Lead Story
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Products new to the market: Trolli Gummi Sour Road Pets, candy in the shape of flattened animals with tire tracks across their backs (in a package with a driver giving a thumbs-up sign), from Trolli Inc. in Pompano Beach, Florida; the Motion-Model shoe, specially designed for wearing while shopping, in “wheat,” black, or white ($72); and the Vegiform (from Robert Marketing Inc. of Barrington, Illinois), a plastic mold fitted over growing vegetables to force them into unusual shapes (such as an elf or an old man), so that the user can be written up in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
In September Connecticut police charged Linda Harper with worker-compensation fraud, for failure to report side earnings she received while disabled with a job-related injury, after she confessed that she had earned $600 working as a prostitute for three weeks at the Oak Room Club in Willimantic.
Creme de la Weird
In November police in Capitol Heights, Maryland, charged Jai Ezeman Stevens, 15, with murdering a man who, to Stevens’s dislike, had been playing reggae music on his car stereo. In Glendale, Arizona, Edward L. Mazy, 93, was charged with gunning down Francine Ritter, 39, because she was playing her stereo too loud.
