Mondo Bizarro

February 23 2024

DOGGY STYLE

New positions can really spice up your sex life. So can new species.

In the great state of Florida recently police were totally unsurprised when they uncovered a case of bestiality between a woman and a dog in Lee County, located in the southwest coast on the Gulf of Mexico. Samantha White, 26, was repeatedly recorded by her husband John, 29, as Samantha engaged in carnal acts with the canine, 4. The couple were outed after someone saw or became aware of videos posted online and notified local authorities. As mondo bizarro stories go, this one is out there. It’s even weirder than that bag of random hands found in Russia a while back.

We picture the tawdry affair beginning by accident when Samantha mistook the dog for her husband, who looks sort of like a werewolf. She only realized her error when she and the dog got stuck together. John, who was busy in the back yard restoring his Camaro IROC-Z all this time, heard her screams for help, rushed into the house and separated the animal from his wife by throwing a bucket of cold water on their fused privates. That’s the way it’s said to work dog-on-dog, anyway, so why not dog-on-human? From that point we expect the Whites realized they enjoyed the weirdness of the episode—et voilà. A side hustle was born.

Unfortunately, putting videos of that type online will enrage and distress animal lovers, then likely come to the attention of police. “I am disgusted by the actions of these two residents,” commented one of the local lawmen. “I will not tolerate any kind of abuse.” Except, of course, abuse of civil rights. As a Florida law official he had to swear an oath on that. The dog, for his part, was removed to an animal shelter, and in a press conference admitted his guilt, profusely and convincingly. He’s now negotiating a book deal.

Florida, John White, Samantha White, mugshots

Mondo Bizarro

May 6 2021

FOR THE LOVE OF GODDESS

Treat your mummy special every day.

When we see the word “mummy” in a news story we pay extra attention. Even more so when the mummy has nothing to do with Egypt. Late last week police in Moffatt, Colorado arrested seven members of a ragtag cult called Love Has Won after they were found in possession of a mummified body. The body was once Amy Carlson, above, the leader of the sect. She was known to the cultists as Mother God, and believed that she was the 534th avatar of God on Earth and had revoked the free will of humanity. Mummy Carlson was posed in a shrine, wrapped in a sleeping bag festooned with Christmas lights, and decorated about her eyeless face with glitter make-up. The cult members were charged with, among other things, abuse of a corpse.

Abuse? Do the police have no idea how expensive the top make-up brands are? L’Oréal’s best eye shadow, the shimmery Avant Garde Azure, which is so good it de-emphasizes the fact that you don’t even have eyes, costs a small fortune. Maybelline’s Superstay lipstick, which makes lips so kissable even a death rictus won’t stop an admirer from going in for some tongue action, runs a pretty penny too. And Guerlain’s Fève Délicieuse parfum is so intoxicating it masks even the charnel stench of death. Don’t get us started on that. The point is, this was no abused corpse. Love Has Won adherents spared no effort or expense transforming their rattling husk of a mummy-goddess into a glamour queen that turned heads wherever she went.

And no wonder they treated her so well, considering they believed she’d lived hundreds of lives, both male and female—and we assume non-binary too, if she was really on her game. They thought she’d been Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, and who knows what other historical personages. You ever notice people who live past lives were never mid-level sanitation workers in some plague-wracked medieval town? Or some young male virgin sacrificially beheaded atop a Mayan pyramid in the year 450? Or a little girl who got trampled flat by a mammoth? Seems to us you’d remember being all those things.

But it’s always Joan of Arc for some reason, or Cleopatra. Mother God even claimed to have been Marilyn Monroe, and that’s going too far in our book, because Monroe was a real goddess. We can prove it because every time we see those early nudes of hers things start to miraculously rise around here. Anyway, we suspect that the seven

detained Love Has Won cultists—you see them above, plus a stand-in for Mother God, the beef jerky version, because we couldn’t find a photo—are looking at some years under the care of the state of Colorado. That’ll be followed by a sprint through the talk show circuit, public repudiation of their bizarre beliefs, blaming it on trauma in childhood and meth usage as adults, finally capped off with careers as self-help gurus. And to think Mother God said humanity has no free will. It does, and we’re going to use ours right now by choosing to “worship” Monroe for a bit. Don’t expect us back today.

