Lead Stories
In October in Fort Worth, Jimmy Watkins, 34, got only four months in jail for killing his wife, whom he caught flagrante delicto with her lover; the jury accepted his defense of “sudden passion” even though he fired one shot, then went out for a few minutes before returning to finish her off. Also in October Ontario’s court of appeals sentenced Michael Nikkanen to probation for rape, in part so he could keep attending his son’s hockey games. And Karine Gaelle Epailly, 25, of Alexandria, Virginia, got a suspended sentence in the death of her infant daughter, whom she abandoned outside in near-freezing rain, also in October.
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In September, Charlie Logan, sheriff of Pickett County, Tennessee, resigned, saying that he needed to fight charges that he’d been having sex with a 15-year-old girl. However, according to some observers, that was to distract from another charge: the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was inquiring into whether Logan cheated on his GED test. (Tennessee sheriffs must be high school graduates.)
The Hardy Blind
In Edwardsville, Illinois, in October, a 48-year-old woman was accidentally shot to death by her husband as the couple posed in an Old West-style wedding photo with him holding a rifle. And in Willingboro, New Jersey, in November, as two partners in a record store were rehearsing what they would do if they ever got robbed, the partner acting as the clerk accidentally shot to death the partner acting as the robber.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belschwender.
