Dallas police think someone lived with skeleton of 93-year-old on couch
DALLAS - The skeletal remains of a 93-year-old woman may have remained on a couch in her living room for months while one or more people continued living in the house, authorities said.
Neighbors reported seeing cars come and go from the home as recently as this week before police, doing a welfare check at the request of a neighbor, found a body inside Monday.
“What is a little bizarre is it appears that someone was living there with her for some time,” Dallas police Sgt. Gene Reyes told The Dallas Morning News.
PITTSBURGH — A newlywed couple spent the night in separate jail cells — she in her wedding gown — after police said they brawled with each other, then members of another wedding party, at a suburban Pittsburgh hotel.
The fight started Saturday night after a reception when he knocked her to the floor with a karate kick in the seventh-floor hallway of a Holiday Inn, according to police. It escalated when she attacked two guests from another wedding party who came to her aid, police said.
The melee moved to an elevator and then to the lobby, where the couple threw metal planters at the two guests of the other party, causing minor injuries, police charged.
“It was pretty wild,” Ross police Sgt. Dave Syska said.
Dentist David W. Wielechowski, 32, of Shaler, and Christa Vattimo, 25, had married a month earlier in the Bahamas but repeated their vows Saturday at a reception for 150 guests. They were checking into their room when the argument began, police said.
Police arrived to find the dentist lying on the lobby floor and his bride screaming, they said.
Authorities charged them both with simple assault, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, and the bride with an additional count of public intoxication. They face a May 7 preliminary hearing.
A district judge considered issuing a restraining order against Wielechowski, but his new bride declined the measure.
The couple declined comment upon their release Sunday morning.
She left with her father, still dressed in her white gown.
Wielechowski left alone, sporting a swollen eye, tuxedo pants, a bloody T-shirt and one shoe.
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AMSTETTEN, Austria (Reuters) - A 73-year-old Austrian electrical engineer has confessed to holding his daughter captive in a secret, windowless cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children by her, police said on Monday.
The case, centered on a nondescript two-storey building in the small industrial town of Amstetten, bears chilling similarities to that of Austrian Natascha Kampusch who spent eight years locked up in a basement before escaping in 2006.
Some parts of the cell in which the family were kept were no more than 1.70 meters (5 ft 6 in) high and officials said the basement even contained a padded cell.
“This is an appalling crime. I know of no comparable case in Austria,” Franz Prucher, head of security for Lower Austria told a news conference.
Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, says her father, Josef Fritzl, lured her into the basement of the block in 1984 and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.
Three of her children, aged 19, 18 and 5, had been locked up in the basement with her since birth and had never seen sunlight, police said, raising worries about their physical and mental state. The younger two were boys, the eldest a girl.
Three other children — two girls and one boy — were brought up by Josef and his wife.
As well as confessing to locking up his daughter for 24 years and siring the seven children, Fritzl also admitted to burning the body of the seventh child in the heating system when it died soon after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of criminal investigations in the state of Lower Austria.
All the victims are receiving medical treatment, said police. State prosecutors said Fritzl would be summoned before a judge later on Monday.
Investigators spent the day combing through the cells where the victims had been held captive. Forensic experts in white uniforms and gloves carried out boxes of evidence from the house which is on a busy street with shops.
Fritzl had hidden the entrance to the cell behind shelves and only he knew the secret code for the reinforced concrete door, said officials.
Photographs showed a narrow passageway leading into other rooms which included a cooking area, sleeping area and a small bathroom with a shower. A tube provided ventilation.
Amstetten, located in rolling hills about 130 km (80 miles) west of Vienna, is an industrial town of about 22,000 people.
HOSPITAL VISIT
The case unfolded when the 19-year-old girl became seriously ill and was taken to hospital, prompting doctors to appeal for the girl’s mother to come forward to provide more details about her medical history.
Fritzl then brought Elisabeth and her remaining two children out of the basement, telling his wife — who thought their “missing” daughter had chosen to return home, police said.
Elisabeth agreed to make a comprehensive statement to the police after receiving assurances she would have no further contact with her father, who she said abused her from the age of 11.
Kampusch, who spent her teenage years held captive, offered to help the victims and told ORF radio she might talk to the family.
“I can imagine that it is very difficult both for the mother of the children as well as for the wife of the perpetrator to get through this,” she said.
Psychiatrist Max Friedrich, who treated Kampusch, said the children were undergoing tests in hospital, in particular for problems with their eyes and skin due to the lack of daylight.
“And socially … the (children) could not develop any sort of sense of community which they would get from going to school or playgroup,” Friedrich told Reuters.
SHAME
The case has raised questions about how authorities and neighbors failed to notice anything unusual in the “house of horrors,” not least because officials said Fritzl had over the years built extensions to the secret cellar.
“The community of Amstetten should drown in shame … The neighbors are turning a blind eye,” the Oesterreich newspaper wrote in an editorial.
The daily Der Standard wrote: “The whole country must ask itself what is really, fundamentally going wrong.”
