5 People Who Died During Sex: And 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists Paperback (16 page)

[Ten Most Dubious Legal Defenses in a Criminal Law Court]

required forty or fifty enemas a day would have made it difficult for him to sit through a very long trial.

9

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a convicted Arizona drug user who claimed that he did not receive a fair trial because there were no fat people on the jury.

10

In 2004, Joshua Baldwin, twenty-four, was found guilty of sixteen incidents of indecent exposure to women in shopping malls in downtown Bay City, Michigan.

Baldwin told the judge, “I was only hoping to get lucky, but I went about it the wrong way.”

167

Twelve

12

Original Observations

Made by Condemned Men

1

“At least I’ll get some high-class education”

—Murderer John W. Deering, facing the firing squad,
after willing his body to the University of Utah
2

“Pretty soon you’re going to see a baked Appel.”

—George Appel, murderer of puns and a New York policeman, as he
was strapped into the electric chair in 1928

3

“Will that gas bother my asthma?”

—Luis José Monge, awaiting death by gassing for the murders of his
wife and three children, at Colorado State Prison in 1967

4

“Warden, I’d like a little bicarb because I’m afraid I’m going to get gas in my stomach right now.”

—Charles de la Roi, sentenced to death by lethal gas in 1946 in
California for the murder of a fellow prison inmate, bidding for the
George Appel Worst Death Chamber Pun Award of 1946

5

“How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s paper?

‘French fries!’ ”

—James French, electrocuted in Oklahoma in 1966 (see above)
6

“Just our luck . . . we haven’t even got a decent day for it.”

—Frank Negran to his fellow murderer Alex Carrion
as they awaited execution at Sing Sing in 1933

7

“Are you sure this thing is safe?”

—T he English poisoner Dr. William Palmer as he was escorted to the
gallows trapdoor in 1855, after killing fourteen people
8

“I’d like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. The rest of the world can kiss my ass.”

—Robert Alton Harris, gassed on April 21, 1992

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[Twelve Original Observations Made by Condemned Men]

9

“I think I’d rather be fishing.”

—Jimmy Glass, electrocuted June 12, 1987

10

“I’m still awake.”

—Robyn L eroy Parks, after his lethal injection on March 10, 1992

11

“You might make that a double.”

—British murderer Neville Heath, gratefully accepting the offer
of a last drink before being hanged in 1946

12

“I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.”

—T homas J. Grasso, unimpressed by room service before
being executed by lethal injection for his role in the murder
of an elderly Tulsa woman in March 1995

169

Ten 10

Questionable

Murder Motives

1800: The sensitive Russian Czar Paul, who is both snub-nosed and bald, has a soldier scourged to death for referring to him as “baldy.” The Czar later has the words “snub-nosed” and “bald” banned so that his subjects use them on pain of death.

1968: Frustrated rock musician Charles Manson finds hidden messages in the Beatles’ album “The Beatles” (popularly known as “the White Album”), especially the tracks

“Helter Skelter,” “Piggies,” and “Revolution 9,” which convince him that the apocalypse is at hand. Irked when producer Terry Melcher fails to turn up to hear his songs, Manson and his “family” decide to pay Melcher a visit.

Failing to find him at home, they instead brutally murder actress Sharon Tate and four others.

1977: Self-styled emperor of the Central African Republic Jean-Bédel Bokassa has two hundred schoolchildren beaten to death by his imperial guard. Their crime is failure to comply with school uniform regulations.

1979: Two Brazilians, Waldir de Souza and Maria de Conceicao, confess to the murder of six children in Cantigulo, including a two-year-old boy. They say that the killings were ritual sacrifices to ensure success in their new cement business.

1984: A sixteen-year-old Malaysian boy is beheaded by a Chinese man in Kuala Lumpur as a human sacrifice in an attempt to win the state lottery. The murder was in vain, as no one picked a winning number that week.

170

[Ten Questionable Murder Motives]

1987: A Chinese pig farmer, Chen Bohong, of Liuzhou, is about to slaughter a pig when he is rudely interrupted by a taxman, who presents him with a bill. Irritated by the interruption, Chen kills the taxman, Sun Taichang, instead.

1989: A Liberian general, Gray Allison, is sentenced to death for the murder of a policeman. He explains that he needed the policeman’s blood to perform a magic rite to overthrow Liberia’s dictator, Samuel Doe.

1993: A thirty-six-year-old man from Peking, Ge Yunbao, admits beating a six-year-old schoolboy to death and then leaving the child’s severed head on a bus. Yunbao explains that he was annoyed at being passed over for promotion.

1995: During the world population conference held in Cairo, the Egyptian newspaper
Al-Wajd
reports that a delegate has stabbed his wife to death because she refused to go to bed with him.

1996: Francois Gueneron is shot dead by his wife because she can no longer tolerate his habitual flatulence. According to Mrs. Catherine Gueneron, her husband, a forty-four-year-old French construction site manager, broke wind morning, noon, and night for eight years. He took a pistol bullet in the chest from thirty-five-year-old Catherine after farting in her face in bed. She told Marseilles judge Gilbert St. Jacques, “I just snapped.”

171

10

Ten Holy Relics

1

At one point, relics claimed to be Christ’s foreskin were on display in fourteen churches in Italy. Pope Innocent III declined to rule on which was the genuine artifact on the grounds that God alone knew which was the true Holy Foreskin.

2

The personal evacuations of the grand lama of Tibet were considered so holy that his followers wore samples of his excrement around their necks. His urine was also thought to be a powerful prophylactic against disease, and his courtiers mixed it into their food.

3

King Henry VII was presented with St. George’s left leg as a gift.

