Lead Stories
In September in Columbus, Ohio, Peter “Commander Pedro” Langan was convicted of federal assault and gun charges stemming from a 1996 shootout with police. Langan also has been convicted of two bank robberies and faces trial in four others as the leader of a neo-Nazi, white-supremacist gang that used the robberies to fund its activities. To show Langan’s kinder, gentler side at the trial, his lawyer brought in a man and a woman, both preoperative transsexuals, both of whom Langan was dating around the time of the robberies while dressing exclusively as a woman. Langan had called the lovers his “business partners” because neo-Nazis are not known to approve of such lifestyles.
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Wired reported in its October issue that Jason Gorski, 39, periodically stages concerts in San Francisco-area parks using surplus diesel-powered coast guard foghorns that yield a “stomach-clenching” 140 decibels, enraging neighbors. Because of the overpowering noise, Gorski is forced to wear sound-insulating protective clothing from head to toe. Local police were dismayed to learn that Gorski does not need a permit for his concerts because technically he plays acoustically.
Joe Murphy of Janesville, Wisconsin, complained to reporters in August that it was the government’s fault he had just gambled away his $40,000 social-security disability grant. Murphy is reported to have a mild mental impairment but fought for and won the right to have his grant paid directly to him instead of to a third-party adviser, which is typical in cases like his. During the fight, Murphy told a reporter, “I said, ‘Just gimme the money, gimme the money, gimme the money.’” Murphy now says, “If you’re mentally or physically disabled, the government needs to protect [you]. What they did was give me a loaded gun and say, ‘Shoot yourself.’”
The San Jose Mercury News reported in April that Eric Abrams, former star placekicker for the Stanford football team, had just been hired to work with the San Jose State University baseball team as a public relations assistant. Abrams pleaded guilty in 1996 to making harassing phone calls, which the prosecutor said were part of his scheme to obtain nude photographs of high school athletes by telling them he was doing a study of physiques for college sports recruitment.
No Longer Weird
Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: Prosecutors and judges who believe overdue-library-book scofflaws deserve jail time, or at least criminal records, as in the case of a 43-year-old woman from Providence, Rhode Island, who received 90 days of supervised probation in August for keeping four children’s books more than a year; and DUI tickets issued to inebriated people tooling down roadways on a bicycle, a horse, or, in the case of Roy Embry, 34, in Morgantown, Kentucky, in May, a lawn mower.
