THREE AMAZING NEWS STORIES

Virginia Millionaire Buys Himself a Ghost Town

By Doug Struck, Washington Post Foreign Service Sat Jul 30, 1:00 AM ET

KITSAULT, B.C. -- The Millionaire Who Bought a Town likes to save a buck. He breakfasts at McDonald's, flies economy class and asks for a doggie bag when he doesn't finish his meal at cheap motel restaurants.
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But when, several months ago, the Virginia-based businessman saw a news story about a whole town being for sale in remote western Canada, he called the same day to offer a check for $5.7 million -- sight unseen.

Today, Krishnan Suthanthiran owns Kitsault, a ghost town abandoned by miners' families more than 22 years ago and preserved like a museum display of suburbia -- though one through which bears occasionally wander.

Suthanthiran, who was born in India and made his fortune selling medical devices and real estate in the Washington area, said he jumped at the chance to buy Kitsault because, "one, it is beautiful up there, and two, I couldn't believe it wasn't being used. I said if nobody else could figure out what to do with a town, I can."

His ideas for transforming the empty community, located in a majestic natural setting, tumble forth:

Kitsault will become an eco-tourist destination or an artist's colony. He will hold conferences, gathering scientists for forums and evening salmon-roasts on the beach. Wedding receptions. A corporate retreat. A movie set. Skiing, hiking, a spa, bans on smoking and cars, maybe a high-speed hydrofoil to bring tourists 85 miles from Prince Rupert.

"I feel like a kid in a candy shop," he said.

Suthanthiran has avoided publicity in the past, content with his work and a growing list of philanthropy projects in India, Canada and the United States. Many involve small scholarships, the kind of boost that enabled him to leave home for college at 15 with only a collection of donations from neighbors in his pocket.

"I do believe in education," he said. "If you're going to eliminate poverty, you need to eliminate ignorance."

At 56, after quietly building his businesses for 28 years, Suthanthiran has plunged into a flurry of financial acquisitions. In the last year, he has moved to buy half a dozen companies. Most are medical concerns that complement his own, Best Medical International. But the purchases also include a Vancouver video production company and now -- the splashiest buy -- a ghost town.

"I guess Kitsault will bring me more into the open," Suthanthiran said with little enthusiasm during an interview on the long, bumpy gravel road stretching 140 miles from Terrace, a town in western British Columbia, to the old mining community.

Kitsault, 500 miles northwest of Vancouver, was to be a model mining town. Instead, it became a monument to corporate misjudgment. In the late 1970s, Amax of Canada Limited chose to reopen a local mine, dormant since 1972, that produced molybdenum, a metal used to harden steel.

The setting is stunning: Green-cloaked mountains crested with streaks of snow plunge toward lakes and river gorges. A tidal estuary by the town teems with shrimp and salmon. Curious harbor seals poke up their heads from the water beneath the swiftly moving shadows of bald eagles.

Amax created a modern, planned community to house 1,200 miners and their families. The company built seven apartment buildings and 92 suburban homes with aluminum siding and green lawns. The town boasted a recreation center with a gleaming hardwood-floor gym and a swimming pool, health clinic, community center, library and day-care facility.

"It was an ideal place for a family," said Larry Payjack, who opened a sporting goods store in the town's small mall. There was no crime; residents formed a bear watch to collect the kids when a bear wandered through.

But just as the families were getting settled, the price of molybdenum plunged, from a $15-a-ton high to $3. An oversupply of the ore from competing mines and the recession of the 1980s killed off the "moly" market.

The company stockpiled the ore in one-ton bags on the beach for a while, recalled Art Hill, an electrician. Then, in November 1982, it ordered the operation closed, and within months, the town was abandoned. Most of the mining families, accustomed to a boom-and-bust lifestyle, moved to places where dreams still hid in seams of coal, asbestos or gold.

Kitsault was left empty and eerie. The glasses are still stacked for the next pint at the Maple Leaf Pub. The sign-in sheet at the day-care center shows a dwindling roster of 3-year-olds. Amber LaForge was the last to attend -- alone -- on June 27, 1983. The pool was left filled. Residents left the doors unlocked.

Amax and the successive owner, the giant mining company Phelps Dodge, kept a caretaker there who mowed the lawns and kept the heat on in the winter, keeping the town surprisingly intact.

"It's nice and peaceful here in the winter," said Jim Essay, 65, who lived with his wife, Maggie, as a Kitsault caretaker for the last two years. "Maggie did a lot of cross-stitching. We played cards a lot."

There were occasional attempts to sell the property, but no takers until the price dropped and Suthanthiran noticed the ghost town for sale.

He had a history with Canada. He had come to Carleton University in Ottawa in 1969 at age 20 on a postgraduate scholarship after leaving India, where a friend's father had taken up a collection to rescue the smart young man from his family grocery store and send him to college.

