What the ... ?
In which we seek your 'what the" stories.
Hello. Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool. Things are about to get weird and — fair warning — more than a little disturbing.
Here is my summary of a grisly story that appeared in yesterday’s New York Daily News:
Sanitation workers found the chopped-up, battered body of a 39-year-old woman inside a cinched garbage bag in the basement of a high-rise apartment building in Brooklyn. Michelle Montgomery was a cheerful married mother of four with no criminal record. She had a steady job and a loving family.
Police instantly began investigating it as a homicide. Justifiably, neighbors were terrified that a Jack the Ripper was on the loose.
Ms. Montgomery had been at a party with friends at a Mexican restaurant called Mama Taco, from which she posted on Facebook this video of herself twerking, around 11 p.m. She was dead two hours later. She left the party with friends, but they soon separated.
The building she was found in was similar in appearance to her own apartment building, both built and owned by the city. But this one was a very considerable distance from Montgomery’s. She was found in the trash compactor room, in the basement.
A couple of days later, police said they had solved the case. And that it was not a homicide.
Can you figure out what police believe happened? I’ll give you two moments.
(moment)
(moment)
Police believe that Ms. Montgomery (perhaps a bit tipsy after a night out) somehow got disoriented and entered the wrong building, but one with a familiar layout. She had something she wanted to throw out, and went to one of the garbage-disposal chutes on the second floor. The chutes are evidently commodiously sized.
From NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny:
“Our theory right now is that she may have [accidentally] dropped an item into the chute and went to retrieve it. She fell head-first into the chute and ended up in the chute room, two floors down, and was processed through. People heard screaming.”
Kenny said that the sanitation workers who found her body also found her purse with credit cards and two forms of identification.
“We believe she was trying to get her purse,” Kenny said. “The compactor automatically bags whatever is crushed.”
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Whew. Sorry about that.
Okay, your Gene Pool Gene Poll challenge for today is simple: Tell us about a “what the…?” moment: Something you have seen or encountered or even just heard about that turned out to be completely different from what you had assumed.
Send ‘em here:
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Good.
Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:
Note: I answered yes. Rachel opted for suspicious.
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Happy Valentine’s Day. Here is a gorgeous sonnet just written by my friend Henry Rathvon, the guy who for so many years co-wrote (with wife Emily Cox) the Sunday Acrostic in the New York Times. Henry compiles his poetry in the Substack named Into The Words, which is free. You should subscribe.
Most species have five petals—like you care!
You fidget, you’re distracted from the text
By scenes of nudes with flowers in their hair.
How can you listen? You’re so oversexed!
It’s not your fault, though. Roses have been wrecked
By symbolism. When you bring to mind
A rose, your science cannot disconnect
The thing so Robert Burnsed and Gertrude Steined.
A red, red rose is made of human hearts.
Our paintings, songs, and ads of every fashion
Have swiped the rose’s biologic parts
And made them metaphors for people’s passion.
Dissect a rose, you’ll find another rose.
There’s nothing left to rhyme with rose but rose.
—Henry Rathvon
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Hey. You. Can you afford $50 a year to become a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool? It will give you the right to post in the Comments section, which means you can comment about how outrageously overpriced is The Gene Pool, considering the trash you get.
That’s it for today.
I feel like this must be an episode of “Only Murders in the Building”
While admitting that we are maybe missing some information, if we are to believe the police version, we have to accept that she 1) was so drunk she went into the wrong building, even though she must have made the trip a thousand times, and her friends had decided she was sober enough to go home alone, 2) decided she had to throw something in the trash, 3) was so drunk she dropped her purse down the chute, even though she had carried a purse for most of her life, 4) thought for some reason she could get the purse back if she just leaned far enough down the chute, even though she must have used the identical chute in her building many, many times, and 5) fit completely inside a garbage bag.