Larry Doil Sanders, 55, of Allen, Okla., was convicted on April 17 of first-degree murder in the killing of his friend, Jimmy Glenn Knighten, 52, in July 2022. The Ada News reported that Sanders and Knighten were fishing together when Sanders believed he saw three sasquatch-looking figures near the river. After strangling Knighten, who he thought had been acting suspiciously, Sanders told relatives that he believed Knighten was trying to summon the sasquatches so they could feast on Sanders, and he killed Knighten in self-defense. Witnesses said Sanders is a regular user of methamphetamine, which ramps up his Bigfoot rhetoric. His defense was that having used meth three or four days before the murder, he was in a drug-induced psychosis. He’ll be sentenced in June.
Animals going rogue
Butte, Mont., residents — no strangers to big animals — got a surprise on the morning of April 16 when they spotted an elephant strolling down Harrison Avenue, NBC Montana reported.
“Pretty exciting,” said Josh Hannifin, co-manager of the Civic Center Town Pump. “Man, they move fast when they just walk.”
The Jordan World Circus was in town, and surveillance cameras caught Viola escaping from her pen after being startled by a car backfiring during her bath time. Handlers were able to catch Viola with no trouble after about 20 minutes.
Suspicions confirmed
NASA revealed on April 17 that the object that crashed through the roof of a home in Naples, Fla., was indeed space trash — specifically, garbage jettisoned from the International Space Station in March 2021. United Press International reported that on March 8, a 1.6-pound, 4-inch-long cylindrical object came through Alejandro Otero’s roof. NASA said the object was what remained of a 5,800-pound pallet of depleted nickel hydride batteries.
“The hardware was expected to fully burn up during entry into the Earth’s atmosphere,” NASA said. “However, a piece of hardware survived reentry.”
It’s a mystery
A 19th century fortress in Antwerp, Belgium, undergoing archaeological excavation turned up a mysterious finding: a British train car from around 1930. United Press International reported on April 16 that the wooden London North Eastern Railway car was originally used for “removals” — moving property from one residence to another.
“It’s a mystery as to how the carriage came to be in Antwerp,” said consultant archaeologist Femke Martens. “Unfortunately there’s very little left of the relic as it disintegrated while being excavated.”
Crime report
On April 9, investigators caught their targets in a puzzling money-making scheme in Rochelle Park, N.J. NBC New York reported that Det. Nick Mercoun and his partner arrested 77-year-old Alfredo Rodriguez and 54-year-old Hector Cortes, whom they dubbed the Shopping Cart Bandits. The two had stolen at least 140 carts from the ShopRite grocery, which Mercoun believes they were selling for about $200 wholesale.
“It was about $28,000 worth of shopping carts,” he said.
The Food Marketing Institute estimates that 2 million shopping carts are stolen each year. Who knew? Rodriguez and Cortes are rolling along at the Bergen County Jail.
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