Strange, but it’s the blooming truth!

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This article was published 02/01/2007 (7093 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The lighter side of courts

PROVINCIAL Court Judge Marva Smith no doubt had the best of intentions when she pulled out a bouquet of flowers, a card and movie passes and handed them to a convicted teen robber before a stunned youth court audience earlier this year.

Smith — who also asked everyone in the room to give the 17-year-old girl a standing ovation — was hoping to reward her for the efforts she’d apparently made to improve her life since her arrest.

“I was so pleased to hear about all the good work you’ve been doing. Your progress report brought a smile to my face. It just made my day,” Smith told her.

The move backfired in two major ways.

Smith’s decision was mocked and ridiculed by many who felt the justice system already goes easy enough on youth criminals without handing out presents.

And it was only weeks later that the teen was back in custody, accused of kicking a Winnipeg police officer in the groin during a drunken rampage.

Although the case made headlines across the country and beyond, it wasn’t the only one to raise eyebrows in 2006.

Here’s a look at several others which proved the old adage that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Lost cool with cow

A Rockwood inmate admits he lost his cool with a stubborn dairy cow and abruptly ended the prison beef by hitting the heifer with a broom.

Albert Boucher pleaded guilty to the rarely used charge of injuring cattle. The bizarre incident this July occurred on the grounds of Rockwood, Manitoba’s minimum-security prison.

Boucher claims he was essentially acting in self-defence while doing his chores on the prison’s farm.

“I just hit it once in the butt. I didn’t think there’d be any repercussions that would be this serious,” he told court. “I wasn’t intending to injure it.”

The cow suffered a small laceration on its udder, along with swelling, and traces of blood in its milk, but eventually made a full recovery.

Hot stuff — until fire

heroics got out of hand

GEORGE Boxshall, 52, had a burning desire to be liked. And for three months in 2004, nobody was more popular on the Main Street strip.

When a small fire broke out at the New West Hotel in April of that year, he wasn’t far behind to snuff it out. Days later there was another blaze at the hotel. And yet another on-the-spot performance from Boxshall.

Nine fires later and Boxshall had quickly become Winnipeg’s busiest firefighter.

Boxshall was reveling in the praise he was receiving from many fellow patrons and residents of the hotel.

“His name became famous up and down the street. People were saying ‘Yay for George. He’s a hero. He put out more fires,” defence lawyer Mike Cook told a Winnipeg court earlier this year.

But not everyone, it seems, was buying his “I was just in the right place at the right time” routine.

Like the police.

When they began to question Boxshall about the apparent series of coincidences, Boxshall melted into a puddle and confessed.

Boxshall pleaded guilty to nine counts of arson and blamed his crime spree on simply wanting some positive attention.

“He wanted his 15 minutes of fame, and he is going to get it. But not in the way he thought,” Cook said.

Verbal diarrhea ends in prison violence

MANITOBA’S highest court overturned an unusual lawsuit in which Corrections Canada was ordered to pay damages to a former inmate who was attacked in his cell by a convicted killer.

Menno Wiebe, 58, was serving a 52-month sentence at Stony Mountain penitentiary when he was transferred to minimum-security Rockwood Institution in late 1999, court was told.

He was placed in a “contained living unit” with five other inmates, including convicted killer Eddie Westwood, 52, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1988 but had been sent to Rockwood in 1997 after being assessed as a low-risk for institutional violence.

Wiebe told court Westwood began causing trouble within their cabin during the summer of 2000.

The pair clashed over several issues including Westwood’s “frequent diarrhea which made a mess of the bathroom which (Wiebe) had to clean up,” court was told.

Wiebe also accused Westwood of stealing his groceries, burning incense, making too much noise and taking “pot-shots” at him whenever he had to undergo invasive body cavity searches for drugs.

Wiebe said he raised his concerns with jail officials but got no help. Jail officials told court they advised Wiebe to deal directly with Westwood and the other inmates in his cabin.

The tension between Wiebe and Westwood boiled over in January 2001 during what a judge called a “bad day” for Westwood.

Westwood was involved in a romantic relationship with a female contracted employee at Rockwood and had been confronted by his wife during a heated telephone conversation, court was told.

An angry Westwood hung up and got into an argument with another inmate, prompting Wiebe to finally confront him about their ongoing issues.

Westwood responded with a punch that left Wiebe with a serious facial injury that required hospitalization.

Career criminal fled jail to help ailing daughter

EARL MacAulay has missed countless critical events in his children’s lives while spending the past 26 years behind bars, serving one of the country’s longest prison sentences.

But the career criminal said he was determined not to let them down yet again — even though it meant sacrificing his own future.

MacAulay, 47, said it was a father’s aching heart that caused him to walk away from minimum-security Rockwood Institution on Sept. 6 and spend a week on the lam before he was cornered inside an East Kildonan home and surrendered peacefully to police.

His 25-year-old Winnipeg daughter had recently gotten married to a virtual stranger and quickly fell on hard times, he claimed.

During phone conversations with MacAulay, she said she had become the victim of domestic abuse and had developed a costly addiction to cocaine and meth, which led her to sell most of her possessions.

MacAulay said he was pushed over the edge after learning his daughter had moved into a crack house — and brought her three young children from a prior relationship with her.

Provincial court Judge Mary Curtis had some sympathy for his plight, but still gave MacAulay a 15-month sentence consecutive to the 40-year term he is currently serving.

The penalty will also move his earliest parole eligibility date back from 2012 and means long days spent in segregation and no chance of ever enjoying the comforts of a low-risk facility.

Winnipeg cop traded gun for garter belt

A Winnipeg police officer traded in her gun and badge for a garter belt and bustier to go deep undercover and expose the inner workings of a sleazy city brothel, court was told during a memorable trial earlier this year.

Det. Debra Mitchell described how she posed as financially strapped university student Cassie Davis to gain employment with Jessie’s Lingerie Models in January 2003.

The blond, blue-eyed officer with the morals unit responded to an ad in the Winnipeg Sun newspaper and was hired by owner Kelly Tannenbaum after a revealing interview and visual inspection.

Mitchell played the part perfectly, showing up on her first day of work with lingerie and several tools of the trade, including condoms and lubricant. She later changed into one of her racy outfits, but never had any dealings with customers before saying she was ill and leaving early.

A male officer later went in for an oil massage wearing a wire.

Tannenbaum, 47, was found guilty after trial of keeping a common bawdy house and living off the avails of prostitution.

Dial 1-800-HARASSMENT

A Winnipeg man was banned from contacting his favourite kinky sex toy supplier following an unusual sentencing.

The 33-year-old entered into a year-long peace bond that prohibits him from calling an Ontario-based company specializing in such products as blow-up dolls and penis pumps.

The man was arrested in August 2005 and charged with making hundreds of obscene phone calls to Calston Industries’ 1-800 number over a nine-month period.

“It was unreal. He’d sometimes call dozens of times in a day, and we’d have to keep hanging up,” company president Larry Gayne told the Free Press from his Toronto office.

He described the calls to his female operators as "filthy" and said the man didn’t appear to have any interest in actually buying the company’s X-rated products.

“I guess he was looking for his kicks,” Gayne said.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca