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Mysterious Find Was a Bunch of Crap. Or Was It?
Editor’s Note: The following column contains information that some readers may consider offensive. Those with weak stomachs should probably stop reading at this point.
Sometimes, things just aren’t what they seem.
In this case, we may never really know.
The mystery began a couple of weeks ago when an area farmer was harvesting his crop northwest of Knightstown and discovered a suitcase standing upright in the corn field. The suitcase, an old, gray piece of baggage that showed signs of wear, was sitting seven rows deep in the field and was to say the least, an unusual sight among the perfectly-aligned rows of corn.
The farmer stopped his combine and opened the suitcase to investigate. What he found inside was baffling.
Wrapped in plastic bags and partially sealed with duct tape were numerous packages of human feces.
Law enforcement officers were summoned.
Initial theories suggested the involvement of illegal drugs. Apparently, it’s fairly common practice for drug traffickers to have subjects swallow balloons or condoms filled with heroin, and then cross the border into the United States. Once here, they pass the balloons through the defecation process and then they, or someone else, retrieve the drugs.
I am not making this up. There was an actual case that went all of the way to the U.S. Supreme Court involving a subject swallowing balloons filled with cocaine.
According to court records, Rosa Elvira Montoya de Hernandez entered the United States at Los Angeles International Airport from Bogotá, Colombia. Customs inspectors detained Montoya de Hernandez upon her arrival based upon a suspicion that she was smuggling drugs. After 16 hours she began passing balloons filled with cocaine. Over the next three days, the woman passed 88 balloons that, combined, were filled with over one pound of cocaine.
Apparently, that’s often how the stuff finds its way here. Just Google “swallowing balloons filled with illegal drugs” and you’ll find literally hundreds of legitimate cases.
So, when law enforcement officials converged on the corn field northwest of Knightstown and they observed the many individual bags containing human feces, their suspicions centered on the drug trade.
The case was turned over the Ryan Larrimore, a member of the Drug Task Force and the Henry County Sheriff’s Department. Larrimore has experience in dealing with human fecal matter because he is the father of a young child. But it’s not his favorite job.
“I don’t even handle changing diapers very well,” Larrimore said. “So you can imagine how difficult this job was.”
The mystery grew as officials began the unthinkable job of sifting through the evidence. There were multiple bags, individually duct taped, placed into a suitcase, and then left in a corn field. Was this a drug drop-off and pick-up point? Were there balloons inside each of those deposits?
At this point, Larrimore found what could be considered either good or bad news. The packages contained nothing but fecal matter. For that reason alone the discovery creates a mystery for law enforcement, depending upon who you talk to.
Larrimore said the case is closed because no drugs were found inside the packages. His theory is that the packages were filled individually by a long-distance traveler, such as a trucker, or possibly a group of migrant workers who didn’t have access to facilities. He theorized that they used the bags and then filled the old suitcase, eventually tossing it into a corn field not too far from the interstate.
“I honestly think it was someone who traveled and just didn’t want to stop,” Larrimore said.
I asked three other law enforcement officers, who were familiar with the case, what they thought, and one agreed with Larrimore. The other two offered another theory.
Those two suggested the individually-wrapped packages were used to transport illegal drugs, and those drugs were removed prior to the suitcase being discovered.
Once the drugs were removed – and the duct tape seal broken on the packages – the drug dealers would have had no more use for the human waste and just discarded the suitcase.
Either theory is relatively easy to believe.
If Larrimore is wrong, then an illegal drug shipment of considerable size just recently made it into the area.
If Larrimore is right in his conclusion, then some really strange people are pooping into plastic bags, sealing it up neatly, and throwing it into our corn fields.
I’m not sure which scenario scares me more.
But the mystery brings one more serious question to the table. Do these absolute idiots who inject heroin into their system know the travel itinerary before the drug reaches their neighborhood?
As you read this, the election is finally over, the propaganda has at least momentarily died down, and hopefully life will return to some form of normalcy.
With that in mind, I’ll give you my favorite election story of 2008, and it goes back to the primary held last May in the Dallas, Texas suburb of Carrollton. Incumbent Mayor Becky Miller built a nine-point lead in early balloting before a Dallas Morning News report was published on “fanciful parts” of her biography. The newspaper report caused election-day voters to rethink their ballots.
According to the Morning News, in her campaign, the mayor had emotionally referred to a brother killed in the Vietnam War. But her father said her only brother is still alive and was never in the military (which Miller "explained" by alleging that her dad has Alzheimer's).
She later gave a name for her brother, but the Morning News confirmed that the soldier, unlike Miller, is black.
Miller also claimed to be a backup singer for Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne, and was once engaged to the Eagles' Don Henley. But spokesmen for each said they never heard of her, which she explained by saying she was earlier known as “Pinky.”
In case you are curious, Pinky lost in the primary.
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