Hi, Mother God here. I command thee: Bring me a glass of the sacramental wine.

Colorado, Amy Carlson, mugshots, cults

Sex Files, The Naked City

February 13 2020

GLORY HOLE

Prison guard gets Cocky, ends up behind bars.

Sexual relations between prison guards and prison inmates aren’t that unusual. Stories appear at regular intervals. It takes a good hook to make the story go viral. In the recent tale of the sexual relationship between prison guard Stephanie Smithwhite and inmate Curtis Warren, the hook is a hole—Smithwhite cut a hole in her uniform pants so she and Warren could get down to business without having to strip. These assignations occurred over a period of months at Frankland Prison in Durham, England, where Smithwhite and Warren trysted in his cell, the prison kitchen, and the laundry facility. Smithwhite also reportedly sent Warren a photograph of herself wearing a catsuit, got tattooed with his name, and exchanged more than 200 calls with him thanks to an illegal phone he possessed.

Warren had the nickname “Cocky,” and no wonder. Turning a tough-as-nails prison guard into a slinky catgirl takes skills of all sorts, both above the neck and below the waist. It also takes the right environment. Other stories haven’t noted it, but by environment we mean—and this isn’t to sell Smithwhite’s burning need for Cocky short—there’s no possibility she would have felt she could take the risks she did unless there was a generally corrupt atmosphere at the prison. In other words, we bet other guards were breaking rules too. Not necessarily to the extent of cutting a glory hole in their pants to get freaky with prisoners, but when cellphones start making it into cellblocks, you tend to suspect it’s because incoming contraband is not a rarity.

Smithwhite’s colleagues finally became suspicious and began surveilling her, and they were probably plenty mad too. After all, she had chosen a drug felon named Cocky over all of them. Which, if one were inclined, might cause a neutral observer to draw conclusions about the sexiness quotient of the average prison guard. They finally caught Smithwhite committing the most innocuous of offenses—passing a note. Confronted in his cell, Warren tried but failed to eat the evidence, which we imagine said something like, “I heart drug felons. Do you heart the carceral state? If so check this box. Meooow. Purrrr.”

All these tawdry details came out during court proceedings that concluded this week. Smithwhite denied that the hole in her pants was to there to facilitate access for Cocky, but the sentencing judge said it was hard to imagine why

else she’d have a hole there. Smithwhite was then hit with a two-year jail sentence for misconduct in a public office.

Since Smithwhite isn’t in the same prison as Warren, the two will need something less like a hole and more like a long tunnel to maintain their affair, but if they split it won’t be due to lack of commitment on Smithwhite’s part. She’s said she hopes the relationship will continue. Warren, meanwhile, was unavailable for comment due to being in the prison laundry room for an unusually long period of time, which will be investigated as soon as Frankland guards locate one of their missing colleagues.

Britain, Durham, Stephanie Smithwhite, Curtis Warren, mugshots

Mondo Bizarro

November 9 2019

DEATH WARMED OVER

In search of Schrödinger's loophole.

Hope springs eternal in the hearts of lifers. A convicted murderer named Benjamin Schreiber claims he should be freed because he fulfilled the terms of his life sentence when he died during a prison medical procedure. Schreiber, 66, suffered from acute kidney stones, and in March 2015 the condition triggered septic poisoning that rendered him unconscious. Doctors rushed him to surgery, where he died—only to be revived. This despite the fact that he had signed a do-not-resuscitate order, which did him no good at all as the doctors ignored it like it was a patient in one of their waiting rooms.

Fast forward to April of this year, when Schreiber filed an appeal stating that he had served his life sentence, and keeping him in prison was life-plus. Let’s take a moment to bask in the incandescent genius of that idea. If we were ever to be friends with someone who bludgeoned a guy to death with an axe handle, it would be Schreiber. Unfortunately, an Iowa appeals court has denied his motion and he looks set to spend a second lifetime behind bars. Judge Amanda Potterfield responded to the sheer quantum weirdness of Schreiber’s argument by stating, “[he] is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is actually dead, in which case this appeal is moot.” Scientific observers say Schreiber is in fact neither, but none of them have jurisdiction over the case.

