One of the first e-mails I received when I got on-line involved Nathan Radlich, his sister, and the late, unlamented Hoochie.
When Nathan Radlich’s house was burgled, thieves left his TV, his VCR, and even left his watch. What they did take was “generic white cardboard box filled with greyish-white powder.” (That at least is the way the police described it.) A spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale police said “that it looked similar to cocaine and they’d probably thought they’d hit the big time.” Then Nathan stood in front of the TV cameras and pleaded with the burglars: “Please return the cremated remains of my sister, Gertrude. She died three years ago.”
The next morning, the bullet-riddled corpse of a drug dealer known as Hoochie Pevens was found on Nathan’s doorstep. The cardboard box was there too; about half of Gertrude’s ashes remained. And there was this note. It said: “Hoochie sold us the bogus blow, so we wasted Hoochie. Sorry we snorted your sister. No hard feelings. Have a nice day.”
Since we have determined that my sense of humour is a wee bit to the odd side, it should come as no surprise for the Gentle Reader to discover that I find this incredibly funny — and since the average criminal mastermind is dumber than a box of rocks, I honestly figured this was a true story.
Alas and alack, I was bipping through the Snopes site this evening and discovered that one of my all time favorite crime stories is an Urban Legend.
Aw, nuts.
Oh, well. It’s still funny, even if it didn’t actually happen.
LawDog
What’s so funny about it is the fact that it is NOT ENTIRELY out of the realm of possiblitiy. 😀
Thanks for the giggle anyway…
LawDog you’re a sick man for sure. I guess that’s what I like about you? 😉
Was this story originally cooked up by Rather and Mapes?
Hmmmmmm?
You might want to see this from 1996:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/cannibal/cocaine.htm
But I still don’t doubt it COULD happen. YES, they ARE that stupid.
I love Snopes. Possibly more than is healthy. The most incredible one I read was about lemmings. Which is not a sentence I’d ever thought I’d type.
Thanks for the laugh!
Just glad I’d swallowed the last of my morning coffee!
on the news here a while back in Houston there was a woman who had been robbed and one of the things they took was an ornate urn, which just happened to contain her sister’s remains or some such other relative. She was pleading for it’s return. Never heard anything else about it so I assume the urn is still MIA. Either that or someone figured out that the media had been had and they dropped it out of embarrassment.
But…but…It could have happened that way!
Ror, the urn was returned. The thief who stole it dropped it off at a nearby church with a note as to who it belonged to.
Thanks for the update Rhett, I had not heard that….
Hey never forget, all lies (and myths) start in truth….