Runners-Up: Actors Marston and Collins, politician Robert Levy, and writer Jose Luis Calva cooking up a storm
TV host and actor Gary Collins, 69, arrested for DUI after slamming his Ford Explorer into a Toyota driven by an 80-year-old man. Collins, who hosts Comcast Cable’s Retirement Living TV featuring experts in senior lifestyles, was reportedly traveling at least 60 mph on a residential surface street in Van Nuys, CA (very near where I grew up). The 80-year-old was rendered unconscious and Collins told bystanders he needed to leave. They managed to make him wait, explaining that if he left he could be charged with hit and run. After he failed a field sobriety test, cops tried to get Collins to breathe into a Breathalyzer, but he claimed he was hard of hearing and unable to understand the officers’ instructions. Witnesses said “you could smell [Collins] from five feet away” and that the cops, exasperated with his cagey behavior, finally arrested him. As the clues described in Get Out of the Way! How to Identify and Avoid a Driver Under the Influence would suggest we would find (in particular, unnecessarily reckless driving), a blood alcohol test at the station showed that Collins’ BAL was over .16 per cent, more than twice the legal limit. It isn’t known how long Collins’ wife, Miss America of 1959 Mary Ann Mobley, has been enabling Collins’ active alcoholism, but they celebrate–hopefully with 7-Up–their 40th wedding anniversary this month.
Aspiring horror novelist and poet Jose Luis Calva, arrested in Mexico City for admittedly squeezing the life out of his girlfriend, Alejandra Galeana, 32, while trying to restrain her during a violent argument. Forensic experts, who found human flesh in a frying pan in his apartment, say that after he strangled her, Calva put her on the bed and figured out a nefarious scheme to get rid of the body. A statement by the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office said he cut it up, stored the severed limbs in the refrigerator “so they wouldn’t start smelling so quickly” and the torso in a cupboard. Police found him with a plate of the fried flesh on the dining table set laid out with cutlery, while he was cooking more flesh to feed to his dogs. Calva said he didn’t remember what he had done that night because he had “consumed alcohol and cocaine.” He may have had other blackouts: he denied being involved in the death of another former girlfriend whose dismembered body was found stuffed in cardboard boxes in 2004 and more recently has been implicated in the murders of three prostitutes. Authorities, who found an unfinished manuscript entitled, Cannibal Instincts, reported that Calva was an admirer of actor Anthony Hopkins, who played cannibal Hannibal Lector in the movie, “Silence of the Lambs.” Alcoholic confabulation can take horrifying forms.
Former mayor of Atlantic City, NJ, Robert W. Levy, 64, who pleaded guilty to false claims of being awarded two military medals to increase his disability benefits from the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs. He fabricated stories of parachute jumps he never made and being left in the jungle with South Vietnamese troops to fend for himself. Levy is the latest in a string of former Atlantic City mayors who have been convicted of various crimes including bribery. Levy is known most recently for having “mysteriously” disappeared for three weeks earlier this fall before resurfacing to resign his post, citing “ill health” and the federal investigation into his war record. The Associated Press report on his plea deal mentioned only his “bizarre three-week disappearance earlier this fall.” Other officials said he was at an “undisclosed” hospital receiving “unspecified” treatments. His lawyer came closest to explaining (not excusing) his behavior, stating that Levy was at Carrier Clinic, which is known for treatment of addiction. We’ll call a spade a spade: his misbehaviors are most likely rooted in a form of alcoholic confabulation that is a bit less extreme than that exhibited by Jose Luis Calva.
Actor Nathaniel Marston, 32, who plays a doctor on “One Life to Live,” charged with assault, reckless endangerment and resisting arrest after attacking three men at 4:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday morning, causing one man to be hospitalized with a broken leg. When officers tried to arrest the soap star, he flailed his arms and kicked at officers as he fought being handcuffed. He was previously arrested on criminal mischief charges for destroying an ATM machine and was fired from the soap with no explanation in 2003, but was rehired when fans protested. Marston was taken to Bellevue hospital after his latest arrest, where he was labeled an “emotionally disturbed person.” Oh, and police say he “seemed to be under the influence of narcotics, possibly cocaine.” I’m shocked, just shocked. As explained at length in Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, if behaviors indicate addiction we should assume that addiction explains the behaviors.