Legal rulings are dry by nature, but you can picture Potterfield reading the filing and saying to herself, “The fucking cojones on this guy.” Did she save the story for when all the judges meet up to bar crawl and boast about who contributed the most to mass incarceration? We suspect so. We also imagine that the bold attempt by Schreiber to obtain freedom via a metaphysical loophole has made him a legend in the cellblock. But the real point is this: there’s a bestselling novel here, aspiring authors. Imagine the person who comes back isn’t Schreiber at all, but some random soul who drifted into his body. His only chance is to thaw the chilly Potterfield, who slowly begins to see something… different… in the ancient convict’s doe-like eyes. We’re giving that to you. Run with it, and thank us in the foreword.

I’m telling you, dammit, something’s changed. His eyes are like whirlpools of pain and sadness. Look for yourself and tell me you can’t see that this is not the same man as before!

Benjamin Schreiber, murder, mugshots

Mondo Bizarro

July 31 2019

COFFIN UP HIS SECRETS

John Dillinger's body—most of it anyway—to be exhumed in September.

At the request of his family, Great Depression-era gangster John Dillinger will be exhumed from the Indianapolis grave where he was buried in 1934 after being shot down by FBI agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. There’s been no official explanation for the request, however the dig should resolve a couple of pieces of Dillinger folklore. The first would be whether it’s him in the grave at all—an urban legend that the FBI shot the wrong man has simmered since his death. And the second would be whether there’s a cock attached to the corpse—a particularly odd legend suggests that Dillinger had a monster member that was somehow snipped before burial and whisked away by a morbid collector.

The rumor of body part theft is no surprise. Grave robberies had been a problem in the U.S. throughout the 1800s, and while these had waned by 1934, as a precaution Dillinger was buried under scrap iron and slabs of concrete covered by a layer of poured cement. The bit about him being hung like a mule is harder to trace. Some say it was caused by a morgue photo which appeared (if you really used your imagination)

to show him with an erection, but being the subject of at least one Tijuana bible certainly didn’t hurt either. In the dirty comic “A Hasty Exit,” which we think was published in mid-1934 before his death, Dillinger uses a massive unit to pleasure his girlfriend Evelyn Frechette and her pal Nellie. Of course, everyone in Tijuana bibles had dinosaur dicks, but we’re speculating here.

It’s possible the public won’t find out why Dillinger is being

brought back above ground (though DNA testing to prove ancestry seems like a good bet), or whether all the famed gangster’s parts are intact. We doubt most people actually care. But for us pulp followers the story is somewhat interesting, because Dillinger is an icon of the pulp era.

As a bonus, the story has also served as a reminder that we have many more filthy Tijuana bibles we need to upload. We’ll get to that as soon as we can. In the meantime, while we all wait for that September exhumation to finally settle longstanding urban legends, you can satisfy your historical interest in John Dillinger by exhuming his Tijuana bible here.

Indianapolis, Chicago, John Dillinger, Evelyn Frechette, mugshots

The Naked City

May 7 2019

TO GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE WE GO

She always said his biggest problem was that he was pig-headed. Turns out she was right.

When you achieve something rare you want others to know. Usually these are minor things, like breaking 200 on bowling night or perfectly poaching an egg, and the subsequent boasts are basically harmless. But even people who do terrible things—and really should keep their mouths shut for the sake of self-preservation—will still at the very least hint at their accomplishments. Such was the case with 67-year-old Virginia Hayden, above, who regaled her grandson with tales of how useful pigs can be. Just like in those mafia movies, she explained how pigs will eat every part of a human body, except the cranium.

Visits to gran’s house must have been heartwarming affairs. Picture her possibly baking chocolate chip cookies and making pleasant smalltalk, dispensing ageless wisdom like, “Did you know that if a woman were to kill her husband and feed his body to pigs, they would eat every part of that fat, hairy body, apart from the

exceptionally hard cranium, which never seemed capable of letting through the things his wife told him, for example to pick up his damn socks and wash a fuckin’ dish once in a while? Did you know that, my sweet?”

