A scrawled note on the door read: "No!!! comment. Just stop knocking. You want a story read a book."
But who could beat the story of the house in this middle-class town, where the police say an exotic dancer at a nude juice bar had a severed hand, nicknamed Freddy, preserved in formaldehyde, and six human skulls?
The police said it was unclear where the body parts had come from, but that did not deter them from charging the dancer, Linda Kay, 31 -- who works at Hott 22, a strip club -- with unlawful disposition of human remains.
The police said they found the crudely hacked hand inside a Mason jar in Kay's bedroom last Friday after answering a call from a woman who said that an owner of the house, Sean McDonough, had threatened to kill himself with a hammer.
When the police finally arrived, McDonough was nowhere to be found, but Kay answered the door.
She became uncooperative, the police said, and they proceeded to search the house based on the phone call and found the jar containing the hand.
Captain Paul Brembt of the South Plainfield Police Department said that Kay conceded that she owned the hand, although she would not say where she got it. Nor were the police sure who owned the six skulls, which were found in an upstairs room.
The Star-Ledger of Newark reported the discovery of the hand and skulls on Tuesday.
Andrea Leipow, 25, an aspiring model, said she had lived at the house for a brief time, ending in April. She said that Kay had told her that a medical student who was a fan of Kay's dancing had given the hand to her as a gift.
Leipow said that residents of the house had nicknamed it "Lefty" or "Freddy" or, simply, "the Hand."
She said that the house's residents scared her, so she left.
"They had tons of weapons," she said. "They had a medieval mace, a shotgun, they had another sawn-off shotgun, pistols, knives."
For the past several years, Kay worked at Hott 22, where she went by the stage name Zilla.
Ira Weiner, a lawyer for the club, said that he often spoke with her.
"She's kind of an artistic person, with her own sense of aesthetics," he said. "But she's harmless. You know, what she collected was not a manifestation of her being vicious, it's just simply what she thought was cool or had some artistic merits."
Kay graduated from Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School in 1993. Her senior yearbook identifies her as a member of the swim team. Kay was released on US$100,000 bail on the day she was arrested. The police are not sure where she is.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not