Suthanthiran got a master's degree in engineering and then went to Washington to make medical devices with an oncologist. He started his own company in 1977, specializing in sophisticated radiation treatment catheters used to fight cancer, the disease that had claimed his father in India. The company now employs a staff of 130 in Virginia and 100 in Europe.

Its owner is not a flashy millionaire. No gold Rolex -- he wears a plastic sports watch and white socks. He says he hasn't been shopping in three years. He does not own a car. He spends more than half his time on the road, so when he flies back to Virginia, he rents a car to drive to the house he bought 22 years ago in quiet Mason Neck.

The only extravagance he admits to is a two-bedroom apartment in Las Vegas. He doesn't gamble, he says, but likes the shows and marvels at the operation of the giant hotels.

Suthanthiran has neither a wife nor children; the closest he came, he said, was when he was 28 and received a surprise call from a family who said they had arranged with his mother in India for him to marry their daughter. He balked, and since then, he said, "I've been busy." He works seven days a week, his ear joined to a telephone. He hasn't borrowed money in 20 years, he said.

But something about Kitsault has brought out the dreamer in him.

"Just look at this place," Suthanthiran gushed as he wandered around the empty buildings of his town. "Look at these paved roads. Look at the gym -- how many schools would love to have a gym like this? Look at this scenery. I've got a mailing list of thousands of doctors who would love to come up here to get away for a week."

The frozen-in-time look of the town is deceptive, though. Ants are chewing away at the wood foundations; mold has crept into the eaves. The electrical wiring is brittle, and the sewage system, which runs straight into the estuary, probably will not pass today's standards.

"I don't think he really knows what he's gotten into," mused Edmond Wright, secretary-treasurer of the Nisga'a Lisims native government, which represents the aboriginal villages that are Kitsault's closest neighbors. "We're really out in the boondocks here."

Besides, native officials told Suthanthiran at a recent meeting to discuss his plans, the 6,200 Nisga'a have treaty rights and a well-vetted development blueprint for the area. Over a hospitable lunch of wild salmon, the Nisga'a officials politely scolded Suthanthiran for rushing ahead without consulting them.

"You've got too much money," Wright chided him.

Suthanthiran is undeterred by skeptics.

"If I wasn't an optimist, I'd still be in my home town in India running a grocery, with 10 kids," he said. "Land development is not for the fainthearted."

His plans do not include capitalizing on Kitsault's ghost-town history, however.

"We're going to focus on the future," he said. "People are going to say, 'Wow.' And they will forget about the past. The ghosts will be exorcised."

THINK OF THE BARTENDER
I don't take any glee on the tragic circumstances of this poor woman's death. But the player I feel for the most is that bartender. Man, hearing murder confessions just shouldn't be part of anyone's job. It's one thing to put up with drunk strangers confessing inadviseable crushes, or drunken lectures about national politics. But for a guy to just let you know about the brutal homicide he just executed on his wife, it'd just be depressing.

Man Gets Death for Killing Wife After Sex
By Associated Press
August 4, 2005, 11:41 AM EDT

PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- A man who got angry with his wife because she wanted to cuddle after sex when what he really wanted to do was watch sports on television was sentenced to death for killing her with a claw hammer.

Christopher Offord, 30, was sentenced Wednesday by Circuit Judge Dedee Costello, who said the brutality of the crime outweighed any mental problems Offord may have had.

"The defendant struck his wife approximately 70 individual blows after spending a happy interlude with her," the judge said. "Her desire to cuddle after sex does not justify the extremely violent, brutal response of the defendant."

Offord pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 2004 slaying of Dana Noser, 40, at his apartment.

He confessed to a bartender at a sports bar before his arrest. He told investigators that his wife had been nagging him to come back to bed.

Offord did not speak in court but said in a jailhouse interview in June: "I figured I killed her so I deserve to die."

TONIGHT ON AN ALL NEW SIMPSONS
Seriously, I really think there was an episode where Homer did this. The guy is bald, just like Homer Simpson.

And what's up with a new story calling them "cops?" I suppose it's more colorful, but it seems like a proper term like "police" would be more appropriate for a mainstream news report.

Cops: Man Fabricated Hitchhiker's Death To Make Wife Leave

POSTED: 3:38 pm EDT August 2, 2005
UPDATED: 12:30 pm EDT August 3, 2005


A 28-year-old man in Marion County, Fla., was arrested Tuesday for making up a story that he killed a hitchhiker and dumped his body in the forest in an effort to persuade his wife to leave him, according to police.

Teddy Akin was interviewed by police and admitted the report was false and that he found the wallet at a newspaper box at Nuby's Corner located near Highway 314. He told investigators that he was having problems with his wife and hoped that this story would make her leave him, the report said.

