oddly enough

oddly enough

Bank robber cut from air duct

OAK LAWN, Ill.

A wig-wearing man broke into a suburban Chicago bank vault and nearly made off with $100,000 but got stuck in an air duct and had to be cut out hours later, authorities said Sunday.

Charles Estell, 38, was found early Sunday hiding in an air duct in an office next to the bank, according to Oak Lawn police spokesman Michael Kaufmann.

The Chicago man reportedly had robbed the suburban bank Saturday afternoon, and pointed a gun at bank employees who confronted him in the vault, according to the FBI.

“I don’t want to kill or hurt you,” Estell said, according to the criminal complaint. “I just want the money.”

He reportedly stuffed $100,000 in a backpack and fled. Employees told authorities it appeared he escaped through the ceiling.

Authorities spent hours searching for him and located him around 1 a.m. Sunday. But before they could cut him loose from the air duct, they had to remove a wig of long, beaded dreadlocks he was wearing.

According to the criminal complaint, Estell told investigators that he got into the vault through the ceiling.

Estell was charged Sunday with one felony count of bank robbery and could face up to 20 years in prison. He has not entered a plea, and is due back in court today.

Supersized hen egg in Texas had another egg inside

ABILENE, Texas

A Texas woman who found an egg the size of a baseball in her chicken coop cracked it open to find another full egg inside.

Cookie Smith of Abilene found last week what she calls the “mutant super egg” that was an inch longer and triple the weight of a regular hen’s egg. She took pictures of the egg and showed photos to her co-workers at an Abilene hospital.

She cracked it open only after an Abilene Reporter-News photographer accompanied her home. Inside was a large yolk — and another intact normal-sized egg.

Arizona man’s heirs get cash found hidden in walls

PHOENIX

An Arizona court says a man’s heirs are entitled to $500,000 cash that was found in the walls of his former home years after he died.

The Court of Appeals ruling last week upholds a judge’s decision that the money, stashed in ammunition cans inside the walls, belongs to Robert Spann’s estate.

Spann died in 2001. According to the ruling, his daughters found stocks, bonds, cash and gold hidden in his suburban Phoenix home before they sold it seven years later.

The couple who bought the home in Paradise Valley claimed the cash after a worker found it in the walls during kitchen and bathroom remodeling.

The Court of Appeals said that legally, the money was only mislaid, not abandoned, so it still belonged to Spann’s estate.

Associated Press