A WOMAN has been found guilty of stalking, in a bizarre case in which she tried to organise acts of violence – against herself. [...] The Hobart Magistrates Court heard Bronte Park general store owner Wayne Turale started receiving a series of disturbing letters in October 2006.
Over 18 months, he received 10 of the poorly written letters, instructing him to perform or organise acts of violence against Mrs Triffett, who was one of his customers.
Each letter was signed with the name "Mick".
The court heard a crossbow was mentioned in at least one letter and the implication was that "something had to be done" about Mrs Triffett.
"I think it was 'get someone to run her over or shoot her'," Mr Turale said. [...]
The letters continued until March 2008 and were passed on to Mr Turale by the new store owner.
The sinister mail was extremely disturbing and upsetting, he said. [...]
When police visited Mrs Triffett, she denied writing the letters.
But forensic scientists later found a likely match between her DNA and DNA found on some of the letters, stamps and envelopes.
01-22-2010, 18:38
Hosakawa Tito
Re: News of the Weird
Urban Cavemen. (Remaining issue: Real Paleolithics' lives maxed out at about age 30.)
01-22-2010, 21:22
Vladimir
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hosakawa Tito
Urban Cavemen. (Remaining issue: Real Paleolithics' lives maxed out at about age 30.)
If it's stupid and it works, it's not that stupid. :2thumbsup:
Strange, but if it gets people to pay more attention to their health I'm for it.
A floor collapsed beneath a group of about 20 members of Weight Watchers as they gathered to compare how many pounds they had shed over Christmas.
Members of the weight-loss club were lining up to compare readings on the scales when they heard a bang as the floor came away from the walls of their meeting room in Växjö in southern Sweden.
“We suddenly heard a huge thud – we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air. The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” one of the those present told the Smålandsposten newspaper.
They abandoned the room as the floor started to give way in other areas.
01-23-2010, 21:02
Gregoshi
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
A floor collapsed beneath a group of about 20 members of Weight Watchers as they gathered to compare how many pounds they had shed over Christmas.
On the bright side, their weight was down... :laugh4:
01-23-2010, 23:14
CountArach
Re: News of the Weird
It's an improvement. At their previous meeting it only took 19 people to collapse the flooring.
Killer can't be deported because he might kill again
An Iraqi immigrant who stabbed two doctors to death has won the right to stay in Britain after a judge ruled that he would pose a danger to the public in his homeland.
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
Published: 8:30PM GMT 23 Jan 2010
An immigration tribunal decided that Laith Alani, a paranoid schizophrenic, should not be deported to Iraq because it would breach his human rights and put people there at risk.
Alani has spent the past 19 years in a secure hospital after he killed two NHS consultants in a frenzied attack because he believed he had received a "command from Allah".
The Home Office wanted to deport him on his release to protect the British public, but he appealed to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) where a panel led by Lance Waumsley, a senior immigration judge, ruled that he could remain in the UK.
The widows of the two doctors, who were not informed of the killer's legal victory or the plans to release him back into society until they were contacted by The Sunday Telegraph, expressed their shock at the decision.
One of the reasons given by the judges is that if Alani was sent back to Iraq he would be unlikely to receive medicine which keeps his paranoid schizophrenic under control.
They said in their judgement: "If his present treatment ... were to be discontinued, as would most likely be the case if he were to be removed to Iraq, the potential consequences would be extremely serious for (Alani) himself, and potentially life-threatening for innocent third parties around him in the event of his likely, indeed almost inevitable, relapse into a state of paranoid schizophrenia."
Alani, now 41, has been receiving the drug clozapine on the NHS for 10 years, and the AIT was told it was the only medication found suitable to treat his mental condition.
The judgement, which was delivered in October but has only just been revealed, also states that deportation would breach the killer's right to a private and family life because he moved to the UK with his parents as a child.
Alani killed Michael Masser and Kenneth Paton, both consultant cosmetic surgeons, at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in November 1990.
Mr Paton's widow, Dorothy, who still lives at the home she shared with him in Ossett, near Wakefield, said last night of Alani: "I think he should be deported. I argued that at the time of the trial.
"I think he is going to be a danger to people in Britain. He is a dangerous man."
Dr Jasmina Masser, who like her late husband specialises in plastic surgery, said: "I am very shocked by this news. I was once very hurt by these events."
The case comes after The Sunday Telegraph revealed how the AIT regularly overturns attempts by the Home Office to deport foreign criminals at the end of their sentences.