Investigators said Teddy Akin told his wife he killed a man and then dumped the body off east Highway 40.

Akin also told detectives at the Ocala police department that he left the body by the interstate and turned in a wallet belonging to Dennis Allen of Utah.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office began a land and air search of areas around Highway 40 but did not locate a body.

Akin was interviewed again by police and admitted the report was false and that he found the wallet at a newspaper box at Nuby's Corner located near Highway 314.

He told investigators that he was having problems with his wife and hoped that this story would make her leave him, the report said.

Detectives contacted Dennis Allen in Utah who confirmed that he had lost his wallet while visiting Ocala and that he did not know Akin or take a ride with him.

Akin was arrested for filing a false report and theft.

The sheriff's office also said they would probably bill Akin for the cost of their seven-hour search, Capt. Thomas Bibb said.

"This was something that cost us a lot of time and energy," Bibb said.

AND A SPECIAL THIRD-AND-A-HALF STORY

This linked from the story about the guy who made up the bullshit about being a serial killer. It's a little "Girls Gone Wild" for a news station to be sponsoring, right? I ahve to say, I found it all interesting, and so I've decided to compose what I'm too lazy to even bother to laughibly refer to as an investigative report.

Who is the hottest hottie in Central Fllorida?



Several local women are competing for the crown of "Hottest Hottie" and a trip to the MTV Music Awards with Club Paris owners Paris Hilton and Fred Khalilian.

Each Saturday during the broadcast of "Big Brother" on WKMG-TV, Local 6 will eliminate one woman who received the lowest number of votes from online voting and live voting at Club Paris.

The winner will be announced live on Sept. 3 from Club Paris.

Click on the Local 6 slideshow to meet the women and then, click here to vote for your favorite contestant. Voting will also be held a Club Paris on Thursday nights.

The winner will also receive a makeover, a shopping spree and will be named the Club Paris nationwide representative for one year.

Name: Jessica Bain
Age: 18
Home: Lakeland
Measurements: 34-28-32
Favorite Food: Cheesecake
Favorite type of music: Country and Hip-Hop
Favorite movie: "Billy Madison"
Favorite saying: "If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen."
Career Goal: Real estate agent or Broadcaster.

Name: Christina Harrison
Age: 21
Home: Melbourne
Measurements: 34-25-32
Favorite Food: Ice Cream
Favorite type of music: Pop & Techno
Favorite movie: Wedding Crashers
Favorite saying: "What doesn’t break you, only makes you stronger"
Career Goal: Spokesperson for a local company.

Name: Jessyca Jones
Age: 18
Home: Orlando
Measurements: 36-28-32
Favorite Food: Ice Cream
Favorite type of music: Reggae
Favorite movie: "Billy Madison"
Favorite saying: "Life is short. Live it to the fullest."
Career Goal: Fashion Designer

Name: Heather Peters
Age: 19
Home: Orlando
Measurements: 34-28-32
Favorite Food: Spaghetti
Favorite type of music: Rap, R& B, Country
Favorite movie: "Billy Madison"
Favorite saying: "Live the life you love, and love the life you live."
Career Goal: Plastic surgeon or Dermatologist

Name: Amanda Zitzman
Age: 19
Home: Orlando
Measurements: 32-26-34
Favorite Food: Chicken Quesadilla from Taco Bell
Favorite type of music: Rap
Favorite movie: "Ace Ventura Pet Detective" – Jim Carrey is hilarious!
Favorite saying: "That’s hot!"
Career Goal: I'm a writer and fashion fanatic so I would love to own my own fashion magazine.

Surprisingly, it was not a hard choice. Jessica Bain was the first candidate, and I was immediately taken by her tomboyish attitude and smoker voice. I was intimidated and intrigued. She's really lucky she won me over with the video/,because her answers left me cold. Her best answer was that her favorite music is country and hip hop, which is pretty sad.

Her tape was really the only one I cared for, actually. I'm not just saying that to avoid posting links to the other five tapes. I had hoped to like Heather Peters, because of her desire to be a plastic surgeon or a dermatologist. Likewise, Amanda Zitman had a head start thanks to her literary aspiration, and a phot which suggested interesting, perhaps ethnic, facial characteristics. No luck, they were both doofs. I kind of see this as a low-level political race, in the same spirit as a college stdent government race, perhaps, but with more influence and charm. I was disapppointed there weren't better candidates. And to be really honest, I'm a little wigged out by how similar Christina Harrison and Jessyca James look.

I was going to go back and re-read some of their answers, and make some biting remarks on the state of celebrity culture, the over-commodification of self, and the weird, and probably unearned, sense of class contempt that I wonder if I'm feeling when I read stories about people like this. But it was too depressing to go back. Society's loss.

Currently, Jessica Bain is in fifth place, with 8 percent of the vote.