I hadn't read News of the Weird in months, and while clicking through the recent archives,
I found this item too weird not to comment on.
David Steffen was convicted in Cincinnati in 1983 of murdering a 19-year-old woman and sentenced to death because the jury found that he also raped her, a violation that was an added devastation to her parents. Steffen confessed to the killing but vehemently protested for almost a quarter century that he did not rape her, and, finally, a 2007 DNA test of semen backed him up, disturbing the family even more (and calling Steffen's death sentence into question). In July 2008, the prosecutor learned that the DNA belonged to 55-year-old Kenneth Douglas, who is not a suspect in the murder but who was a morgue assistant in 1982 when the woman's body arrived and, said the prosecutor, had sex with it. Though the statute of limitations likely prevents prosecuting Douglas, the woman's parents seemed somewhat comforted that, after all, their daughter was a virgin. [Cincinnati Enquirer, 8-13-08]
So um... yeah. Aside from the issue of the guy being on death row for 25 years, what's up with the girl's parents? She wasn't 14. She was a grown woman, well out of high school and into the real world. Do parents really believe their 19 y/o daughters are a virgins? Furthermore, why would you want someone to die a virgin? Of course you don't want your daughter to be raped and murdered (as opposed to just murdered?), but why would you want her to have died a virgin? No, sex isn't the greatest thing ever, but it's usually pretty good, and it's at least interesting and different than anything else. There's a reason for the old joke cliche about people having frantic sex when they think the end is near; because everyone enjoys sex on some level, and you'd had to go out without one last go 'round. Odd that parents would be so eager to deny their own daughter that experience, in her all-too-brief life.
Since that was kind of a downer, here are a couple of others just for laughs.
The Panda Chinese Restaurant in York, Pa., was already in trouble in an early June city sanitation inspection, with demerits piling up because of accumulated grease, insects in the seating area and rotting lettuce, according to a York Daily Record report. Then, in the middle of an inspector's visit, he came upon a live snapping turtle in the restaurant's main sink. Said the inspector, "I had to sit down and gather myself before I could speak." The manager said he had seen the turtle outside and had brought it in for safety: "It was wrong that we put it in the sink." [York Daily Record, 6-11-08]
Unrealistic Expectations: Victor Rodriguez, 21, about to be arrested on a domestic assault charge in Bridgeport, Conn., in June, turned to his 9-foot-long pet python and, as police approached, shouted to the snake, "Get them!" (It remained motionless.) [Connecticut Post, 6-17-08]
Labels: sex, weird news
