■UNITED STATES
Cemetery workers probed
Workers at a historic Illinois cemetery may have dug up more than 100 bodies and dumped them in mass graves at the back of the 60 hectare property in a scheme to resell plots to unsuspecting customers, authorities said. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said on Wednesday that his office was questioning five employees from Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip. But no charges were announced and investigators were working to determine how many plots might have been resold. The sheriff’s investigation began six weeks ago when the cemetery’s owner reported that an employee who began feeling guilty revealed what allegedly had been going on, possibly for as long as four years, Dart said. Burr Oak is the final resting place of singers Dinah Washington, Willie Dixon and Otis Spann, as well as former world heavyweight boxing champion Ezzard Charles, Harlem Globetrotter Inman Jackson and several Negro League baseball players.
■UNITED STATES
Alleged fawn beater charged
A 75-year-old woman who found a fawn in her flower garden has been accused of beating it to death with a shovel. Dorothy Richardson is charged in a warrant with animal cruelty at her Euclid home near the Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Creek Reservation, a wooded park where deer, foxes and other wildlife roam. Animal control officer Ann Mills requested the warrant. She says “everybody’s very upset” about the fawn’s June 15 death. Richardson told Cleveland’s WKYC-TV she was afraid of the fawn and used a shovel to try to make it move. She said it died she put it in a box and took it to the curb on trash day.
■UNITED STATES
Liberty replica beheaded
A 90kg Statue of Liberty stolen from a New York City coffee shop last month has apparently turned up in a video that shows it blindfolded, beheaded and smashed to pieces. The video includes slogans like “We don’t want your freedom” and “Death to America” flashing in 1980s video game font on the screen, according to the Daily News. The video, staged to resemble a videotaped beheading by terrorists, was posted to YouTube anonymously on July 4. Coffee shop owner Debi Ryan called the theft “un-American.”
■COLOMBIA
Family sees Jackson’s ghost
A family in the town of Malambo told reporters on Thursday that they saw Michael Jackson’s ghost while they were watching the music video of Thriller. The alleged ghost first appeared as a chemical odor and then in a shadow of the singer. “I told one of my children to turn off that video, and my son did not want to do it. I told him again to turn it off, because I could feel Michael Jackson’s presence here with a smell of formaldehyde,” Rocio Salazar told the RCN news. The children reportedly used a cellphone to record video of a shadow that the family believes was Jackson’s apparition. “One of my children told me he saw a shadow behind me, which you can see in the recording,” the woman said.
■UNITED STATES
Toddler hides too well
A Greenville, Pennsylvania, toddler did such a remarkable job of hiding during a game of hide-and-seek that the family had to call police and firefighters to help find her. Two-year-old Natalie Jasmer was playing the game with her siblings on Tuesday. When the family couldn’t find her, her parents called the police. But it was the family dog that finally sniffed her out. She had fallen asleep in a drawer underneath the family’s washing machine.
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