Coffin Conversations - by dementia

SYDNEY, Australia -- An armed robber picked the wrong target when he raided an Australian bar where a biker gang was holding a meeting.

He ended up hogtied and in a hospital.

The man and an accomplice, wearing ski masks and waving machetes, stormed into the club in a western Sydney suburb shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday and yelled at patrons to lie down as they tried to rob the cash register, police said Thursday.

About 50 members of the Southern Cross Cruiser Club had just started a club meeting in another room, and the bikers jumped up to intervene.


One robber escaped by leaping over a balcony, while the other tried to flee through a service entrance, the club's president, who identified himself only as "Jester," told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

"We caught him at the fence and crash-tackled him and hog-tied him to the ground and waited for the police to get there," Jester said.

Police confirmed that club patrons had subdued one of the robbers, who was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, but did not give further details. Police captured the other suspect nearby.

Jester said the robbers had walked past the bikers as they entered the bar but apparently failed to notice them, perhaps because the ski masks obscured their vision.

"I don't think he did his homework very well," Jester said of the ringleader. "He picked the wrong night."

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Police in the western Canadian town of Wetaskiwin didn't have to do much work when they arrested a drunk driver at the weekend -- he had parked his car next to their offices and wandered inside.

Police discovered the man as they drove by early on Saturday morning to respond to an unrelated call. Although the police office was locked, the lobby was open.

"There was a vehicle parked about 10 feet outside our front door. The gentleman had walked into the front lobby and he was displaying many indications of being intoxicated," Constable Mark Scheck said on Wednesday.


"So at that point we did take him into custody ... it's pretty unusual," he told Reuters by phone from Wetaskiwin, some 45 miles south of Edmonton, Alberta.

The 28-year-old man has been charged with impaired driving.

LONDON (Reuters) - A chef accused of murdering teenage model Sally Anne Bowman said on Tuesday he had sex with her corpse while high on drink and drugs but did not murder her.

Mark Dixie, 37, said he stumbled across the teenager's body lying between a van and a skip in the street after he went out to buy cocaine in the early hours.

Giving evidence at his Old Bailey trial, Dixie said he felt "worse for wear" after a drug and alcohol binge and did not immediately realise she was dead.

"I took full advantage of someone and I shouldn't have," he told the jury. "I thought she had passed out through drink or fallen over."

He told defence barrister Anthony Glass that he had not noticed the pool of blood around the 18-year-old's body.

Dixie said he had just been on a four-day drugs and alcohol binge during which he took cocaine and cannabis and drank wine, beer and whisky.

He described himself as the "life and soul of the party" with a large appetite for drugs.

"I am like a vacuum cleaner when it comes to cocaine. I always need more," he said.

After realising that Bowman was dead, Dixie said he panicked and ran to his flat. He smoked cannabis to try to calm down, slept for a few hours and went out drinking.

Bowman, who was working as a hairdresser and part-time model at the time of her death, was stabbed outside her Croydon home in September 2005.

Earlier in the trial, prosecutor Brian Altman said Dixie murdered her for his own sexual gratification and then concocted a "ludicrous" defence "borne out of desperation".

Dixie denies murder. The trial continues.

A hearse overturned when the horses pulling it to a south London cemetery stampeded, dragging the carriage and coffin past appalled relatives and sending floral tributes flying.

"It was dreadful," a mourner told the South London Press. "The horses dragged the carriage to the cemetery on its side, tossing the coffin all over the place and destroying all the flowers inside.

"Some people got very angry and had to be restrained by other mourners... It is understandable given the circumstances. I'm horrified that something like this could happen."

Police were called to calm angry mourners so that the funeral last month could go ahead.

The carriage appeared to have clipped a mini-roundabout as it entered Lambeth Cemetery for the funeral, the local council which administers the graveyard said Friday.

Russians visiting a health resort received a rude shock when a nurse used hydrogen peroxide instead of water to give them enemas.

Itar-Tass news agency reported Thursday that 17 tourists in the Caucasus spa town of Yessentuki had to be treated in hospital after the mix-up.

A controversial German doctor who invented a technique for preserving corpses plans to sell his stomach-churning creations online.

A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.

Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.