*ding*

“Oh, good. The cookies are done.”

Rewind a bit from that cozy scene. In 2011 Hayden’s third husband Thomas flew to Mexico for medical treatment and never came back. In early 2012 an unidentified cranium, with scalp and hair attached, was found near a rural Pennsylvania road. Nobody put cranium and hubby together until 2017, when Thomas Hayden’s daughter, who had been estranged from her dad for more than a decade, contacted police with suspicions that his supposed one-way trip to Mexico was something other than it seemed.

Long story short, Virginia Hayden was arrested last week on suspicion of murder.

The lesson here may be that talking about heinous crimes will sometimes indicate how informed one is in esoteric areas of knowledge, but other times will indicate that one has, in fact, committed heinous crimes. Now some of Hayden’s other wise utterances take on a darker tone. For example, she used to mention how stabbing a corpse before sinking it in water would keep it from floating, and how giving a person a heavy snootful of nitroglycerine spray could trigger a heart attack. Hayden’s second husband died of a heart attack. And her first? He was a suicide. At the moment there’s no indication foul play was involved in either death, but we’ll bet you a batch of chocolate chip cookies the police are looking into it.

Mexico, Pennsylvania, Virginia L. Hayden, Thomas Hayden, murder, mugshots

The Naked City

February 14 2019

DRAW TO A CLOSE

Serial killer art released in effort to solve cold cases.

As pulp art fans we were a bit amazed by this next news item. The FBI has just released drawings imprisoned serial killer Samuel Little made of his victims, with the hope that the images will help in solving open cases. Little is serving life for three murders he committed in California, but he claims to have killed ninety women over nearly four decades. Law enforcement in various states have definitively linked him to more than thirty murders. Many of those killings were not classified as such at the time because Little’s preferred method of dispatch was to knock the women out and strangle them, which meant that there were not always clear signs of foul play if the remains went undiscovered for any amount of time.

But now, by circulating these drawings, authorities hope to close dozens of cases scattered throughout the United States in places the nomadic Little is suspected to have traveled. The feds are being helped by Little himself, who agreed to cooperate in exchange for being allowed a transfer to a new prison. He’s 78 years old and in poor health, which means it’s basically now or never in securing his assistance.

After Little dies in prison it will be interesting to see what eventually happens to these drawings. In the past such artifacts tended to end up in repositories such as the Black Museum and similar places, but in this day and age we suspect they’ll be destroyed once their usefulness is agreed to have passed. Since they’re incredibly sad when considered in context, destruction may be a fitting end for them. But it’s also possible, though not likely, that they could be sold and the proceeds used to compensate victims’ families. One thing is for sure—there are plenty of collectors of the morbid out there who would buy them.

FBI, California, Samuel Little, mugshots, murder

The Naked City

January 11 2019

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Crime pays with a series of beautiful mugshots.

Above is a collection of police booking photos of women arrested in Sydney, Australia during the late 1910s to early 1930s. These were originally shot and developed using a dry glass plate process, warehoused for decades, unearthed several years back, and shared online by Sydney Living Museums. They weren’t curated as a women-only group—we grabbed only women because we were struck by their remarkable faces. We also like the last shot, just above, which features a mystery figure in the background keeping her or his—looks like a dude to us—face lowered.

Charges on the group range from robbery, to “attempting to procure a miscarriage on behalf of a third party,” to plain old murder. You notice a booking photo was a little different back then. Full body framing in open rooms was common. Because of the composition, shallow focus, and hyper-detailed glass plate process, these are (presumably accidental) art shots. They serve as a companion collection to the previous set of Australian mugshots we shared, which you can see here. You’ll notice we’ve repeated a couple, which means you can learn specifically what they did to get arrested.

Australia, Sydney, Sydney Living Museums, mugshots, murder

The Naked City

April 27 2018

BOSTON MARATHON

After two long years of unsolved killings National Star Chronicle points the accusatory finger at—nobody.

