Georgia grave robbers charged in looting case

Two Georgia men – one nicknamed “Bubba” – have been charged in a recent grave-robbing incident in which the corpses of five Confederate and Revolutionary War soldiers were dug up.

Jerry Atkinson and Ralph Hillis Jr., both of Waynesboro, Ga., could get up to five years in the hoosegow if convicted of “malicious removal of the dead from a grave.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Hillis goes by the nickname “Bubba.” He was arrested last week, but Atkinson remained at large, according to the Burke County Sheriff’s Office

However, Burke County deputies did a search Atkinson’s home and discovered a methamphetamine lab, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

The cemetery is in a secluded location and has been a burial site since the 1700s.

It is believed the suspects were searching for relics such as buttons off the uniforms the soldiers may have buried in.

Grave robbers steal clothing off corpses

There remain a handful of actions that are generally accepted as off-limits by society today. These include: guzzling the communion wine during mass, sending your kids off on Halloween dressed in white robes and a hood, and messing with the dead.

Someone in Burke County, Georgia, apparently missed the memo on the last item, as authorities there reported that grave robbers broke into caskets in an isolated cemetery and removed clothes from the bodies of Confederate and Revolutionary War veterans.

Investigators said grave robbers turned over head stones at Old Church Cemetery in Waynesboro, Ga., pulled caskets from the ground and removed the clothes from the deceased, leaving their bones exposed.

The robbers also disturbed graves containing children’s bodies, according to the Waynesboro True Citizen.

The cemetery is in a secluded location and has been a burial site since the 1700s.

An official with the Burke County Sheriff’s Office said he believes the grave robbers were searching for relics, The Telegraph reported.

A surfeit of eels land NH man in hot water

In what may have been one of the more slippery cases in state history, the Maine Marine Patrol last week nabbed a New Hampshire man with 41 pounds of elvers – young eels – worth more than $80,000.

Phillip Parker, 41, of Candia, N.H., was caught with the brood – the largest such case in the history of the Maine Marine Patrol – without a state “elver-harvesting license,” according to the Bangor Daily News.

Lest one think harvesting baby eels is a penny-ante business, elvers sell for $2,000 per pound, the paper added.

Demand for American elvers has skyrocketed since Japan’s devastating 2011 tsunami and after restrictions were placed on European elver exports, according to the Manchester (NH) Union Leader.

“They are often sold to Chinese or South Korean buyers, who rear them to adulthood and sell them for food,” the publication reported.

The American Eel, which is found along the East Coast of North America, has a fascinating life cycle.

Parenting: You’re doing it wrong

The following is in no way is meant to make light of child abuse, but sometimes you just have to shake your head in amazement at the poor decisions made by some parents.

The mother of a South Carolina middle school student who was being suspended has been arrested after authorities said she walked into the school and slapped the wrong child.

Tyshekka Collier, 36, went to Fairforest Middle School in Spartanburg County Wednesday morning to pick up her son.

When Collier walked into the office, she saw a boy sitting in the office with his head down. Mistaking him for her son, she slapped him in the face, according to Spartanburg County sheriff’s deputies.

However, the boy Collier struck was sick and was sitting on a couch waiting for his mother to pick him up, according to Fairforest Middle School Principal Ty Dawkins.

Dawkins said once Collier realized she had slapped the wrong boy, she apologized, and then walked over to her son and began to slap him for getting in trouble, hitting him in the head and face and knocking him to the ground, according to a Greenville television station.

Collier was charged with disturbing school and assault and battery. It wasn’t known if she had a lawyer.

Her three children are in protective custody, according to the Associated Press.

You know being a parent isn’t for you when …

Proving that reprobates can usually find a way to adapt modern technology to their own devices while, at the same time, most of them aren’t all that smart, an Oklahoma woman was recently arrested for attempting to sell her children on Facebook.

Misty VanHorn, 22, of Sallisaw, Okla., was nabbed late last week for attempting to sell her 10-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son on Facebook, according to The Sequoyah County Times. She is being held on $40,000 bail.

After posting a number of offers on Facebook, VanHorn, shown above, made contact over the social media network with a woman in nearby Fort Smith, Ark., and offered to sell the 10-month old for $1,000, according to the blog The Social Graf.

One Facebook message sent by VanHorn to the prospective buyer in Arkansas stated: “Just come to Sallisaw, it’s only 30 minutes away and I’ll give you all of her stuff and let y’all have her forever for $1,000,” the blog added.

VanHorn also offered to sell both children together for $4,000. She apparently was not in the mood to offer a package discount.

VanHorn told the Arkansas woman that she needed the money to get her boyfriend out of jail, according to The Sequoyah County Times.

Civil War executions were overt events

Military censorship has been part and parcel of war reporting worldwide for at least a century.

Nearly half the French divisions on the Western Front mutinied to one degree or another in 1917, their will weakened by three years of devastating losses and no prospects of success as World War I dragged on. However, revelations on the extent and intensity of the mutinies, which included the execution of several dozen French soldiers, weren’t disclosed until 1967, and some information has still not been made available even after 96 years.

