Two 14-year-old German boys have been charged with stealing €3,000 worth of jewelry from one of their mothers, to pay for a visit to a brothel. Police said the boys were still grinning as they were being questioned.
Caught in a "delirium of hormones," as a police statement on Monday put it, the two boys got only a tenth of the value of the jewels when they sold them to a canny gold dealer.
"With their proceeds of €300, the pair didn't just buy pizza, kebabs, and have a game on the fruit machines," police spokesman Ralf Minet said. They also paid two visits to a brothel in the red light district of Karlsruhe, southwest Germany.
Buoyed by the night's experiences, “one could still see a delighted smile on the faces of the thieves during their interrogation," Minet's statement said. "But the little rascals' smiles, who are not unknown to the police by the way, disappeared soon enough, especially because they will have to pay for the reversal of the transaction out of their pocket money," he added. The boys are to be charged for theft.
An elderly man lay dying in his bed. In death's agony, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed.
Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled downstairs.
With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven. There, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table, were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies
Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?
Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table, landing on his knees in a rumpled posture. His parched lips parted; the wondrous taste of the cookie was already in his mouth, seemingly bringing him back to life.
The aged and withered hand trembled on its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife.
"Stay out of those." she said, "They're for the funeral."
A fisherman found a human finger in the belly of a trout caught in a remote northern Idaho lake. And detectives located the owner, who delivered a surprising message.
Despite the hard work of investigators, Haans Galassi said he did not want to be reunited with his severed digit.
"At first the sheriff asked me if I wanted it back, and I was thinking 'um, no!" Galassi, 31, said.
The reunion may bring back too much pain for Galassi, who is getting over the accident two months ago on an Idaho lake.
Galassi was wakeboarding on Priest Lake in July while holding on to a rope attached to a speed boat. Then things went terribly wrong.
He noticed too much slack in the rope, tried to correct it and the rope wrapped around his left hand, he said.
"It pulled me over in the water and dragged me for a few feet before it broke me free," Galassi said. "I didn't feel pain at first, just numbness, and I pulled my hand out of water and it was bad news. I look and see I'm missing all four fingers at that point."
Galassi was rushed to the hospital and has been trying to get by without his fingers. He learned that he can still grip and grab items such as a steering wheel with his affected hand.
And then he got the strange phone call Tuesday from Det. Gary Johnston of the Bonner County Sheriff's Department.
The fisherman who found the finger on September 11 quickly put it in a freezer and called the sheriff's department, Johnston said.
"The lake is cold and deep so it was in remarkably good shape," Johnston said. "We'd fingerprinted it and sent it to the state lab to match what's on file and lo and behold, they came back and said that's Haans' little finger."
Fisherman Calvin Nolan told CNN how he made the grisly discovery as he gutted a trout caught by his friend Mark Blackstone as they fished together.
He had noticed something in the gut of the fish that he thought looked like a crawdad, or crayfish, which they had been using as bait -- but Blackstone said, "No, that's a finger."
Nolan said the digit was very well preserved when they first found it, adding: "It was as fresh as if it was on my finger."
The two fishermen, who turned the 4-5 lb trout over to the sheriff's department, were so amazed by their unlikely discovery that they both bought lottery tickets afterward, Nolan said.
"I've caught a zillion fish, but never one with a human finger," he added.
In the meantime, since Galassi said he did not want the finger, the sheriff's department will leave it in an evidence freezer in case he changes his mind, Johnston said.
And Galassi may just do that.
"Now I'm thinking, what if I can get it put back on?" he said. "I've called my doctor to see if they can put it back on and I'm waiting for him to call me back."
