On today’s programme we reported on two very different cases involving police activity.
For our first story we visited the USA where two women have just been charged for alleged abuse of a corpse – and theft after they propped up a man’s body whilst they withdrew money from his bank account.
After returning home, Loreen Feralo, 55, and Karen Kasbohm, 63, found their housemate 80-year-old Douglas Layman dead in the house they shared in the town of Ashtabula on the shore of Lake Erie in northern Ohio.
Rather than reporting the death to authorities, they carried his body to the front seat of his car, propped it up, and drove to his bank where they withdrew around $900 (£700).
It seems that the trio had been to the bank together before and so were well known to the staff .
The women used the bank’s drive-through till, but the scheme went awry after they later off-loaded his body at the local county medical centre without providing any information.
One of the pair later called to give staff some details, and the body was subsequently identified as Mr Layman.
Police subsequently visited Mr Layman’s home where the women admitted what they’d done.
Not that dissimilar to the plot of the 1989 movie Weekend at Bernie’s, in which two work colleagues discover that their boss is dead after arriving at his house for a party, and try to persuade guests he’s still alive to avoid being falsely suspected of killing him.
For our second foray into the world of crime, we moved to Yorkshire where last week Janine Forth had just arrived at a caravan park near Thirsk only to spot someone hitching up her caravan to a black BMW and driving off at a rate of knots.
After just 45 minutes police successfully tracked the luxury car, which it emerged was being driven with cloned registration plates.
The vehicle was being driven South on the M1 having left the A1 at Garforth.
A search of the car revealed a selection of fake registration plates plus a load of equipment typically used by suspects engaged in carrying out vehicle thefts.
But the biggest surprise of all was that the driver turned out to be an 11-year old boy!
He has since been arrested on suspicion of a number of offences including theft, burglary, possession of equipment designed for theft, various motoring offences including dangerous driving and not least, driving under age and without a licence.
After questioning, he was released on conditional police bail pending further investigations.
What more can there be to investigate one wonders?
Following a recent increase in thefts of caravans, owners have been recommended to install CCTV, alarms and tracking devices – and taking high quality photos of their property to aid identification if stolen.
All being well I hope to return once again tomorrow,
Scott