The British, in the same conflict, often didn’t even disclose to family members that their loved ones had been executed, choosing to bury men convicted and executed for crimes such as desertion in the same area as other soldiers killed in action and awarding the families pensions.

And as recently as 2004, the US military did its best to lay down a smokescreen surrounding the friendly-fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.

The thought being, more often than not, that the morale of troops and/or folks at home would be damaged by the truth.

That apparently wasn’t a concern in the South during the War Between the States.

South Carolina’s Edgefield Advertiser ran a story on May 11, 1864, which detailed the execution of Pvt. Henry Jerome of the 17^th South Carolina Infantry regiment in Charleston.

MILITARY EXECUTION – About half-past ten o’clock yesterday morning, the Race Course was the scene of a military execution. Private Henry Jerome, of Company A, 17th Regiment, S.C.V., who twice had been guilty of the crime of deserting his colors, paid the penalty with his life. The execution took place in the presence of Major Blanding’s command of the 1st S.C. Artillery and an infantry regiment – the firing squads being detached from the ranks of the Regulars. The condemned, a man of mature years, short in stature, and of quiet demeanor, was brought to the ground in an ambulance, attended by Rev. Mr. Aldrich, Chaplain of the 1st S.C. Artillery. After the last prayer had been said, the culprit refusing to have his eyes bandaged, knelt beside his coffin. At the first fire, he fell insensible, having received several mortal wounds in the chest, and within two minutes all signs of animation had disappeared. Private Jerome was, we understand, a native of Chester District, and leaves a wife and three children.

Bikers, bulldozers and puppies: It’s all good

Occasionally one comes across a news report that cries out for additional information. Given that journalism has been called the “first draft of history,” it’s not surprising that reporters aren’t able to always get complete answers to every question that arises.

Sometimes, though, one has to wonder if an article’s author is an actual living human being, or simply an automaton devoid of curiosity and an awareness of the surreal.

Take this story from the BBC:

A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.

The man drove up to a Hell’s Angels clubhouse near Munich, wearing only a pair of shorts and carrying a puppy.

He dropped his shorts and threw the dog, escaping on a bulldozer from a nearby building site.

Powder, ball found in 18th century cannon

A cannon that sat in New York’s Central Park for nearly 150 years was discovered last week to have been loaded with a cannonball and black powder the entire time, it was announced last week.

Parks workers came upon a live cannonball, loaded in a Revolutionary War-era cannon currently being refurbished, New York television station CBS 2 reported. The artillery piece was one of two British cannon being stored at a Central Park shed near the 79th Street transverse, according to the station.

Preservation workers for the Central Park Conservancy called police last Friday after opening up the capped artillery piece for cleaning and finding the cannonball, cotton wadding and 28 ounces of black powder wrapped in wool, still capable of firing, according to the New York Times.

The loaded cannon was on public display from the 1860s until 1996, when the Central Park Conservancy decided to bring it indoors to protect it from vandalism. It was donated to the park around the time of the War Between the States.

The cannon, believed to be more than 220 years old, was apparently donated after it is believed to have been salvaged from the HMS Hussar, a British frigate that sank in the East River around 1780 during the American Revolution, according to the Associated Press.

Long-missing Matisse recovered in Europe

A quarter century after an impressionist work by Henri Matisse was taken from a Swedish museum by a thief wielding a sledgehammer, the 1920 painting has been recovered.

The work, “Le Jardin,” an oil on canvas now worth approximately $1 million, was about to be sold when dealer Charles Roberts ran it through a global database of stolen art – standard practice before a sale, according to Agence France-Presse.

Roberts, who runs Charles Fine Art in southern England, said he was stunned to discover the Matisse had been filched in May 1987.

“It’s not something that happens every day,” Roberts said. “I’m glad I found out now rather than later.”

Roberts said the current Polish owner, whom he did not name, had bought the artwork in good faith 20 years ago, according to the Associated Press.

Christopher Marinello, a lawyer working with the London-based Art Loss Register, which tracks stolen, missing and looted art, said the painting, valued at about $1 million, would be returned to Stockholm’s Moderna Museet.

Teacher arrested, readers confused

Schools have been known for giving out awards for just about everything, with the idea being that if no one is left out, no one’s feelings will be hurt. You know, just like in the real world.

However, at least one South Carolina high school would appear to really be reaching with its latest accolade.

Kinsley Wentzky, 34, a high school English teacher at Columbia’s Dreher High School, was arrested Friday on a charge of sexual battery with a “student 16 or 17 years of age with no aggravated force or coercion,” according to the Columbia Police Department.

That means the relationship between the female teacher and unidentified student did not involve physical violence, such as rape. Wentzky has admitted to having sex with the student in a statement, according to the arrest warrant.

So how does the headline in the Columbia newspaper, called The State, read regarding the incident: “Dreher High School honors teacher charged with sexual battery.”

Now lest one come away with the misguided assumption that the school in question is actually lauding said teacher for being charged with sexual battery, it should be noted that the instructor is an English honors teacher.