Lead Stories
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Readers’ choice, part 2: In a well-publicized case, four men were charged with a variety of fraud- and sex-related offenses in Chino Valley, Arizona, in January. According to authorities, 43-year-old Robert Snow (a former sex offender) and 61-year-old Lonnie Stiffler had posed as the legal guardians of Neil Rodreick, whom they had met online and, believing him to be 12 years old, subsequently had sex with. Rodreick was actually 29 but apparently passed as a preteen via thorough shaving and makeup; the three of them also lived with 34-year-old Brian Nellis, formerly Rodreick’s cellmate in the Oklahoma prison where both served time for sex offenses. Investigators said that with the other men’s help, Rodreick attended the seventh grade in a series of charter schools in central Arizona for more than a year before officials became suspicious and called law enforcement. Reportedly Snow and Stiffler were shocked and angry when police told them Rodreick wasn’t really 12.
According to the Sacramento Bee, 40-year-old Sudan Provost walked into a downtown bank in December and allegedly announced, barely audibly, that he intended to rob it. Police said he then approached a teller and handed her his driver’s license and a money order he wanted cashed. Asked if he had an account there, Provost reportedly said, “This is not a joke. I have a gun. I do this for a living.” As if to demonstrate he opened his bag, which apparently contained no gun; then he asked the teller for a tissue. When she said she didn’t have one, Provost said he’d be right back and walked across the street to a drugstore. By the time he returned, police had arrived.
In January 67-year-old Jack Cline died of complications from leukemia in Birmingham, Alabama. The week before, the state supreme court had ruled he couldn’t proceed with his lawsuit against manufacturers of the chemical benzene, which has been linked to leukemia and which Cline said he was exposed to at work for decades. Under Alabama law, according to the court, such a suit must be filed within two years of the last exposure to the toxic substance, but can’t be filed until the plaintiff actually develops symptoms. (In other states the statute of limitations doesn’t start running until the disease appears.) Since Cline wasn’t diagnosed until more than two years after his last contact with benzene, there was never a time when he would have been able to sue.
