by Chuck Shepherd LEAD STORY * An Associated Press dispatch from Thailand in January reported on a Bangkok mechanic named Somsong Thanopwattana, who ingests quantities of lube grease, which he first tried five years ago. He prefers 20/50 grade and says his bowel movements are the best he's ever had. His doctor, however, has cautioned him against the diet, pointing to grease's combustibility and warning him against passing gas close to an open flame. [Asahi Evening News-AP, 1-16-95] THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY * In April, three members of San Francisco's Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society pleaded guilty to smuggling over 200 rare plants into the U. S. from Asia. Said another Society member, who speculated on their motive: "Carnivorous plants can really give you an obsession. ... I started out with a Venus's flytrap 35 years ago. ... You get one and you want another one." [San Francisco Examiner, 4-16-95] * Phoenix, Ariz., police arrested a Christian school headmaster, Michael William Wetton, in March and charged him with child abuse. A woman and her 15-year-old daughter had met with Wetton to consider enrolling the girl, and, according to police, Wetton demonstrated the school's Christian discipline by forcing the girl to strip and submit to a paddling while reciting the Lord's Prayer. [Arizona Republic, 3-22-95, 5-20-95] * Denver, Colo., police arrested Milton Edward Anderson, 63, in March and said he was their principal suspect in a wave of about 200 recent brassiere-slashings (right cup only) at retail stores. Anderson denied the charge but admitted he was wearing women's underwear at the time he was arrested. [Rocky Mountain News, 3-28-95] * In March, librarians in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties in California were on the lookout for a mystery slasher who had removed the pages from poetry books in several libraries. Speculated the editor of a poetry magazine interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle, "The poetry world attracts people on the fringes. ... Maybe this person thinks these poems should be in a different style or form, or wants them to rhyme." [San Francisco Chronicle, 3-25-95] * In February in East Moline, Ill., Benjy G. Kremenak, 39, pleaded guilty to having stalked a woman for nearly three years. His hearing had been postponed from May 1994 because the judge at that time became alarmed when Kremenak several times during the hearing spontaneously broke out singing his rendition of "Chapel of Love." [Quad-City Times, Feb95] * In December, Charles Moody, 34, was arrested in Louisville, Ky., and charged with killing his mother and brother, wrapping the bodies in plastic so that some features were visible, and leaving them at curbside for garbage pickup. He told onlookers quite unconvincingly that they were only fake bodies. Said a local psychologist interviewed by the Louisville Courier-Journal, "[Moody's] is a classic example of denial that will be taught in classrooms for years." [Louisville Courier-Journal, 12-7-94] * In April in Haddon Heights, N. J., police charged Ms. Leslie Nelson with the murders of two police officers who had come to her home to serve a warrant for weapons violations. Nelson resisted arrest and barricaded herself inside for 14 hours. The 6-foot-2 Nelson, who had recently undergone a sex-change operation to cease being Mr. Glenn Nelson, was seen during the standoff at a window in the home holding a rifle while clad in G-string and halter top. [Houston Chronicle-Phila. Inquirer, 4-21-95] * In January, months of investigative work by the Warren (Ohio) Tribune-Chronicle resulted in murder charges being filed against a man for a 1978 murder that had been officially reported as a suicide by county coroner Joseph A. Sudimack, who had retired in 1987. Still being investigated are several other of Sudimack's "suicide" determinations, including one case of a man who was shot and run over by a bulldozer; another of a man who was found hanged, on his knees, with toilet paper stuffed in his mouth; and another of a man who died of carbon monoxide poisoning from an inoperable lawn mower. [Tuscaloosa News-AP, 2-12-95] * Danny Strickland, 34, was arrested in Savannah, Ga., in November after a shoot-out with police, and charged with killing his father. Among the evidence against Strickland was a to-do list he had made for disposing of the body (e.g., nail windows closed, repair bullet holes, melt bullets) and some equipment he had purchased to dispose of the body (e.g., a meat grinder). [Post & Courier-AP, 11-21-94] * In January, attorney Lawrence Gottfried, 50, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for destroying documents during his tenure with the Board of Veterans' Appeals in Washington, D. C. According to Gottfried's attorney, Gottfried cracked under domestic and work-related stress. He removed or tore up files from more than 30 veterans' cases he had been working on in order to return the cases as "incomplete" so he would not have to work further on them. [Washington Post, 1-24-95] I DON'T THINK SO * In a May story on the racial harassment of Lateef Saibu by his neighbors in Providence, R. I., one neighbor quoted Saibu's chief antagonist as saying he opposed the Saibu family's moving there because "it would bring down [my] property value." According to the Providence Journal-Bulletin, the neighborhood consists of seven houses and three small industries "jammed up against a hilly dead-end," with "bare dirt yards," rusted "junk cars and truck tops," "cracked windows," and facades with "curling shingles." [Providence Journal-Bulletin, 5-27-95] * According to Allentown, Pa., district attorney Robert Steinberg, the skinhead brothers Bryan and David Freeman, who are charged with the brutal February murders of their parents, don't really believe the skinhead doctrine of racial hate. Steinberg says they have told others they acquired their forehead tattoos (e.g., "Berserker") "because it was a good way of meeting girls." [Columbia Daily Tribune-Knight-Ridder, 4-27-95] * In a May letter to a California state senator, the Motion Picture Association of America wrote that Hollywood is not responsible for any increase in violence in society and that "in fact, the opposite may be true." According to MPAA executive Vans Stevenson, the sexual revolution and the civil unrest and rioting on college campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s must have been produced by kids' watching "healthy" shows like "Captain Kangaroo." [San Jose Mercury News, 5-5-95] Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved. Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.