4

Sri Lanka has a temple dedicated to one of the Buddha’s teeth.

5

In the nineteenth century, three holy navels of Christ were on display in churches at Rome, Lucques, and Chalones-sur-Marne.

6

For several decades, the brain of St. Peter was thought to be housed above an altar in Geneva, until it turned out to be a pumice stone.

7

St. Peter’s nail clippings have surfaced in a dozen churches in Europe.

8

The body of the Welsh saint Teilo was at one time miraculously housed in three different locations.

9

At least sixty churches claim to be the repository of the Virgin Mary’s breast milk.

175

[Ten Holy Relics]

10

King Philip II of Spain owned more than 7,000 holy relics, including various fragments of the true cross, the crown of thorns, 144 heads, 306 arms and legs, and 10

whole bodies. His personal favorites were the arm of St.

Vincent and the knee of St. Sebastian.

176

Ten 10

Causes of the

Black Death According

to the Church

1

Jews poisoning the wells

2

Going to the theater

3

Olive oil

4

Lust for older women

5

The use of dice

6

Talk of sex

7

Hanging out with witches

8

Overeating

9

Wearing pointed-toed “wincklepicker” shoes 10

The planets Mars and Saturn moving closer together and

“turning the air bad”

177

Ten A 10

ppalling Pontiffs

1

POPE DAMASCUS I (366–384) Left no detail to chance in his campaign to win election as pope by hiring a gang of hit-men to murder the nearest rival for the job and all of his supporters. Nicknamed “the matron’s ear-tickler,” he enjoyed a reputation as a ladies’ man but also surrounded himself with an entourage of sexually ambiguous young men. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for adultery by a synod of forty-four bishops in 378 a.d. but was pardoned by the emperor.

2

POPE STEPHEN VI (896–897) Not on the best of terms with his predecessor, Pope Formosus, Pope Stephen had the corpse of the ex-pope dug up and tried by the

“Cadaver Synod” for crimes against the Church. A few months later he was overthrown, imprisoned, and strangled to death in his cell.

3

POPE JOHN XII “THE BAD” (955–963) He held orgies at his home and, during one of the raunchier sessions, was accused of summoning the devil. He and his friends also liked to molest female pilgrims inside the basilica of St. Peter: When a cardinal pointed out that this wasn’t theologically sound practice, the pope had him castrated. Found guilty in absentia of various crimes including incest, adultery, and murder, Pope John was excommunicated and later bludgeoned to death with a hammer by an irate husband who found him in bed with his wife.

4

POPE JOHN XXI (1276–77) The only doctor ever to become pope, he was originally appointed physician to
178

[Ten Appalling Pontiffs]

the Vatican on the strength of a medical treatise in which he prescribed lettuce leaves for toothache, lettuce seed to reduce sex drive, and pig dung to stop nosebleeds.

While receiving his medical advice, three popes—

Gregory X (1271–76), Innocent V (1276), and Adrian V

(1276)—died in quick succession. He was duly elected pontiff, possibly in the hope that his medical skills would enable him to live longer than the previous three. Twelve months after his election, the roof of his new palace fell in, crushing him horribly, and he died six days later.

5

POPE BONIFACE VIII (1294–1305) Boniface got rid of his predecessor, Pope Celestine V, by locking him up in Fumone castle and leaving him to die of starvation.

Boniface was an atheist who had numerous gay lovers and was eventually tried for heresy, rape, sodomy, and eating meat during Lent. Boniface didn’t attend his trial and escaped punishment, but went mad soon afterward and committed suicide. Pope Clement V had Boniface’s body exhumed and burned as a heretic.

6

POPE LEO X (1313–21) The patron of Michelangelo and Raphael, Leo was promiscuously gay; when he was elected he was suffering so much from anal ulcerations that he had to be carried into the conclave on a stretcher.

It was Pope Leo who provoked Martin Luther to nail his ninety-six theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg to denounce Church corruption.

7

POPE JOHN XXIII (1410–15) A former pirate who obtained the papacy through force of arms, he was
179

[Ten Appalling Pontiffs]

charged in 1415 with fifty-four offenses, including piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest. There were originally seventy charges, but sixteen said to be “of the most indescribable depravity” were dropped in the interest of public decency.

8

POPE SIXTUS IV (1471–84) Builder of the Sistine Chapel. His less artistic achievements included six illegitimate sons, one of them the result of an incestuous relationship with his sister, and a papal bull unleashing the Spanish Inquisition and the subsequent torture and burning of thousands of heretics.

9

POPE ALEXANDER VI (1492–1503) The only

pontiff to travel in public with a retinue of scantily clad dancing girls and the first to introduce the concept of entertainments featuring naked women at Mass, Alexander secured the papal chair by bribery and then used it for the personal gain of his growing family, the infamous Borgias. His ten illegitimate children included a favorite daughter, Lucretia. At one point the pope was enjoying incestuous relations with Lucretia while she in turn was sleeping with her own brother, Cesare.

Alexander also threw the Vatican’s most outrageous party, the “Joust of Whores,” featuring a variety of entertainments including a prize for the guest who slept with the most prostitutes. While the pope and his teenage mistress and various civic dignitaries looked on, fifty naked prostitutes recruited from the city slums slithered around on the marble floor picking up chestnuts with their labia.

180

[Ten Appalling Pontiffs]

10

POPE PAUL III (1534–49) Rome’s biggest pimp, Paul kept some 45,000 prostitutes who paid him a monthly tribute. He also poisoned several relatives, including his mother and his niece, to gain control of his family inheritance, and he enjoyed an incestuous relationship with his daughter. He once killed a couple of cardinals and a Polish bishop to settle an argument over a theological point.