In May, The Times of London reported on Japan's Shingo Village, which is well known to locals, and practically no one else, as the burial place of Jesus Christ. According to documents written in ancient Japanese, Jesus supposedly moved to Shingo from Jerusalem as a young man, married Miyuko, became a farmer, and died at age 106. However, that cannot be true, according to Katherine Jhawarelall, 35, a Hindu woman with a criminology degree, living in Durban, South Africa, because she is certain that she herself is Jesus Christ (after awakening one day in 2004 with a swollen arm containing a miracle-producing stigmata), according to a report in Durban's Post. [The Times (London), 5-29-06] [Hindustan Times-Indo-Asian News Service, 5-24-06]
Weirdo-American Community
n June, another client who did her own lawyering, eccentric Susan Polk, was convicted of murdering her husband, after a long trial in Martinez, Calif., in which she spent two weeks on the witness stand as both questioner and witness (and in a judge-allowed departure, as her deep-voiced husband, as she re-created their conversations). Polk also told the jury that she is psychic, that she called the Sept. 11 attacks in advance, that her husband was an Israeli intelligence agent that she once foiled an assassination attempt on the pope, and that Colin Powell is the Antichrist. [San Francisco Chronicle, 5-18-06; New York Times, 6-17-06]
Creme de la Weird
n May, a judge in Reno, Nev., sentenced Raymond Russell George, 58, to five consecutive life sentences for molesting three young girls over a two-year period, but George said he welcomes the prison time because it will give him a chance to use his comprehensive knowledge of the Bible to help inmates find Jesus. George is notorious also for his dreadful inattention to hygiene, which he said is necessary to keep fellow prisoners (his potential congregants) from getting too close to him. (Otherwise, he said, they "flick boogers at me and fart in my face.") [Reno Gazette-Journal, 5-17-06]
