ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Resort for nudists is seeking cover for upcoming trial

CINCINNATI

An Ohio resort for nudists that’s being sued is seeking to keep the upcoming trial under wraps.

An attorney for Paradise Resort Inc., just west of Cincinnati, filed a motion recently asking a county judge to bar the public and news media from the trial and to seal the case records.

Lawyer Kevin Frank declined to give reasons for the request. But the motion suggests the resort’s owner-members fear they’d face discrimination at work if their association with the nudist club were to be made public.

Paradise is being sued by the estate of one of its founding members. The lawsuit claims the resort tried to force the estate to sell the woman’s share in the property for a fraction of its value.

The trial is scheduled to begin Monday.

Calif. car dealer who hexed prosecutors is sentenced

LOS ANGELES

Authorities say a used-car dealer is headed to prison for fraud, despite attempting to place a voodoo hex on prosecutors handling his case in Los Angeles.

Thirty-four-year-old Ruben Hernandez was sentenced last Wednesday to 12 years after being convicted of using false Social Security information and bank statements to buy properties.

Hernandez was arrested in February 2009 after being a fugitive for a year.

Authorities searching his home found a shrine with voodoo dolls dunked headfirst in cups of water with pins in their eyes. Officials say the case number and names of the prosecutor and investigators were written on the dolls.

Hernandez was convicted in May on four counts of filing a false application and three counts of grand theft.

He was ordered to return to court to face 28 additional counts.

Gator raid: 3-foot-long alligator gets collared in Michigan

TRENTON, Mich.

Police in a Detroit suburb have picked up an unusual suspect: a 3-foot-long alligator.

Deputy Chief James Nardone says officers nabbed the reptile recently as it strolled along a suburban street in Trenton, Mich.

Nardone says the gator is probably someone’s pet. He joked that it likely didn’t swim into the suburb, which is perched on the shore of the Detroit River.

Authorities are holding the alligator at an animal-control office until it can be moved to a nonprofit rescue that handles abandoned exotic-animal cases in nearby Belleville.

Associated Press