Parole absconder Robert Lewis Crose, 47, managed to evade California authorities for 12 years but then led them right to him when he complained on his Facebook page about the cold weather in the northern Montana town of Cut Bank. A fugitive task force in California notified Glacier County, Mont., sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Siefert, who arrested him. “He said he’d worked cutting up here, harvesting, for the last 10 years,” Siefert said. (Montana’s The Billings Gazette)
• Cincinnati police reported that when Rufus Bowman, 16, pulled a gun on a 6-foot-1-inch, 290-pound prostitute “wearing a pink halter top and pumps,” the victim resisted. The 5-foot-7, 230-pound Bowman shot the victim in the arm and chest but couldn’t stop the prostitute from taking away the gun, grabbing him by the hair and administering what Hamilton County, Ohio, prosecutor Ryan Nelson termed a “beat down.” Identifying victim Joshua Bumpus as a “a transvestite prostitute,” Nelson noted that Bowman “picked the wrong prostitute to rob.” (Cincinnati Enquirer)
Irony of the Century
Smoking pot may slow or halt Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at California’s Scripps Research Institute. Reporting in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, they discovered that marijuana’s active ingredient—delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—helps preserve brain function. “Compared to currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, THC is a considerably superior inhibitor of Abeta aggregation,” the key pathological marker of Alzheimer’s, said the study, whose authors point out it “provides a previously unrecognized molecular mechanism through which cannabinoid molecules may directly impact the progression of this debilitating disease.” (MSNBC)
Techno World
When Las Vegas voters complained after they’d been awakened during the night by automated phone calls urging their support for a ballot measure to change how state judges are selected, the California company that campaign’s organizers hired to make the calls apologized—with another robo-call. The voice of Paul Stone of Campaign Solutions blamed “human error and computer error” for mixing up a.m. and p.m. (KTNV-TV)
• The telecom company Ncell launched high-speed Internet service on Mount Everest by erecting a transmission tower at the 29,035-foot peak’s base camp. Ncell said the new service lets climbers surf the web faster, send video clips and e-mails and make phone calls cheaply. (Reuters)
Slightest Provocation
Frederick Wilkes, 54, beat his wife after he started to prepare lasagna for dinner and found leftover beans inside a ricotta cheese container, according to Massachusetts authorities. “He threw the container of beans at her, and they became involved in an altercation,” said Jake Wark of the Suffolk County district attorney’s office. Dinner guest Mario Donnarumma, who offered to go to the store for ricotta cheese but returned with only beer and vodka, told police that Wilkes grabbed his wife and threw her outside their Chelsea apartment, along with a bean-splattered couch. Police found the lifeless body of Theresa Kenna Wilkes, 50, in her driveway the next morning. (Boston Herald)
• Authorities said Steven N. Cowan, 66, fired a shotgun at his television, then aimed it at his wife, who fled their home outside Black Earth, Wis., and called 911. Cowan held sheriff’s deputies at bay for 15 hours before surrendering. According to the criminal complaint, Cowan and his wife were watching Dancing with the Stars when Bristol Palin appeared. He flew into a rage, complained about “the (expletive) politics” of Palin’s appearing on the show because he didn’t think she was that good a dancer and then went for his gun. (Wisconsin State Journal)
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.
