Victims of the month: proving once again that alcoholic non-fiction is much stranger than fiction.
Alcoholic victims of the month:
Blake and Mary-Jo Handley of Port St. Lucie, Florida, who were beaten to death with a hammer by their 17-year-old son because they didn’t let him have a party. The boy used Facebook to invite friends to his house for the Saturday night event after his parents were already dead. The bodies were found the next morning when police received a tip, presumably from one of the partiers. You just can’t make this stuff up—fiction is so much more believable, isn’t it?
Everyone who pays for insurance in Australia if Michelle Egglestone wins a lawsuit against her ex-fiance’s insurer. When Egglestone leaned against a railing in order to relieve herself at her ex-fiance’s house in Smythes Creek, Victoria, the railing gave way. The picket fence below resulted in “penetrative injuries” to a number of body parts, which “could have been avoided with reasonable care on behalf of the defendant” if only the fence posts had “adequate” capping. No surprise she was reported to have been drinking. If this was fiction, no one would believe it.
John Rauchbauer, 30 and his children Tyler, 10 and Hayden, 4, who were awakened at 2 a.m. when Crystal Leija’s car plowed through his living room, dining room and into the boys’ bedroom. Rauchbauer screamed for his boys in the pitch black darkness and Leija, 32, yelled out, “If you give me $1,000, I’ll help you find your kids.” She had gotten drunk at a bowling alley, hit a parked car as she left and ran through two fences and mailboxes before smashing into the house. Despite the fact that Hayden’s bed was pushed through the wall into the back yard the boys suffered only minor injuries. I doubt any writer of great fiction would ever have included the part about the money, compelling evidence for the idea that truth is much stranger than fiction.