Birdsong travelled to Chicago, Illinois, on business twice this summer. Chicago seems to have its share of weird news. Here are a few such stories.
August 4, 2009: An 86 year old Chicago woman was arrested for the 61st time over last weekend – for shoplifting anti-wrinkle cream from a North Side grocery store, police report. Ella Orko’s first arrest, for petit larceny came in 1956. Her latest crime came on Sunday at the Dominick’s Finer Foods grocery. An employee saw her stuff $225 worth of items into her pants before trying to leave without paying. Orko was charged with felony shoplifting and a Cook County judge ordered that she be held on $10,000 bail. Police say she has at least 20 aliases. Out of her 61 arrests, police say 13 resulted in convictions
Just call her “Klepto” Granny…
August 4, 2009: A South Side man was accused of endangering thousands of lives by allegedly impersonating a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) traffic controller and radioing bogus instructions to subway train operators. Marcel Carter, 20, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for breaking a federal law forbidding interference with transportation operators, say federal prosecutors. On or about June 2, 2009, Carter stole a CTA Kenwood radio transmitter and over several weeks transmitted instructions to train operators to disregard stop signals. None of his orders were obeyed. Carter was arrested a few days before this report when he and his brother asked a CTA employee at a subway train station if there was a reward for a stolen radio.
Crazy Numbskull!
August 6, 2009: A Somali born cabdriver, Abdinasir Kahin wrestled with a cross-dressing, chain wielding suspected pickpocket in a dress and put him in a bear hug until police arrested him. The thief in the dress had already escaped from police once after allegedly helping to beat a man bloody. While police struggled with the man’s alleged partner in theft, Kahin saw the make-up wearing cross dresser return to grab a big white purse he had dropped before running away. That is when Kahin got out of his taxi and wrestled with and held the cross-dresser until an officer arrived to handcuff the thief.
Sounds horrible…a cross-dressing, chain wielding pickpocket in a dress…What next, Chicago?
August 7, 2009: Prosecutors leveled additional charges Thursday against four Burr Oak Cemetery workers accused of illegally unearthing old burial plots to make room for new graves. Carolyn Towns, 49; Keith Nicks, 45; his brother Terrence Nicks, 39, and Maurice Dailey, 59, were originally charged with dismembering human bodies last month after authorities revealed the alleged grave selling scheme at the Cemetery where 1,200 bone fragments have since been found. Yet, now, in the formal indictment handed down by the Cook County Court, the four face two counts each of aggravated theft of $100,000 to $500,000, unlawful removal of gravestones, desecration of human remains, unlawful removal of deceased human beings from a burial ground and conspiracy to dismember human remains. The most serious felonies carry penalties of from six to 30 years in prison. Towns, who was the cemetery manager allegedly masterminded the scheme, which prosecutors said began in 2003.
There should be a special place in hell for these four fools!
