A Letter to My Dog, Half Pint

This last year may have been the worst one of my life, but at least I've got the world's two greatest dogs by my side to help me stagger into 2018. Today's post features a letter to Half Pint. Benjamin will be getting a letter later this week--he'd never let me hear the end of it, otherwise. Also, this posts features a lot of short video clips of Half Pint being silly. Since I apparently can't do anything right these days, they are exclusively shot in vertical mode. Please accept my apologies (and cut me some friggin' slack).

Weird Crime Wednesday: The epic crime spree of William Todd

(photo @ sodahead.com)


Nashville, Tennessee

On March 25, 2012, William Todd was taking a Greyhound bus ride from Kentucky that needed to make a stop in Nashville.  The bus arrived at approximately 3:00 AM for a whopping 9 hour layover.

While most of us would be mildly annoyed at having to wait that long (in the middle of the night, no less), Todd decided to turn what little was left of the weekend into an adventure.  His first stop was The Slaughterhouse, a popular haunted house attraction.  

The attraction was most likely closed (due to it being 3:00 AM), but that didn't stop Todd from breaking into the place, stealing a gun, a shotgun, a taser, and (of course) a t-shirt.  After securing his weapons and his souvenir, Todd closed the place down himself by setting it on fire and burning it to the ground.

                                                            wikipedia
In the south, we call this "pulling a Sherman."


Next on Todd's to do list was breaking in his new weapons and obtaining some walking around money.  He did this by tasing and pistol whipping a group of people he found that were leaving a bar.  He then took their cash and credit cards, ran off, and hailed a cab...

...which he promptly carjacked and took on a quick run to a local Walmart.  At this point, you're probably expecting the Walmart he visited to get blown up, but the worst thing Todd probably did there was use the express lane with the $200 worth of food that he bought.

I'm not sure what possessed Todd to go through a Walmart check out line (which is still insanely slow even when at 3:30 AM) like a normal person, but once he had his food for the week, Todd wasn't finished wreaking havoc.

At approximately 6:00 AM, Todd found a local law office, broke in, and ransacked it.  As a parting gift, he defecated on one of the desks and smeared poop over the framed law degrees decorating the wall.


Pictured:  The desk of a lawyer that will definitely 
not be taking William Todd's case "like a boss."


Todd next moved onto the Hotel Indigo, which was adjacent to the law office building he had just visited.  He then went door to door impersonating a female housekeeper in an attempt to acquire (i.e.steal) more cash. Todd was finally able to get a Canadian couple to fall for the cliched "pushy female hotel maid" act. When the pair came to the door, he robbed them of $600 at gunpoint.

While he was still in the hotel, Todd realized that his bright red hair and long ponytail would make him easy to identify by the many people that he had terrorized that evening.  To fix this, Todd somehow found (or had purchased at Walmart) a razor and shaved off all of his hair before departing. 

No information has come out about what Todd did for the next 2-3 hours, but at approximately 9:00 AM, Todd crashed his stolen cab into a downtown parking garage.  Not one to be deterred, he simply hailed another cab at 11:30 AM.  Instead of assaulting the driver and taking the car, however, Todd simply asked that he be driven to Opryland...because everyone has to see Opryland before they leave Nashville, apparently.


                                                                           bellevuetravelne.com
They have waterfalls in the lobby!!!


At this point, Todd decided to get cheap (despite having $600 stolen dollars burning a hole in his pocket) and offered his driver a knife to his neck rather than cab fare and a tip.  He emerged from the car and ran towards the hotel's powerhouse/cooling tower.

Todd's reign of terror ended when police finally (!) caught up to him atop the hotel, attempting to hide from them by submerging himself in a water-cooling vat.  

Suffice to say, police and local news were baffled by what happened, with Sgt. Tony Blackburn stating "He was just on a terror.  I've never seen anything like this before." 

What's even better is that the news report embedded below states that the crimes took place on April 25, 2012.  When I made the reasonable deduction that Todd's trip to Nashville actually began on March 25 (and later confirmed it), one intrepid commenter on Fark.com declared:  

"The chick in the video said April 25th. I was all like, 'WTF? It's news from the future! The cops can still stop him.' 
So thanks for ruining that."



So in 9 hours (which is less time than it would take to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy back-to-back), Todd had managed to commit 11 felonies.

William Todd is currently being held in a Nashville prison on charges of burglary, aggravated assault, and fraud (so far).  His bond has been set at $180,000.  Not surprisingly, Todd is also a wanted man in the commonwealth of Kentucky.

Actual mug shot of William Todd via The Tennessean
"Hello, I'm looking for a lawyer.  You may have found some corn that I ate on your framed law degree."

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