You can imagine how thrilled we, careful students and ardent fans of bizarre crime, were when we saw this first line from a Lorain Morning Journal story:
A 42-year-old Elyria woman was arrested and taken to the county jail for assault after allegedly knocking on her neighbor’s door with “the look of death in her eyes” and then sticking him in the chest with a “pitchfork,” police reported.
Boom. Perfect. What better to brighten a lousy Tuesday morning than a story of a modern-day witch, possessed and angry, showing up at a neighbor’s door. Maybe she wasn’t a witch. Perhaps she was just the lead in an angry mob and there would be more member from the community behind her, carrying torches and pitchforks.
The victim, 27-year-old Jonathan Warner, also called the weapon “the pitchfork from hell.”
Alas, the Morning Journal was just cockteasing us, but the story’s still entertaining.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2011.
