O-Bits: Cheating Death Edition

Stealing from the dead is a particularly loathsome crime. It’s preying on those who can’t defend themselves. An existential sucker punch, like a certain president continuing to brag about his upset victory more a year after the election. But we digress.

We start with the tale of the dumbest deputy in Broward County, Florida. And it’s Florida, so you know there’s a high bar to clear. WPEC-TV, the Sinclair-owned CBS affiliate in West Palm Beach reports that said Deputy Jason Cooke heard about an elderly man med-evaced during Hurricane Irma, and decided to pay a visit.  Once there, he rifled through the house, grabbing money, jewelry, and a few prescription pill bottles before leaving. He took the good stuff, too: opiates, anti-psychotics, and Soma, the muscle relaxant named by a company where no one ever read “Brave New World.” What he didn’t count on was the interior security system, which alerted the man’s family—who was at the hospital where the man was pronounced dead—and recorded the entire encounter. Adding insult to inquiry: The Palm Beach Sheriff’s office took a while to get him off the streets, then put him on paid administrative leave.

From the inexcusable, but at least they had an explanation file comes a story from Austin. The American-Statesman tells us that a local man was arrested for stealing a headstone from Georgetown cemetery. The headstone, dating from 1884, was found by police in the apartment of a more recently departed woman. Text messages connected the stone to Jeremiah Rhyne. He’s a satanist (although with a name like that, he really didn’t have a choice in the matter, did he?), and told police he stole it for an altar he was going to use it for a funeral rite. Obviously, being a Satanist, he was not going to stop a stealing from the dead, he’s going to blame the dead, telling police the recently departed woman (whose death is under investigation) was also a Satanist, and drove him to the graveyard, telling him which headstone she wanted. like Addie Bundren is Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying.”

Finally, a mortuary in South Africa has been robbed four times over the last year. You’d think they’d get an alarm. Or perhaps have someone living on premises.

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.