This edition of National Star Chronicle appeared today in 1964, and as you can see it blares the claim that the Boston Strangler had been caught. Eleven women in the Boston area had been slain during the early 1960s, with the victims ranging in age between nineteen and eighty-five, nearly all of whom were sexually assaulted or raped before bring killed. Boston police felt they were drawing close to a break in their marathon investigation, but the confessed killer Albert DeSalvo was not apprehended until the autumn of 1964. He was actually arrested for a different set of crimes known as the Green Man rapes, but he eventually claimed, while a patient at the Bridgewater State Hospital in southern Massachusetts, to have committed the Boston Strangler rape/killings.

The admission came in April 1965.

In addition to the eleven killings police had tentatively linked, DeSalvo confessed to two more killings, bringing the unofficial total of his victims to thirteen. So Chronicle jumped the gun on their headline by a year, but we’ve all learned by now never to trust low rent tabloids, right?

At the time this Chronicle hit newsstands Boston police in fact still had dozens of suspects. The police sketch does resemble DeSalvo somewhat, who you see in his mugshot at bottom. Of course, the sketch also resembles other suspects in the case. In fact, it even resembles big brained Tany Kominski in the above post.

The police didn’t immediately consider all the strangulations to be the work of one person. The age range of the victims, as well as some variations in the method of dispatch, had slowed them in seeing a connection. Later, after DeSalvo confessed, many observers doubted the real killer had been caught. In 2013 DNA testing definitively tied DeSalvo to the last victim in the murder chronology, 19-year-old Mary Sullivan, but public doubt over who killed the others continues to this day. Of course, the public is always doubtful. Meanwhile the prosecutors are certain they got the right guy. Of course, prosecutors are always certain. One thing’s beyond doubt—National Star Chronicle didn’t help clarify matters.

Boston, National Star Chronicle, Albert DeSalvo, Mary Sullivan, mugshots, tabloid, murder

Mondo Bizarro

January 8 2018

BODY SHAMING

Federal authorities decide to go for broker.

And speaking of dismemberment, a trial has commenced in Detroit involving a body broker that violated federal laws related to handling cadavers. What exactly is a body broker? These businesses provide corpses to medical schools, medical seminars, and the like, and the rules are pretty strict for this unusual industry. But back in 2013 the FBI raided International Biological, Inc.’s warehouse because of complaints about the company peddling bodies and body parts infected with HIV, sepsis, and hepatitis. During the raid authorities found frozen clumps of heads, arms, legs, organs, and torsos, as well as masses of dead insects, and eventually were forced to separate the body parts with a pneumatic chisel. Some pieces were found in ordinary beer coolers, Tupperware, paint cans, 50-gallon drums, and even in a refrigerator next to ingredients for sandwiches.

Adding a domestic twist to this mess is the fact that the government’s star witness, Elizabeth Rathburn, is the ex-wife of International Biological’s owner Arthur Rathburn, just below, and we presume she’s telling the jury Arthur was never good at cleaning up after himself—he never put the toilet seat down, he didn’t wash dishes, and rarely if ever took out the garbage. And there’s not much Arthur can say in his own defense. In fact, we bet his attorney won’t even let him take the stand.

But if he does his ex-wife should perform the cross-examination. “So, sweetie, in addition to these being almost uncategorizably heinous crimes against people who in good faith donated their bodies to science, did I not fucking tell you to get off your ass and clean up that shithole?” And when Arthur denies that he’s an untidy guy she can simply say, “Your honor, as proof Arthur has no idea when to get rid of garbage the prosecution would like to enter into evidence his mustache.” We have a feeling this trial is going to end very badly for him.

Detroit, Arthur Rathburn, Elizabeth Rathburn, mugshots

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 6

1966—LSD Declared Illegal in U.S.

LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.

October 5

1945—Hollywood Black Friday

A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.

October 4

1957—Sputnik Circles Earth

The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.

October 4

1970—Janis Joplin Overdoses

American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.

October 3

1908—Pravda Founded

The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.

October 3

1957—Ferlinghetti Wins Obscenity Case

An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.

October 3

1995—Simpson Acquitted

After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.