First Posted: 2/24/2015
Woman steels $700 worth of meat from Sam’s Club
Store security at Sam’s Club told police a woman had stolen seven packages of meat tenderloins valued at $700 on Saturday. The woman concealed the meat packages in a black bag, police said.
Anyone with information about the theft or can identify the woman is asked to call Patrolman Joseph Wozniak at 570-208-4635 ext. 295.
County charges dropped against Paul Weakly
Luzerne County prosecutors have withdrawn all charges, including two counts of criminal homicide, against Paul Weakley.
Judge Fred A. Pierantoni III on Monday morning approved a motion from prosecutors to dismiss the charges in keeping with Weakley’s federal plea agreement.
“You will now be returned to the federal authorities to never again return to our community and victimize people,” Pierantoni told Weakley at the close of the proceedings.
Weakley, 45, was accused along with Hugo Selenski in the May 3, 2002, flex-tie strangulation murders of Michael J. Kerkowski and Tammy Lynn Fassett.
After first leading police to Dallas High School, Weakley in June 2003 gave up the burial site at Selenski’s Kingston Township property containing the remains of Kerkowski and Fassett, still bound in flex ties.
Weakley pleaded guilty in federal court in 2008 to the killings, as well as the home invasion and robbery of Samuel Goosay. Weakley is serving a life sentence for those crimes.
Scouts’ slogan applied in saving residents in Nanticoke fire
A woman and her children escaped from a burning building Saturday morning when a Boy Scout leader and his son alerted them of the fire.
No one was injured in the fire that caused extensive damage to an apartment building on the corner of East Green and South Walnut streets and displaced at least six people.
Frank Marshallick said he and his son, Jared, had been distributing fliers for a food drive and were heading back to the American Legion Post 350 on West Broad Street to pick up more when they saw smoke coming from the eaves on the South Walnut Street side of the building.
Marshallick, 48, a leader of Boy Scout Troop 418 in Nanticoke, spoke by telephone and recalled what he and his 13-year-old son did.
Marshallick said he stopped his car and ran to the building, telling his son to call 911. He said his son could not get through to 911.
Wilkes-Barre man pleads guilty to exposing himself and urinating in Freeland
A man from Wilkes-Barre accused of exposing himself and urinating in a child’s club house in Freeland pleaded guilty in Luzerne County Court this week.
Michael Tufts, 40, last known address as South Main Street and formerly of Four Seasons Estates, Hazle Township, pleaded guilty to indecent exposure and open lewdness.
Judge Michael Vough said Tufts will be sentenced April 27.
Prosecutors withdrew two counts of unlawful contact and a single count of indecent assault against Tufts.
Freeland police alleged Tufts approached an 11-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy playing with friends in a club house near Freeland Village on Aug. 13.
Tufts exposed himself and urinated inside the club house, police said.
The girl told police Tufts asked her if he could touch her and he asked her if she wanted to touch him, according to the criminal complaint.
The girl called Tufts a “perv,” and in response Tufts called her an expletive and grabbed her, the complaint says.
Murder suspect dubbed ‘Michelangelo of buttocks injections’
A Philadelphia Gothic hip-hop artist who did illegal cosmetic surgery on the side boasted at her murder trial Thursday that her body sculpting work was so popular she was dubbed “the Michelangelo of buttocks injections.”
Padge Victoria Windslowe, who performed under the name “Black Madam,” is accused of killing a 20-year-old dancer from London during a procedure at an airport hotel that involved industrial-grade silicone and Krazy Glue.
The woman’s 2011 death — and the months that Windslowe spent on the lam — led Philadelphia police to investigate the strange world of “pumping parties” and underground surgery.
“Everyone was calling me ‘the Michelangelo of buttocks injections,’” Windslowe, 45, of Philadelphia told a judge at a final pretrial motion Thursday morning, just before her trial got underway. “God’s blessed my hands with everything I touch. I make lots of money, in lots of ways.”
The judge said that jurors must ultimately decide “the degree of recklessness” Windslowe assumed when they weigh third-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges.
