Last Days

David Schmader is on vacation this week.

MONDAY, APRIL 18 This week of strong-
armed stonerism, tattooed murder confessions, and drive-by blessings kicks off with an old-fashioned tea party in the Himalayan mountains. There, a near starved mountaineer named Greg Mortenson was nursed back to health about two decades ago by a pack of humble villagers after becoming separated from his climbing team. “They gave me everything they had—their yak butter, their tea,” Mortenson recalled of the experience. In return, Mortenson vowed to come back and build the village a school. That vow turned into best-selling memoir and book club staple Three Cups of Tea, as well as a multimillion-dollar nonprofit dedicated to building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “It’s a beautiful story and it’s a lie,” writes best-selling writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer in an exposé released today, aptly titled “Three Cups of Deceit.” Krakauer accused Mortenson of shamming the hell out of his memoir and using the nonprofit as his “private ATM.” Fueling the allegations: mountain guides who refute Mortenson’s “lost boy” story, as well as so-called Taliban captors pictured in his book who have been identified as well-respected scholars. “I stand by the information conveyed in my book,” Mortenson said in response. Meanwhile, a 60 Minutes investigation found that roughly half of the schools built by Mortenson’s nonprofit “were empty, built by somebody else, or not receiving support at all. Some were being used to store spinach.” Tomorrow, Montana attorney general Steve Bullock will open an investigation into the charity. Apologies to all the duped book clubs that read Mortenson’s alleged bullshit and all the Afghan and Pakistani children who probably never learned to read.

TUESDAY, APRIL 19 The week continues with a story touting the potentially life-saving virtues of “Just in case the guy I’m meeting turns out to be a woman-torturing kidnapper!” texting. Today, Seattle police arrested 66-year-old John Joseph Hauff Jr. on suspicion of kidnapping, raping, and torturing a 24-year-old woman after picking her up for an evening of what court documents label “sexual role playing.” Instead of loosely tying her up and using a sex toy on her, as the two had discussed, Hauff allegedly drove the woman to a soundproof mobile-home-turned-torture-chamber in Tacoma, where charging documents say he chained her to a wall and subjected her to three hours of rape and torture, including “shocking her… plucking her pubic hairs, binding her breasts, inserting liquid into her bladder by way of a catheter, and spreading her vagina with a device the victim believed to be a speculum.” When the woman asked if Hauff intended to kill her, he reportedly replied, “We’ll see.” Unbeknownst to Hauff, the woman had texted his license plate number and city to a friend with instructions to contact the police if she didn’t call by midnight. Once Hauff became aware of this, he freed her and gave her $200. Police who investigated Hauff’s DIY torture chamber found that the “walls [were] approximately eight inches thick, making most sounds—such as screams—emanating from inside the room almost undetectable.”

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20 On the lighter end of the alleged torture spectrum, but still sad, in Tacoma today, PETA scored a victory by shutting down the time-honored tradition of goldfish races at the Harmon Tap Room. Each week, live goldfish were put in eight-foot-long plastic gutters filled with water and propelled to a finish line by drunk bar patrons using squirt guns, squirt bottles, or straws. PETA denounced the races as cruel: “Drunken patrons have impaled some fish with cocktail straws and have swallowed others alive.” “It was really, really popular,” said bar owner Pat Nagle. Nevertheless, USA Today reports that the bar shut down the races after receiving weeks of e-mails from PETA-inspired protesters. Weekly goldfish races continue at Woodsky’s in Fremont despite the fuss.

THURSDAY, APRIL 21 Moving from alleged crimes against nature to alleged crimes against grandma: 19-year-old Scranton, Pennsylvania, resident Andrew Jordan Demkowich is facing multiple misdemeanor and felony charges after allegedly forcing his 74-year-old grandmother to smoke pot with him and coercing her to write him a check for her last $98. Once the teen passed out, his grandmother called for help. The Smoking Gun reports that cops found him asleep in the living room, a “partially burnt ‘blunt’ sitting on the top of his sweat pants.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 22 Today takes us to Los Angeles County, where a man was convicted of first-degree murder after his tattoo confessed to the crime. The story begins in 2004, with the unsolved gangland killing of John Juarez, shot dead in front of a liquor store. The crime went unsolved until 2008, when one day Anthony Garcia, 25, was booked on suspicion of driving with a suspended license and a homicide detective noticed a familiar scene tattooed on his chest. “Each key detail was right there,” reports the Los Angeles Times today. “The Christmas lights that lined the roof of the liquor store where 23-year-old John Juarez was gunned down, the direction his body fell, the bowed street lamp across the way, and the street sign—all under the chilling banner of RIVERA KILLS, a reference to the gang Rivera-13.” Garcia then added spoken word self-incrimination to tattooed self-incrimination by bragging about the shooting to his temporary cellmate—an undercover cop. Garcia now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. “Investigators don’t believe Garcia’s elaborate tattoo was a rash decision,” reports the LA Times. “Photos from several bookings over the years show the mural on his chest evolving as he added details to the tattooed murder scene.”

•• Speaking of tacky confessions, today a church in Old Hickory, Tennessee, repurposed a bank teller’s window to offer drive-through blessings in honor of Good Friday. “From midnight Thursday to midnight Friday, people can drive up to the building to drop a burden or sin at the first window,” reported MSNBC.com. “Then they can pull up to the second window and receive a blessing.”

SATURDAY, APRIL 23 The week continues with the firing of a Maryland McDonald’s employee who videotaped the brutal beating of a transgender woman at the hands of two teenagers and then uploaded the video to YouTube. The video, which quickly went viral, shows two women kicking, punching, and dragging the 22-year-old victim across the floor of the Baltimore restaurant, with the attack only subsiding when the victim appeared to seizure and someone is heard telling the suspects, “Y’all need to go before the police come.” CNN reports that one of the teenagers, 18, is currently in jail facing two counts of assault. The other, 14, is being treated as a juvenile. Authorities are considering adding hate crimes charges.

SUNDAY, APRIL 24 Nothing of interest happened today, unless you believe that rabbits shit chocolate.

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