It's a bad weekend to be a female senior citizen. Or a good weekend, depending on your perspective. The lessons learned: Pick your funeral parlor, your graveyard, and your online love interests very carefully. And if you see any old hags looking like Granny Clampett and running around in Detroit wearing a hat, then real quick-like make a beeline the hell out of there.Grandma Got Screwed Over By a Funeral Parlor & Graveyard (Allegedly)
He just wanted to lay Granny to rest with some dignity. But instead of a graceful exit to Heaven, Granny got detoured through funeral parlor and graveyard hell (allegedly). That's why Granny's son (Byron Morrow, whom I'll call Sonny) has sued the Taylor funeral parlor and Mount Hope cemetery in Chicago over Granny's "humiliating burial." First off, I want to know who was running these joints, anyway -- Paul Bearer and The Undertaker?
Things got off to a rough start almost from the beginning. Sonny alleges that the funeral parlor first screwed up the embalming of Granny. Imagine going to your grandma's wake and taking a gander inside the casket. She looks so peaceful. They've really made her look good.
But wait. What's that dripping sound? Wait. What's that brown liquid leaking from her skull!?! Jesus! That's formaldehyde! Good God, it wreaks! Where's the damn exit?
Sure enough, that's exactly what Sonny is alleging in the lawsuit: That the zany undertaker at the funeral parlor "improperly embalmed" Granny, "leaving brown liquid leaking from her skull." But at that point, these guys were just getting warmed up and having a "Hell of a Time" (allegedly).
You see, Granny was a rather large woman. There be 230 pounds of Granny, to be precise (not including embalming fluid, although most of that probably leaked out).
So Granny was going to need a (1) super-sized sarcophagus and (2) an extra-large grave site. No problem on the first count. The funeral parlor reportedly rebounded from the scalp-spewing incident and hooked up Granny pretty well on the oversized casket front. But then there was also the little matter of the grave site.
At the graveyard for the funeral, "the grave site ended up being too small for the oversize casket," alleges Sonny. But the Mount Hope cemetery wasn't going to let a little detail like that derail things.
Instead, they allegedly tried to jam the big coffin into the tiny burial space like it was a health care bill on Sunday Bloody Sunday -- which didn't do the coffin or Granny (or America) any favors. Specifically, Sonny alleges that "the gravesite ended up being too small for the oversize casket, and ended up being damaged in an attempt to force it into the grave." That's more offensive than Grandma Sarah herself:
Claiming the family "was humiliated and insulted" as a result of the alleged negligence of the funeral parlor and cemetery, Sonny's lawsuit is looking for over 50 grand in damages. No word yet whether they left Granny jammed down in that little grave or whether she got new death digs somewhere else.
This Grandma Got Run Over by a Slimeball
A different Granny was just looking for a little online love. So the 54-year-old New Zealander hit up Match.com and was quickly "winked" by a "kindly, bearded gentleman" whose profile said he was 55 years old. And "there was something different about this man."
Granny liked that the dude was "down to earth" and wasn't a "fancy" pants. Granny and the man started exchanging e-mails and talking on the phone. He told her sob stories about his ex-wife breaking his heart, his daughter dying, and spending every Valentine's Day at the graveyard.
He also says he's about to retire and open up his own "high end" jewelry joint, but first he's got to go to London on business. Then come the wild stories. He starts to Talk Turkey -- tells her that on his way back, he's stopped off in Dubai to buy diamonds worth $1.9 million for his new jewelry store.
Then the guy claims he got robbed by Somalian gangsters, who took his watch and briefcase (apparently having no interests in the diamonds). He tells Granny that his bank accounts have also been frozen, and so he needs some dough to pay the duty on the diamonds. Granny wires him her entire savings account -- $5400.
Then the guy needs some more money to have a company transfer the diamonds back to New Zealand. He says he is not allowed to carry them himself "because it is too much of a security risk." (This guy has an answer for everything -- nothing Lazy about his Song).
But by now Granny is starting to get suspicious. She calls the man's New Zealand phone number, and it's been disconnected, and the home which is his listed address has been sold. Turns out the guy and everything about him was a fake.
Cops says there's nothing they can do for Granny. While I find that a little difficult to believe, the real wrath here should be aimed at the scuzbucket who took Granny to the cleaners.
Only the most rotten and sleazy creep would try to scam a grandmother through a dating site. Whomever this guy was, I'm certain he's got a reservation waiting in that underground diamond mine that burns 1000 degrees year round.
Grannies Strike Back in Motown!
You can only push these grannies around for so long before they start to push back. Cops in Detroit are on the trail of a gang of Grannies known as the "Mad Hatters" (pictured at the very top from surveillance photos).
The calling card of these five Grannies is that they nearly always wear "hats of various colors and shapes" when they steal money, checks and credit cards from distracted shoppers from one side of Detroit Rock City to the other.
And the take for this little Senior Syndicate has been incredible. Cops estimate the Grannies' "ill-gotten bounty may approach $500,000"! The Grannies reportedly use the checks and credit cards to get as much money as they can out of the bank and also to purchase merchandise.
Cops "surmise that the genial appearance" of the Grannies "is helping them to pull off the caper." Put another way, "shoppers, banks and retailers tend not to suspect that the grandmotherly woman in a floppy white hat standing in front of them is a cold-hearted crook."
Why take the risk of knocking over a gas station or pulling a bank job, after all, when you can just swipe your score from the purse of Gretchen Soccer Mom while she tries to decide between the bratwurst and the braunschweiger. No weapons, no violence, no small p-o-t-a-t-o-e(-s).
Now if the Mad Hatter Grannies could just go Robin Hood and turn over some of that "bounty" to repay the Kiwi Granny who's out her savings and to compensate the family of the Chicago granny who got jammed into the ground with a leaky melon (allegedly): Hell, the Mad Hatters would still have almost $450,000 left over!
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