Another puzzle is how Josef’s wife Rosemarie could have been unaware of what was going on.
Police have said they believe Rosemarie did not know what happened to her daughter when she disappeared in 1984. It was assumed Elisabeth had left voluntarily when her parents received a letter from her saying they should not search for her.
BENTONVILLE, Ark. - An inmate awaiting trial on a murder charge is suing the county, complaining he has lost more than 100 pounds because of the jailhouse menu.
Broderick Lloyd Laswell says he isn’t happy that he’s down to 308 pounds after eight months in the Benton County jail. He has filed a federal lawsuit complaining the jail doesn’t provide inmates with enough food.
According to the suit, Laswell weighed 413 pounds when he was jailed in September. Police say he and a co-defendant fatally beat and stabbed a man, then set his home on fire.
“On several occasions I have started to do some exercising and my vision went blurry and I felt like I was going to pass out,” Laswell wrote in his complaint. “About an hour after each meal my stomach starts to hurt and growl. I feel hungry again.”
But Laswell then goes on to complain that he undertakes little vigorous activity.
“If we are in a small pod all day (and) do next to nothing for physical exercise, we should not lose weight,” the suit says. “The only reason we lost weight in here is because we are literally being starved to death.”
No hot meals?
The suit also asks that the county be ordered to serve hot meals. The jail has served only cold food for years.
The meals, provided through Aramark Correctional Institution Services, average 3,000 calories a day, jail Capt. Hunter Petray told The Morning News of northwest Arkansas for a story Saturday.
A typical Western diet consists of 2,000 to 3,000 calories a day.
Laswell’s suit was filed without a lawyer in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville.
Aramark is one of the world’s biggest food service providers and is owned by an investment group led by CEO Joseph Neubauer with financial partners from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.
A Liberal motion calling for Ottawa’s Peace Tower flag to be lowered whenever Canadian soldiers are killed abroad was passed in the House of Commons Wednesday.
The motion passed 142-115, supported by the Liberals and the NDP.
However, the Conservative government is suggesting it will ignore the non-binding motion and ask a committee to come up with a wide-ranging policy on when the flag should be at half-mast.
Rather than lowering the national flag every time a Canadian soldier is killed, the Tories wants to put more emphasis on Remembrance Day, lowering the flag once a year in honour of all Canadian soldiers killed.
MPs voted Wednesday on the Liberal motion that would require a moment of silence and lowering the Canadian flag on the Peace Tower for all dead soldiers, even as a report recommends cutting back on the honour.
Jason Kenney, secretary of state for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, told CTV’s Canada AM on Wednesday that the current policy, which sees the flag lowered for every soldier’s death, hurts the flag’s status as a symbol of national pride.
Royal Canadian Legion and other veteran’s associations, as well as many in the military, support the position, Kenney said.
VANCOUVER — A brazen bikini bandit has been pinched in Rutland, B.C. — wearing one of his stolen suits.
The teenaged boy suspected of being a serial swimsuit swiper was pulled over when a stolen van hit a spike belt - and police found the culprit wearing a frilly pink bikini.
“When the police told me, it was hard to keep a straight face,” said victimized shopkeeper Darlene Lehoux, owner of the Serenity Tanning Salon.
“The only pink one that was stolen had little frills on the bottom, and little frills on the bra too.”
Lehoux’s shop has been hit three times in the last year, and each time the till was untouched, but bikinis went missing. The last time her security camera caught the boyish bandit on tape.
“He dilly-dallies around as if he’s shopping at Wal-Mart,” said Lehoux. “He takes a few bikinis, and heads out to the van.
“Then he comes back, and looks at the sunglasses, and looks at the bikinis again.”
Lehoux raced down to the store when the call came in, and spotted the thief three doors down, exiting another shop and leaving in the stolen van.
“I don’t know what else he needed in the other store - maybe he was looking for makeup and hair products,” joked Lehoux. “But I got his licence plate number.”
Lehoux lost 42 bikinis this time around, but 25 were recovered.
A 15-year-old boy faces a number of charges, and will appear in court in June.
ALBANY, N.Y. - Ryan Potulny scored at 2:58 of the fifth overtime to give the Philadelphia Phantoms a 3-2 victory over the Albany River Rats early Friday in the longest game in American Hockey League’s 72-year history.
In the previous longest game in the AHL, Michael Ryder scored at 14:56 of the fourth overtime to give Hamilton a 2-1 victory over Houston in the 2003 Calder Cup finals.
In the longest game in NHL history, Mud Bruneteau scored at 16:30 of the sixth overtime to give the Montreal Maroons a 1-0 victory over Detroit in the 1936 semifinals.
Michael Leighton made 98 saves for the River Rats, and Michael Teslak stopped 65 shots for the Phantoms.
Philadelphia’s Jared Ross tied it at 2 at 15:13 of the third period with his second goal of the game. Kiel McLeod scored twice in regulation for Albany.
