More confused Maine criminals

Thanks to Julia for pointing this doozy out! Wow. I wish I had footage of this, especially the parade of people following the culprit's footprint trail through the snowstorm! Glad he didn't smack his rescuer with more than a shovel. Jeepers.

Machias man indicted on charges of stealing trucks, assaulting rescuer
By Diana Graettinger
BDN Staff
3/13/09

MACHIAS, Maine — A 27-year-old Machias man, whom police called a one-man crime spree, was indicted Wednesday on charges involving the theft of three trucks and a blow with a shovel to the head of a good Samaritan trying to keep him from burning up in a truck fire.
[...]
The incident began during the cold, snowy, early morning hours of Jan. 31.

“It was near-whiteout conditions,” Deputy Richard Rolfe of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department said Thursday.

[Franklin] Perry left a party in Lubec, but did not have a ride back to Machias so he began walking along Route 189, a distance of about 30 miles.

“He underestimated the distance from Lubec to Machias,” Rolfe said.

While snow pounded the area, Perry stopped at a local trash dealer’s house and found keys inside the man’s 2001 GMC pickup truck. Rolfe said Perry drove the truck about six miles when he ran the vehicle off the road and into the woods.

The Machias man abandoned the truck and walked about a mile when he spotted another truck parked at a residence. The 1989 GMC truck also had the keys inside. He got halfway onto the road when the truck got stuck, and, desperate to get moving, he revved the engine several times and the truck caught fire, Rolfe said.

A neighbor, hearing the commotion and seeing the fire, grabbed a shovel, a flashlight and a fire extinguisher and went to help.

“Frank Perry was lying down in the seat at that point,” Rolfe said. “[The neighbor] dropped his shovel and other stuff on the ground and pulled [Perry] from the [burning] vehicle.”

Perry then picked up the shovel and allegedly whacked the good Samaritan on the head, Rolfe said. The man suffered minor injuries to the right side of his head.

“[The injured man] had an orange stocking cap on which was rolled and that took some of the blow,” Rolfe said.

Lubec firefighters were called to the burning truck. They put out the fire and then saw footprints in the snow and followed them.

Perry continued up the road and came upon a parked car at another residence, Rolfe said. This time the keys were gone, but he found a plastic bag full of change that the owner kept to do her laundry and took that, the deputy said.

From there, Perry walked to a nearby residence where he found a 1999 Dodge pickup truck also with its keys inside.

When firefighters arrived, the pickup’s owner was standing in his driveway. He told them his truck had just been stolen.

“Frank didn’t make it one-half mile before he went off the road with that one,” Rolfe said. “He took out one of those post and cable guardrails. He rolled over one of those and that basically slowed him down enough so he didn’t roll down over the bank.”

At that point a parade of people were following the footprints in the snow that ended in Whiting where firefighters and some of the victims came upon Perry. They held him until police arrived.

Perry was taken to the Washington County Jail where his blood alcohol level registered at 0.15, nearly twice the state’s legal limit of 0.08.

Rolfe said that when he talked to Perry, he confessed to taking the three trucks but denied he hit anyone with a shovel.
[...]

Read full article here: [Source]

This article has generated a lively discussion on Bangor Daily News' website (a whopping 29 comments as of this morning).

Mechanical Gorilla Rescue

Yes, I know. You read the title, you say, "WHAT?!!" But really, folks! The story first appeared in the Bangor Daily News on September 3rd, while I was off on a week's vacation. The things I miss! I swear. Thanks to Cranky Yankee over at the New England Anomaly for pointing this out.

Don't worry, it has a happy ending!

East Machias store owner wants kidnapped gorilla returned
By Diana Graettinger
Bangor Daily News Staff

EAST MACHIAS — A giant gorilla was kidnapped in broad daylight Sunday from in front of Sandy’s Sales on Route 1.

No ransom demand had come from the kidnappers as of Tuesday, but the Maine State Police are investigating and have put out an all-points bulletin on the primate — an 8-foot mechanical ape.

The gorilla has been a favorite local attraction at the year-round flea market store, and owner Lowell Miller, 79, wants it back, no questions asked.

It was last seen standing with its hand on the sign in front of Sandy’s Sales. Miller did not know it was missing until he started to close up on Sunday. He thought his clerk had wheeled it inside, and the clerk thought Miller had.

“None of us saw him take it,” Miller said Tuesday.

Miller was surprised the gorilla was missing because of its weight.

“That had a platform in the bottom made out of cement. I had to wheel it out with the wheels on it. Then inside it had motors in it, and you plugged it in and the arms went up and down and it turned sideways,” he said.

“Who the hell would ever steal a gorilla as heavy as that thing was?” Miller said Tuesday.

Miller believes the gorilla may be hiding in a teenager’s bedroom, and police suspect it may be holed up in some college students’ apartment.

“I don’t know if it is exactly at the college,” Sgt. Jeff Ingemi of the Maine State Police said Tuesday. “I think that it is more likely at a college apartment.”

Miller said he has owned the gorilla for about 10 years. He said it was valued at around $1,500.

Miller’s gorilla is a rubbernecker’s delight as motorists pass by the store.

“It is noticeable,” Miller said. “How many people have a gorilla outside?”

This is not the first time the gorilla has run into trouble, but it’s the first time it has turned up missing.

One time, Miller said, a customer ran into it in the store’s parking lot.

