Linda] after she spurned him. He was married at the time, and the heinous attack became an instant tabloid sensation.

After his release, Pugach divorced his first wife and convinced [Linda] to marry him in 1974. He proposed to her on live television.

Disturbing? Yes, though perhaps not as unsettling as her later testimony.

“Testimony?” you may be asking: Why, yes, though not at the trial for her own blinding. Instead, she was called to her husband’s defense in regards to the OTHER mistress blinding that Burton had threatened.

Two decades after his release from prison, Pugach was accused in another case with chilling similarities but acquitted of the charges in 1997. He had been accused of threatening and harassing another lover after she tried to end their five-year affair. That woman testified that he threatened to make it “1959 all over again.”

[…]

Linda Pugach testified at that trial, describing her husband as a good man. Under cross-examination by Pugach, a disbarred lawyer who defended himself, she said couldn’t have sex with him after undergoing heart surgery in 1990.

The only clear winner in that incident may have been Pugach’s divorced first wife, but some ladies take less guff than others – from TheDenverChannel.com:

Alec Eric Arapahoe was reportedly drunk when he went to [his grandmother and great-aunt’s] house just before midnight, according to police records.

One of the women confronted Arapahoe about being intoxicated, and “demanded he turn over his Taser device,” the arrest report stated.

She told police that’s when Arapahoe got angry, and physically blocked the women from leaving. She also said Arapahoe grabbed the phone when she tried to call police.

Scary stuff, but I’ve learned that six decades of being a lady – the women were 60 and 61 – goes a long way towards toughening up a dame.

You know those clips in which burly policemen are knocked flat by a taser demonstration? The Araphoe sisters consider those fellows whiners.

When one of the women tried to run from the apartment, Arapahoe shot her in the back with the Taser. She told police she felt the pain, and felt her back muscles tighten up, but was able to get out and call police.

The only way this story might have gotten better is if she’d went back afterwards and spanked him.

Today’s TCT brings you not one, not two, but FOUR deliciously ridiculous criminal acts.

First up on the buffet, a man with an eating problem.

Florida (of course) Today reports:

“He was driving to work, she works at a Taco Bell in Palm Bay,” Martinez said.

Can you blame either of them for being hungry?

“During the course of the drive down to work they got into a verbal argument and she basically became upset.

Well, maybe hangry.

She kind of pushed his head, and he responded by biting (her thumb).

“He bit it completely off and spit it out on the floorboard.”

Palm Bay police victim advocates are working to help the woman. Martinez said hospital staff were not able to reattach her thumb.

Well, at least his anger issues weren’t as bad as, say, one of the heirs to Barney, TV’s purple dinosaur.

Authorities say the son of a co-creator of the long-running children’s show “Barney and Friends” has been arrested for allegedly shooting a Malibu neighbor.

[…]

Whitmore says the neighbor was critically wounded but is expected to survive. Whitmore says the shooting was the result of an ongoing dispute. – FoxNews.com

Rage is an international past time, however – even when vacationing.

From breakingworldnewstoday.com:

An Italian doctor didn’t realize that he was in another country with many eyes watching him.

[…]

Darius Napolitano, 41, was with his wife and two sons in the park of the resort Saturday afternoon when witnesses said he brutally kicked his 3 year old during a family argument, according to local reports.

Don’t worry though, a follow-up clarified how the doctor could have possibly done such a thing:

The police said Napolitano admitted having beaten the boy because he was misbehaving.

“I do not kick my kids in the face for nothing,” he said according to witnesses.

Apparently Robert Jarell Neal also had a reason for bloodshed, though his victims aren’t talking.

WRAL.com has the story:

Police said Terrance Ervin Daniels, 45, [who is deaf] was walking and using sign language on East Morehead Street Wednesday afternoon, when Robert Jarell Neal saw them and stabbed Daniels multiple times.

Talk about able-ism, what could have possibly brought on such a vicious act?

Was it a hate crime?

Some argue he may have thought it was self defense.

Witnesses to [the stabbing] said the victim […] was signing with another man when a third man mistook their conversation for gang signs and attacked.

Welcome to the first TCT of 2013! How were your holidays? Get any nifty presents? Get in any fights with family members?

Urooj Khan was, unfortunately, long gone before the year rolled over, but, if they celebrated, I’m sure his family had a gift-packed tree – and a tense holiday feast.

From CNN, emphasis is mine:

One day, Urooj Khan literally jumped for joy after scoring a $1 million winner on an Illinois lottery scratch ticket.

The next month, he was dead.

To be fair, however, it wouldn’t be much of a True Crime Tuesday if a month later he was sunning on the beaches of Morocco.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office initially ruled Khan’s manner of death natural. But after being prompted by a relative, the office revisited the case and eventually determined there was a lethal amount of cyanide in Khan’s system.o issue an amended death certificate that (established) cyanide toxicity as the cause of death, and the manner of death as homicide,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Steve Cina said Monday.

It’s interesting, perhaps, that the tip was called in by a relative, but I find it even more so that cyanide poisoning slipped through the first sweep for causes of death.

On June 26, Khan was all smiles at a 7-Eleven in the Rogers Park section of Chicago. Surrounded by his wife, daughter and friends, he held an oversized $1 million check and recalled his joy upon playing the “$3 million Cash Jackpot!” game, where tickets sell for $30 apiece.

He would have to wait a few weeks to collect his actual winnings, which amounted after taxes to about $425,000. According to CNN affiliate WGN, that check was issued July 19, but Khan never got to spend it.

I wonder what sort of daydreams Khan entertained in that money-less month? A new car? A new house? A new bride?

Whatever the case, someone was preparing a special sort of celebratory meal:

The next night, Khan came home, ate dinner and went to bed, according to an internal police department document obtained by the Chicago Tribune. His family later heard him screaming and took him to a local hospital, where he was later pronounced dead[.]

If it was, as I suspect, his wife, Khan really picked a winner – but to murder him the day after collecting the money? That takes Powerballs.