Scanner : reporters

The Erin Brockovich of Private Eyes: Ordinary Citizen Almost Singlehandedly Solves Forgotten Murder

Brian Fairbanks — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:26:00 GMT

Susan Galbreath has a story to tell that would make one helluva good Meryl Streep-Angelina Jolie-type Oscar-bait vehicle. You can bet they'll figure out how to screw this one up, by bringing in romance, character flaws that insult her gender, and annoying plot holes.

In an extraordinary six-page Times (UK) story, which we'll summarize below, an English reporter discusses how this extraordinarily resilient person took on ineffective law enforcement, stalkers, killers, and-- worst of all-- failing marriages over a seven-year period to finally bring a psychotic killer and his conspirators to justice...

Back in 2000, Galbreath came across the body of a nineteen-year-old girl. The woman had been raped, strangled, and raped again repeatedly after her death, then burned beyond recognition. (Her parents identified her by her jewelry and other small indicators.) The initial police investigation failed to bring about a credible suspect and the story disappeared. Galbreath didn't care about her marriage, which was failing, and her general lack of interest in work and socializing. She befriended a reporter and lured him to Kentucky to help her investigate. The two interviewed suspects and fed their information to the police, who were either working closely with the gumshoes or ignoring them as a couple of crackpots, depending on who was in charge of the basically-forgotten case at the time.

Eventually, Galbreath was on her own. She set up a MySpace page as a tribute to the deceased and noticed that one MySpace user in the area was a person of interest-- a woman who had fled the area amid rumors she was involved in the murder. Galbreath played dumb and contacted her as if at random to ask her to contribute to the page as an area resident. It was the straw that whipped that camel's ass, and the person of the interest soon started spilling her guts out of nowhere. The MySpace user turned out to be an accomplice with a guilty conscience and later told the police how it all went down: the psycho had picked up his victim in a car full of drunk and drugged-out partiers, hit her over the head with a baseball bat, and had his conspiring female friends, of which the MySpace user was one, cover up the crime by dumping and burning the body.

18-year-old Jessica Currin had been walking home after a dullish Saturday evening at her friend’s house when she was stopped and given a lift in a car driven by Quincy Omar Cross, a 31-year-old layabout, serial hard-drug user and sexual offender. Also in the car, in a heavily drug-induced party mood, were four others – one man and three girls in their late teens.
Once she was inside the large, white, old Cadillac, Cross immediately began to sexually assault Jessica, aided by one of the girls. All four had been using cocaine, Ecstasy and alcohol. When Jessica resisted, Cross smashed a small baseball bat into the back of her head.

After several years on the (unpaid) job, Galbreath's work ultimately came down to the one chance MySpace message, but she wasn't fazed by all that lost time. Now the budding detective wants to get her PI license and has since found the love of her life and peace. At last.

Read the much more coherent (and epic) full tale here.

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MSNBC Needs a Lesson on Panties

Colleen Kane — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:10:00 GMT

A hard-hitting MSNBC video expose on a trend in sales of panties-- namely, that sales of thongs are down in the economic downturn in favor of "granny panties"-- reveals an oversimplified, antipodal view of panties. According to newscaster Lauren Petty of WVIT, there are only two kinds.

Can we just review the range of other readily available categories, all of which are more comfortable than thongs and less ugly than granny panties?

String bikini.

Bikini.

Boyshort/ hipster cut.

Vintage-style high-waisters.

Just sayin'. And to watch that news video, it's here.

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Vicar Happened to Be Naked When He Fell On the Potato... With His Ass

Brian Fairbanks — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:03:00 GMT

For some reason, this incredible news story escaped our attention. Maybe because it was published on a day we had more important things to worry about...

On Halloween, the Telegraph published a story that began:

A vicar attended hospital with a potato stuck up his bottom - and claimed it got there after he fell on to the vegetable while naked.
The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table.
He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game.
The vicar had to undergo a delicate operation to extract the vegetable, one of a range of odd items medics in
Sheffield have had to remove from people's backsides or genitals.
Others include a can of deodorant, a cucumber, a Russian doll – and a carnation.

Wait, stop right there. We can understand the cucumber (obviously), the deodorant (shapely), even the carnation (we never thought of flowers as automatically phallic or even stimulating, but to each his own-- and you know the carnation incident was a "his"), but how in the Christ-- pardon my language, vicar-- do you fit a Russian doll up your ass?! Was it just the doll's arm? If so, it's an inflatable arm... how could that have been enjoyable? All that plastic and air?

Look at that. The Telegraph's bizarrely unfinished reportage caused us to be distracted from what should have been the lead heard 'round the world: A RELIGIOUS FIGURE STUFFED AN UNCOOKED (?) POTATO UP HIS OWN ASS, THEN CLAIMED HE FELL ON IT WHILE IT HAPPENED TO BE STANDING STRAIGHT UP ON A TABLE, THEREFORE FITTING INSIDE HIS TIGHT BUTTHOLE.

