Original

Three Thrown Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
by Alan Bellows
published 22 November 2013

“My name is Joseph Cassel,” the man said. Joseph was a 58-year-old patient who at that time had been institutionalized for almost twenty years. He was quite bald, and he grinned often despite missing half of his front teeth. His shirt and trouser pockets were bulging with belongings such as eyeglasses, tobacco, pencils, handkerchiefs, books, and magazines. Joseph tended to inexplicably fling the reading material from the windows when he thought no one was looking. Although he was not from England, nor had he ever even visited the place, he yearned to return there someday. He was the most mild-mannered of the Three Christs.

“Joseph, is there anything else you want to tell us?” Rokeach prompted.

“Yes.” he replied. “I’m God.”

The next to speak was the eldest of the three. “My name is Clyde Benson,” he mumbled in a low voice that characterized most of his speech. “That’s my name straight.” At 70 years old, Clyde suffered from dementia, but in moments of lucidity he tended to reminisce about working on the railroads, and fishing. He was quite tall and almost entirely toothless.

“Do you have any other names?” Rokeach replied.

“Well, I have other names, but that’s my vital side and I made God five and Jesus six,” Clyde replied.

The third Christ to introduce himself was Leon, the youngest at age 38. He had been raised by a single mother, a militant Christian woman who had struggled with her own mental health. Some five years earlier his mother had come home from her daily church session to find Leon in the process of destroying the crucifixes and other Christian ornamentation that covered every wall of the house. Leon then commanded his mother to reject such false images and worship him as Jesus.

Original

Who Wants to be a Thousandaire?
by Alan Bellows
published 12 September 2011

One fateful November day in 1983, Peter Tomarken‘s dapper countenance appeared on one of Michael’s many monitors. Tomarken was the host of a new game show called Press Your Luck which was giving away more money than any other game shows at the time. What most interested Michael was the game’s “Big Board,” an electronic array of prize boxes which operated by lighting up squares in a rapid and random fashion until the player pressed a big red button to stop the action. The player’s randomly selected box might contain a vacation, a prize, cash rewards, and/or extra spins. But with each spin there was also a one-in-six chance of hitting a Whammy which would cause an animated character to appear on the screen and expunge all of a player’s winnings.

Larson invested in a newfangled video cassette recorder and began taping episodes of Press Your Luck. After weeks of painstaking scrutiny Michael realized that the bouncing prize selector did not actually move randomly; it always followed one of five lengthy sequences. This information was only moderately useful due to the rapidly shuffling positions of the prizes and penalties, but his methodical analysis led to another finding. Of the eighteen squares on the Big Board there were two that never had Whammies: #4 and #8. This meant that all a player must do to avoid Whammies⁠—and thus retain his hundreds of dollars in winnings⁠—would be to memorize five interminable series of numbers and develop superhuman reflexes. Giddy with the thrill of discovery, Larson began fine-tuning his timing using his VCR’s pause key as a surrogate big red button.

Six months later, in May 1984, Michael Larson sat beardily in the interview room for the Press Your Luck auditions in Hollywood. His story left few heartstrings unpulled: He explained that he was an unemployed ice cream truck driver. He had borrowed the bus money to get to Hollywood from Ohio because he loved Press Your Luck. He had stopped at a thrift store down the street to buy a 65 cent dress shirt. And he was unable to afford a gift for his six-year-old daughter’s upcoming birthday. Executive producer Bill Carruthers said of Larson’s audition, “He really impressed us. He had charisma.” Contestant coordinator Bob Edwards was uneasy about Larson, but he couldn’t quite articulate why, so Bill overruled him.

Original

Jockey Tragically Killed Thursday, Wins Title Friday
by Alan Bellows
published 09 December 2005

In a desperate, long-shot attempt to revive his friend, Dr. Stevens administered a shot of adrenaline directly into Neves’ heart. For several minutes it appeared to have no effect, and the discouraged Dr. Stevens left the hospital.

Sometime in the next twenty minutes, Neves sat up and walked out of the first aid room.

He headed across the grandstand towards the jockeys’ room, wearing nothing but his pants and one boot. When the crowd realized that the shirtless, bloodied, toe-tagged man who was staggering across the grandstand area was the jockey who had been declared dead about a half hour earlier, the crowd and the race officials rushed towards Neves. Shock turned to celebration. “At one point,” Neves later recalled, “I think everyone on the damn track was chasing me.”

Upon arriving at the jockeys room, where his colleagues were conducting a collection for his widow, Ralph Neves demanded to be allowed to ride the rest of his races. The astonished stewards refused to let him return to riding until he spent a night in the hospital under observation.

Original

The Wrath of the Killdozer
by Jason Bellows
published 29 July 2009

The damage from small arms and the extra weight of the armor were taking a toll on the vehicle, however. The radiator had sprung a leak, and the Killdozer was losing horsepower. As the fatigued machine crashed through the wall of the hardware store the floor beneath the beast broke, and the front end of the bulldozer fell into a shallow basement. The engine struggled, but it could not power itself out of the pit.

As SWAT teams surrounded the wounded Killdozer, one of the members reported hearing a single, muffled gunshot from within the cab. The vehicle didn’t move again, ending a rampage that had lasted 2 hours 7 minutes, and caused about $7 million in damage.

Explosives were employed to try to open the tank, but in the end it took twelve hours with an oxyacetylene torch and a crane to crack the armored top. Inside Heemeyer was found dead, having shot himself with a .357 handgun. He was the lone casualty of the destruction spree.