STRANGE CRIME

Some true crime stories are tough to categorize. They’re just…strange. (Shameless plug: For more bizarre crime stories like these, check out Portable Press’s Strange Crime.)

WRONG HOUSE, JERKS

One morning in July 2018, a Manchester, England, man awoke to an alarming discovery: someone had let the air out of his van’s tires and spray-painted this message on his house: “PAY YOUR BILL YOU B*ST*RD.” The man (who wished to remain anonymous in news reports) was frightened but also perplexed…because he had no unpaid bills. A few days later, he awoke to find a second spray-painted message: “PAY YOUR BILL DONNA!” He didn’t know anyone named Donna. And this time, the perpetrator cut the van’s brake line and even set fire to his neighbor’s van. The police said they’d try to look into the matter, but there wasn’t much for them to go on. The homeowner painted his own message (“DONNA DOES NOT LIVE HERE”), but he’s still so scared that neither he nor his wife can sleep through the night. “Someone has obviously upset someone,” he told the Manchester Evening News, “and I am stuck in the middle of it.”

TREAD LIGHTLY

It was a scary scenario for an FBI agent and three members of the Oregon State Police Bomb Squad in September 2018. They were investigating a rural property belonging to 67-year-old Gregory Lee Rodvelt. Acting on a tip that the 15-acre compound was protected by “improvised devices,” the officers proceeded to enter the grounds. First obstacle: a gate blocked by a minivan, surrounded by metal-toothed animal traps. They disabled the traps and then walked through the gate. Second obstacle: another gate, this one with a wire attached to it. The wire went up a hill and was attached to a shim, which was holding up a large cylindrical hot tub. If the gate was opened, the wire would dislodge the shim, and the hot tub would roll down the hill, Raiders of the Lost Ark–style. They disabled that trap too. Next obstacle: the house itself, which had a metal door, and metal bars on all the windows. The bomb squad used a small explosive charge to open the door, and the FBI agent went in first. Blocking his way was a wheelchair, which he carefully rolled aside and…BANG! “I’m hit!” he yelled, as blood gushed from his leg. The wheelchair, it turned out, had been rigged with a shotgun. The FBI agent survived, but it took several days to clear the property of traps (there were many). Rodvelt, who wasn’t there (he was already in custody in Arizona on separate charges), was charged with a felony count of assaulting a federal officer.

A QUICK STORE RUN

Contraband is hard to come by in prison, so four inmates in Mississippi’s Holmes-Humphreys County Correctional Facility came up with a novel idea: go out and get some. Late one night in 2017, they escaped from their cells, snuck outside, climbed over the fence, and then walked to a nearby Dollar General Store. They broke in, stole cigarettes, lighters, and other items, and then returned to the prison, where they climbed the fence, snuck back in, and made it back to their cells, undetected. Only problem: the store’s security cameras led authorities right to them. The local police chief, Robert Kirklin, was perplexed as to why the escaped prisoners would break out, only to break right back in. “That is just something,” he told Mississippi News Now. “Now I’ve heard it all.”

Mama Cass Elliot and Keith Moon of The Who died in the same London apartment (four years apart).

THE IMPERFECT CRIME

One night in the summer of 2018, a Blackpool, England, woman named Zoe Doyle received a frantic call from her boyfriend. The 45-year-old man, Leigh Ford, said he’d been kidnapped, and that if she didn’t transfer all of their money to the kidnappers’ bank account, they threatened to cut off his legs (and another part of his body). Doyle, who was 35 weeks pregnant, thought Ford was kidding and told him to come home. A few minutes later, he called back, even more upset, and she could hear people yelling terrible things in the background. So Doyle did as she was told: she transferred everything they had—a whopping £80—and then called police, who sent over a hostage negotiator and put an entire team (including a helicopter) on the case. Then they all waited for Ford to call back. They waited all night. The next day, police found Ford limping on a sidewalk. He said the kidnappers had let him go. Suspicious investigators did a little digging and soon found surveillance footage of Ford and his friends buying a bunch of booze from a local shop…at the same time he was supposedly being kidnapped. He was arrested for wasting police resources and sentenced to 16 weeks behind bars, causing him to miss the birth of his child. “The silly thing was,” said a dumbfounded Doyle, “it was his own money. He could have spent it if he had wanted.” Instead, she said, “He put me through hell.” At last report, the couple had reconciled and were raising their baby together.

BAD MARE DAY

Canadian Mounties mounted an investigation after a farmer reported that someone had trespassed onto his land and had given his 18-year-old horse, Yoshi, a haircut. “She came running into the shelter in a bit of a panic,” said Frank Dourte of Prince Edward Island. “And when I looked at her, she was missing a bit of mane, both on her tail and from her bangs, way down to her wither.” Dourte was especially troubled by the crime because it occurred during daylight while the horse was outside. So someone had to “enter the property, cross the electric fence and barbed wire, go into the field, and start trimming the mane of my horse.” As of last report, there are no suspects, but the Mounties are on the case. “It didn’t appear to be anything malicious,” said RCMP Constable Robert Honkoop, “but certainly peculiar.”

A spider’s blood is pale blue. It gets that color from copper.