“He went downtown drinking and telling everybody, ‘Hey, I just ran over Sandy’s monkey,’” Miller said.

It cost Miller $75 to have the gorilla repaired that time.

Miller said he wasn’t interested in having anyone arrested, he just wants his mechanical primate to come home.

[Source]

When I went to check up on the story on my return, lo and behold -- a miracle!

Stolen gorilla found in Vermont cornfield
By Diana Graettinger
Bangor Daily News Staff

EAST MACHIAS, Maine — A power-driven gorilla that has been missing since the Labor Day weekend turned up over the weekend in a cornfield in Swanton, Vermont.
...
The gorilla that belonged to Sandy’s Sales was taken from in front of the Route 1 store the Sunday before Labor Day. For a time, police believed it might be in a student’s apartment in the Machias area.

It was only after the owner of the Ohio-based company that had built the mechanical monkey got involved that things began to happen. Ken Booth made a video and put it on YouTube quoting a story that ran in the Bangor Daily News about the missing monkey. He offered a $500 reward.

[See original video here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMljYsfjUg0]


Shortly after the cyberspace detective work started, there was a response from the kidnapper. That video was also posted on YouTube.

[See kidnapper's response here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5uKaXjDE8&watch_response]


Dressed in black from head to toe, the masked man working with a sock puppet said he wanted $1 million — then said he was just kidding. Finally, he said he just wanted to unload the beast.

Within hours, the mechanical giant was picked up by the Vermont State Police and taken to the Troop A barracks in St. Albans, Vermont.
[Source

Poor gorilla! I hope he gets home quickly. He's had a looooong, strange trip.

The Witchcraft Scare of 1979

Imagine this. You live in a small town. During a chat with your neighbor, you hear that the local university is offering a new class -- in the occult! Not only that, your neighbor whispers to you, but also there are 13 people in the class. “Thirteen!” you cry, thinking to yourself, “Isn’t that how many are in a coven?!” It is even said that the class participants have been told not to speak about the class to any outsiders.

Never mind that the class is an English class. Never mind that they’re studying mostly literature and critically discussing the occult in history. The result is a perfect example of the start of a witch-hunting craze.

I myself would never have heard of these events if it hadn’t been for Tom Moody, one of my subscribers. He approached me shortly before this issue was due to go to press, related the capsule version of the story to me, and asked if I would be interested in hearing more about it. Would I ever!

We sat down and he mulled through his recollections of being one of the 13 people in the class that raised such hell. It was 1979, and the fall semester at the University of Maine at Machias started amidst controversy. Tom was enrolled in a class being taught by his advisor, Professor Alvin W. Bowker, and the topic was the occult.

The class focused not only on representations of the occult in literature, but also on society’s creation of, and reaction to, occult-related fear. Topics included witchcraft, vampires, demonic possession, and personal paranormal experiences. Discussions were to draw material from assigned texts. As a new curriculum addition, the course had required special approval from the administration. UMaine Machias was considered progressive at the time. However, some townspeople were not so easily drawn into exploration of the new and strange, and let their reactions be driven by superstition and neophobic reactionism.

As Bowker welcomed the class, he warned students not to discuss the class outside of the classroom walls. This was not out of any hermetic distaste for disclosure, but more likely, Moody feels, out of a genuine concern on the part of Professor Bowker that students might come to real bodily harm due to the high level of reaction that had come from people in the town of Machias when rumor of the class’s existence leaked out. Moody recalls the atmosphere in the community as being “very tense” at the beginning of the semester (though later it cooled down), but remembers this added excitement to the subject.

Almost 30 years later, Moody can recall some of the reading list. Texts included Stephen King’s Carrie and Salem’s Lot, Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, plus some non-fiction selections such as Hostage to the Devil, which details five American possession cases. The list hardly seems as shocking as the protestors imagined it to be, but it accomplished its purpose in class.

Moody, who grew up in a church-going family, was told growing up that “you don’t want to learn about the Devil, because you’ll be opening up your soul, making it vulnerable to him.” This never stopped his curiosity, though when reading Hostage to the Devil, he remembers feeling fear at how easy it seemed for the Devil to possess unprotected souls. It is this same fear that permeates all human dealing with the unknown, which can make things sticky for those of us who just want to find out a little more than what is written in books.

How can you differentiate thoroughly between good and evil, without having learned about them both? How much of the town protest would have subsided if people had just asked a few questions before reacting? These questions remain relevant today, as does the threat of the witch-hunt mentality in today’s society.

Some sidenotes:
-- Pope Paul II made his first visit to the U.S. in early October 1979. Could this highly anticipated event have triggered some of the reactions of the townspeople?
-- Another intriguing coincidence was the first airing of the Salem’s Lot miniseries in November 1979. I wonder how many of Bowker’s students took time from their studies to chill themselves watching it?
-- The author of the 2007 collection of chilling Maine lore Dark Woods, Chill Waters (Down East Books, $10.95) is Marcus LiBrizzi, who teaches English and cultural studies at the University of Maine at Machias, just as Bowker did before him.

Epilogue:
Since my print deadline was so close, I was unable to establish contact with Professor Bowker, who appears to have moved to Florida (time to revert to good old snailmail). I’d also like a chance to find out if there was any material about the fracas in the local newspaper, the Machias Valley News. So stay tuned!