
Update: The Akron prosecutors must have read our original post and agreed with the impeccable logic — the charge against Bill Morrison has been dropped, so says the Akron Beacon Journal. Rest easy, friends, sanity reigns briefly again in the republic.
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Hey hey, that's a pretty nice ax you got there.
At least . . . that's what we were thinking when we saw the picture to the right. Pretty realistic, huh? Maybe a little too realistic, at least for an unidentified nerve-burned Akron woman who spotted the item and immediately reached for her phone to dial 911.
Here's the backstory: according to the Akron Beacon Journal, local guy Bill Morrison has a professional interest in Halloween. Every year he works up characters and does the make-up for local haunted houses. This year, he cooked up a bloody ax and went in for verisimilitude: the prop's handle was made of actual wood, the rubber blade splashed with red, blood-like paint. All told, the ax took $80 to make, and Morrison thought he could sell the item to a friend. They arranged to meet at a bar on October 16. As he walked into the establishment with the ax tucked under his trench coat, he was spotted by a nearby women. She freaked, calling the police but not leaving her name.