Last year this newspaper disclosed how dangerous offenders from overseas, including killers and paedophiles, had used the Human Rights Act to avoid deportation despite a pledge by Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, to remove any foreigner who breaks the law.
Mr Brown said in 2007 that foreigners must "play by the rules or face the consequences", adding: "If you commit a crime you will be deported from our country."
Alani had come into contact with the two doctors after being referred to their clinic for removal of a tattoo from his arm – a picture of an eagle above the words "Republic of Iraq" – because he claimed the adornment was against his religion.
He became concerned about how long he would have to wait for the procedure, and even tried to remove the tattoo himself by scraping his arm with a knife.
Mr Masser, 42, was stabbed six times in the throat and chest with a sheath knife. His widow gave birth to son Harry six weeks before Alani's trial; the couple already had a seven-year-old daughter.
Mr Paton, who was 56, and married with three grown-up children, suffered 24 stab wounds in the chest and abdomen.
The surgeons' bodies were discovered by Mr Paton's secretary, Pamela Mackay, when blood was seen coming from underneath the door of a consulting room.
After his arrest, Alani told detectives: "It was a command from Allah. I have had visions from Allah and you can't be more right than Allah."
He told police he believed one of the doctors was Satan and one was Lucifer, and said he had added their names to a death list which also included James Whale, the broadcaster, who had earlier 'cut off' Alani during a radio phone-in during which he expressed anti-Semitic views.
At his trial at Leeds Crown Court in 1991, Alani, who was unemployed and living in Wakefield at the time of the crimes, admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was sent to Rampton maximum security hospital indefinitely.
But he was transferred to a smaller "regional secure unit" in 2005.
The AIT said that in 2008, as part of his "staged preparation for his intended release into normal society", Alani was moved again, this time to a 12-bed residential care home which operates as a "therapeutic community" for people with mental health problems.
He could be set free next year.
01-24-2010, 11:17
Beskar
Re: News of the Weird
Actually, it is probably because Iran told the UK to "not go there" and with the sentence of death... they relented.
01-24-2010, 12:11
Furunculus
Re: News of the Weird
we should have sent him back anyway.
01-24-2010, 12:20
CountArach
Re: News of the Weird
Please keep this thread for discussion of News of the Weird items.
PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Amid the mass of aid agencies piling in to help Haiti quake victims is a batch of Church of Scientology "volunteer ministers", claiming to use the power of touch to reconnect nervous systems.
Clad in yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the controversial US-based group, smiling volunteers fan out among the injured lying under makeshift shelters in the courtyard of Port-au-Prince's General Hospital.
A wealthy private donor provided his airplane to fly in 80 volunteers from Los Angeles, along with 50 Haitian-American-doctors, in a gesture worth 400,000 dollars, said a Parisian volunteer who gave her name as Sylvie.
"We're trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called 'assist' to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication," she said.
"When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch."
Next to her lay 22-year-old student Oscar Elweels, whose father rescued him from the basement of his school where he lay with a pillar on his leg for a day after the deadly January 12 quake.
His right leg was amputated below the knee and his left leg was severely bruised and swollen.
More than half of his fellow students died in the rubble of his school, although the rest of his family was unscathed, he said, thanking God.
"One hour ago he had no sensation in his left leg, so I explained the method to him, I touched him and after a while he said 'now I feel everything'," said Sylvie.
"Otherwise they might have had to amputate his other leg. Now his sister knows the method and she can do it."
Asked about the method being used on him, a smiling Elweels described it as "a sort of harmony between the nerves, a kind of exercise. I couldn't feel at all, but then I could."
Does he know Scientology? "Yes, it's a French organization," he said.
"All the patients are happy with the technique," said Sylvie. "But some doctors don't like the yellow T-shirts. It's a color thing," she insisted.
01-24-2010, 18:09
naut
Re: News of the Weird
Crazies.
Pity they didn't send people who can actually be of assistance.
If those firemen don't loose their jobs I take back all the good things I said about Belgium. That's unbelievable! Firemen setting fires to get attention.
01-25-2010, 19:54
Fisherking
Re: News of the Weird
Some how, being that they are civil servants of the Belgian State, I don't think that is going to happen...
01-25-2010, 20:05
Vladimir
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fisherking
Some how, being that they are civil servants of the Belgian State, I don't think that is going to happen...