See that's the part that gets us-- his cover story might almost be believable in a giving-him-the-benefit-of-the-doubt sort of way, but he still can't explain why, if the potato was laying on a table, it was able to fit head-first in his bunghole.

Image: We don't remember where we found it, but we've been trying to use it in a story for ages. Our apologies if you were expected a potato there and are very disappointed...

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"I Seem To Have Forgotten To Bathe For Two Days"

Brian Fairbanks — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:47:00 GMT

The man who has been anointed to run the public schools in good ol' Miami-Dade County has just had his entire affair, in the form of raunchy e-mails, splashed across the front pages of everything from his local paper to Gawker.com.

Normally, we wouldn't make a big deal of a guy or gal having an affair, even if one of them is in Alberto Carvalho's esteemed position, but we'll make an exception for how perfectly insane these messages are...

Former Miami Herald reporter Tania deLuzuriaga, pictured above, now a 27-year-old staffer for the Boston Globe, met Carvalho when she was covering education for the Florida paper. Soon after, source and confidant got personal:

From: Tania
Subject line: “Fuzzy.”
“It occurred to me while I was riding that I seem to have forgotten to bathe the past two days. I also haven’t shaven since I left Miami. Thought you might like that image. If you say you’d still go down on me I’ll call you a liar. Hope your day is wonderful. I love you.”
Subject line: "Re: Fuzzy"
“Don’t shave. Wanna are it." [His Blackberry meant to say "Wanna see it," but this is way better.]

If you think that's TMI territory, wait'll you check out her next one:

“Will you be completely offended if I leap into your arms the next time I see you (place permitting)? Like in the movies, with arms and legs wrapped around. Like what I wanted to do Thursday and didn’t and when I said I wanted to you asked why I didn’t…love, love, love you xoxoxo.”

Oy vey... is this 44-year-old married man that much of a mess that he thinks a happy then-26-year-old who is naked in front of him doesn't want him? By the way, you might be wondering how all these e-mails leaked... and why... we're betting Carvalho's wife found them and went to the press just to humiliate him and gain the upper hand in a divorce proceeding. Or something else. What do you think?

Via Miami New Times. Photo by Jonathan Wiggs.

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News Anchor Fired After His Swingers Craigslist Ad Cracks Up The Office

Brian Fairbanks — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:59:00 GMT

A well-known Las Vegas TV personality was summarily fired Monday after multiple Craigslist ads surfaced showing the dude in the buff, seeking a guy or a girl for he and his girlfriend to go to town on.

But it wasn't the fact that Jeff Gradney had put up a personal (sex) ad that had people so upset... rather, the ad's photographic content saw to that...

While the offending ad has apparently been removed, we found a nearly identical one on the same Craigslist page, this time seeking women instead of men for a menage a trois:

We are a hot, intensely passionate couple looking for a hot woman to play with. You must be comfortable with yourself, playing with a man and a woman, and being watched by the woman while you use his cock! We'd LOVE to make YOU CUM OVER AND OVER!!! If you like having your feet played with that's a definite PLUS! We don't have a specific type so please send pics... and one of feet would be nice! We will respond within 24 hours, can't wait to hear from you!

Here are the photos that got Gradney canned:

It's the bottom right photo, allegedly of Gradney sticking it to the (wo)man, that upset everybody at the local ABC affiliate:

Gradney, who joined the ABC affiliate three years ago, was dismissed Monday, after a disgruntled employee sent management and staffers a Craigslist ad, a source said, that appeared to show the reporter having sex with his girlfriend. The ad read: "hot, intensely passionate couple looking for a cool guy to play with." [Review Journal]

It should be pointed out that we discovered the Craig's List ad without anyone's prompting and that it may not necessarily be the couple, although a photo (which has also been removed) from the ABC website, purportedly of Gradney, seems to match the shirtless gym shot from the above images.

By the way, doesn't this all seem a little silly? So what if the guy put up a teeny, tiny pic of himself, even if he is having sex in the photo? Because he's a news reporter, it's an automatic "no no"? And who's this person who narc'd on him?

See the ad here... until they take it down.

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Bug Turns Straight-Laced Reporter into Bernie Mac

Nicole Pasulka — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:46:00 GMT

Bug in Mouth Brings Out the Street in Reporter - Watch more free videos

While riding bikes last week, swarms of bugs kept flying into our mouths. It was gross. Even grosser, we caught ourselves absent-mindedly chewing one and swallowing it. We were tired of constantly spitting them out. We gave up.

So we're not just laughing at this reporter when a bug flies in his mouth, we feel his pain.

And would like to take this opportunity to offer a comprehensive lesson on the appropriate use of the word motherfucker. Please consult the Mac-man below.

Video of the Day: Reporter Botches Marriage Proposal

Emily Farris — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:59:00 GMT