By David Dishneau (Associated Press via Huffington Post, 03/23/12)
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Dozens of drivers stopped to grab fistfuls of money after thousands of dollars spilled from an armored truck along a Maryland highway Friday and created what one motorist called one big “snow globe of cash.”
Attorney Heather Kelly said she was driving on Interstate 270 to her office in Frederick when she passed through the surreal scene about 35 miles northwest of Washington.
Kelly didn’t recall seeing an armored truck, but she did see two clear plastic bags of currency along the road and about 30 cars parked on both shoulders by people frantically trying to collect the money.
“It was in the traffic lanes and on the shoulders and just generally kind of like a snow globe of cash,” she said.
She said stopping seemed too risky, but some drivers did. No one was injured.
“Some people had fists full of money, fists full of dollars, and other people were just still trying to collect,” she said.
The two bags contained about $5,700 in cash and coins and fell out of an unsecured door, Maryland State Police Sgt. Mark Cummings said.
The motorists who stopped were able to snatch up almost all the money, Cummings said. Police urged them to return it to the state police barracks in Rockville, with no questions asked and no charges filed.
The truck was operated by Garda World Security Services Corp., a Montreal-based security and cash logistics company, spokesman Joe Gavaghan said. He said the company is cooperating with state police investigators.
Even on his way to 4 life sentences "Merz" continues to smirk.
With new talk that convicted child rapist John Joseph Merzbacher could regain his freedom because defense attorneys failed to disclose a plea offer back in the 1990s, let’s take a moment to review the sordid history of this case.
The Sun’s Tricia Bishop reports on a petition drive to keep the now 70-year-old behind bars. TwoU.S. Supreme Court cases decided this week have bolstered Merzbacher’s claims that he was wronged. Had he known about the plea deal, he says, he might’ve taken it and would already have served the 10 years put on the table.
Instead, he was convicted and sent to prison for four life terms.
Here is some background on Merzbacher, who Tricia wrote had been accused of terrorizing students at a Baltimore Catholic school in the 1970s and convicted two decades later of six counts of child rape and sexual abuse in connection with the allegations.
(jumping ahead a few paragraphs… BML)
Within a few months, the eighth-grade class at Catholic Community Middle School in South Baltimore had a new English teacher.
And, as he had at Highlandtown Elementary, Mr. Merzbacher quickly endeared himself to students. A pipe-smoking jokester with an easy manner and a fondness for rock ‘n’ roll, he brought fun and games into his classroom.
In one corner, he set up a traffic light that flashed red and yellow and green. At the back of the room, he plugged in a stereo and spun hard rock records by The Who.
In one song by the band that Mr. Merzbacher played repeatedly for his students, the lyrics were laced with tortured yearning.
“I know there’s a place you’ve walked where love falls from the trees,” came the words from the classroom stereo. “My heart is like a broken cup, I only feel right on my knees. I spit out like a sewer hole and still receive your kiss.
“How can I measure up to anyone now after such love as this.”
Students said Mr. Merzbacher would assign them to write an essay about the song.
The next year, the night that his students received confirmation — the Catholic sacrament that signaled their entry into spiritual adulthood — Mr. Merzbacher took two of his students on a high-speed ride through the woods near Essex. Empty beer cans rolled on the floor.
“Open the glove box,” one of the students recalled him saying. “Give me my gun.”
“He took the gun out and just started blasting away at stop signs,” said Steve Kazmierski, now 33. “There we were driving down these dark roads, all drunk, shooting off a gun.”
At school, Mr. Merzbacher kept the gun in his desk drawer, often brandishing it in class, students said. At least two of them recount the teacher pointing the weapon at them and threatening to kill them if they ever revealed his secrets.
“In the mornings, he would send me over to the utility closet to make coffee for him,” said a 32-year-old painter who has testified before a grand jury in the case. “Then, he’d come in behind me, close the door and rape me. Day after day. For three years. After the first few times, I would just go numb.”
Continue reading “The Frightening World of John Merzbacher” at The Baltimore Sun.
His victims thought he was locked up for life, but a decision by the Supreme Court may help unlock his cell. Baltimore school teacher John Merzbacher was convicted of child rape in 1995.
Alex DeMetrick reports his appeal to get out has been strengthened by the high court’s decision on Wednesday.
John Merzbacher last walked free before he was sentenced to four life terms in 1995 for repeatedly raping Elizabeth Murphy while she was his student in the 1970s at a Catholic school in Baltimore.
“I’m just grateful for this verdict,” Murphy said. “He’s off the street and hopefully other children are safe.”
Seventeen years later, Murphy is worried that’s about to change.
“What we’re on the verge of right now is just a grave moral and legal injustice,” she said.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Decision Could Set Convicted Baltimore Child Rapist Free” at WJZ CBS Baltimore.
Guest was enticed to activate sprinkler system by website, fire officials say
By Kayla Bawroski (Explore Harford / Aegis, 3/23/2012)
The Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office says an apparent Internet directed prank caused a guest at the Holiday Inn Express in Aberdeen to activate the hotel's fire sprinkler system early Friday morning, causing an estimated $100,000 in water damage to at least eight rooms. (Ted Hendricks, Aegis))
A bizarre Internet directed prank caused extensive damage to an Aberdeen hotel early Friday morning, the Maryland State Fire Marshal’s Office said.
According to a notice of investigation from the fire marshal’s office, a guest at the Holiday Inn Express in the 1000 block of Beards Hill Road was contacted by a website http://www.pranku.net “and was told a gas leak had occurred in the hotel and was subsequently coaxed into breaking off the hotel room sprinkler heard with the toilet bowl cover, causing water to flow into eight rooms and the floor below.”
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Dozens of drivers stopped to grab fistfuls of money after thousands of dollars spilled from an armored truck along a Maryland highway Friday and created what one motorist called one big “snow globe of cash.”
