Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (32 page)

“Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.”

—Will Rogers

Women get songs stuck in their heads longer than men do, and are more likely to be irritated by them
.

THE MAYOR WITH
TWO NAMES

Here’s a strange story about a mayor who was well liked by the citizens of his small town. But they didn’t know about his bizarre, secret past
.

M
EET DON LAROSE
In the mid-1970s, Don LaRose was a happily married man with two young daughters. A respected pastor in the town of Maine, New York, he often gave sermons warning against the evils of Satan. Then, in 1975, he suddenly vanished. Three months later, Minnesota police picked up a homeless man who said his name was Bruce Kent Williamson—but he couldn’t remember much other than that. After he was checked into a mental hospital in Chicago, his memory started to come back. He said he thought his name was also Don LaRose and that he’d been abducted by “Satanists” who were “determined to expunge every last bit of righteousness” from him. He said they brainwashed him with shock treatments until he believed he was a totally different person. “In truth,” he said, “I’m not sure who I am.” Staff were able to locate his family and send word that he was safe.

LaRose’s wife went to Chicago and brought her weary husband home. Though his memory was still cloudy, he tried to pick up the pieces of his former life. In 1977 the LaRose family moved to Hammond, Indiana, and Don resumed his duties as a Baptist minister. At first, life was good. But underneath, he was a terrorized man. LaRose told local police that his Satanist abductors had caught up with him again and were threatening to make his life a “living hell if he didn’t stop blaspheming Satan.” The police didn’t believe him. Then, in 1980, Don LaRose disappeared again.

MEET KEN WILLIAMS

A few months later, a man in his early 40s named Ken Williams arrived in northwest Arkansas. While Don LaRose had been a clean-shaven man with glasses, Ken Williams had a graying beard, bushy eyebrows, and no glasses. That was all the disguise he needed—for the next 27 years, LaRose lived as Ken Williams. After remarrying in 1986, he was once again a respected family man…but the guilt of leaving his first family haunted him. “What I had done weighed heavily on my heart and mind from the first day I rode out of Hammond,” he later wrote. “What happened in 1980, whether it was right or wrong, I did because I was under threat for the safety of my family. If I’d stayed, there’d be bodies in a grave.” In 21 years of marriage, he didn’t even tell his wife about his former life. Williams was appointed mayor of Centerton, Arkansas, in 2001 after the town’s previous mayor resigned. He was reelected twice.

On average, there are 40,000 liability lawsuits filed in the U.S. every year, vs. about 200 in the U.K
.

THE JIG IS UP

Williams might have continued living with his secret if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his former life. In March 2007, he created the Web site
DonLaRose.com
, which chronicled his former self’s mysterious disappearance. One of LaRose’s nephews found the site on the Internet and shared it with his family; they were amazed at how detailed it was. And then they saw the name of the site’s creator: Bruce Kent Williams. It was so similar to “Bruce Kent Williamson” that they knew they’d finally found him. Not only was he not dead, not homeless, and not in a mental institution, but there he was—the
mayor
of a town. Rather than call the police, they called the
Benton County Daily Record
—and the story shocked Centerton’s 5,500 citizens. At first, Williams denied it, but soon admitted to the accusations and resigned. His second wife, Pat, asked, “Who are you—Don LaRose or Ken Williams?” He replied, “I’m a little of both, I guess.”

A TALE OF TWO FAMILIES

Pat Williams supported her husband: “I love him. I’ll stand by him. We’re in it for the duration.” And many people in Centerton felt the same way. Said one citizen: “I can verify the fact that Mayor Ken Williams was always unbiased, fair in his decisions, and wise beyond his years. An honest gentleman.”

But with Don LaRose’s family, it was a different story. His first wife, who had since remarried and still lived in Indiana, refused to speak to the press about the ordeal. So did his two adult daughters. His father, 97-year-old Adam LaRose, did take questions from his hospice, and explained that he’d never gotten over the sting of being abandoned by his son: “I would love to see him again. That would be my day.” LaRose has since met with some of his family, including his father. However, LaRose’s 22-year-old grandson, Tony Hofstra, is skeptical: “I don’t know if he’s crazy or if he’s lying to everybody about this Satanic attack and all these threats. I don’t know if he just didn’t want to pay child support and disappeared.”

In 2008 the U.S. Army awarded a $4 million contract for the development of helmets that will read and transmit soldiers’ thoughts to each other.

In August 2008, police determined that Williams had committed a crime, and he was brought up on felony forgery charges. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years’ probation and 100 hours of community service. “I just wanted to put the experience behind me,” he said.

STILL PREACHING

Today, he runs two Web sites. The first,
KenWilliamsMinistries.com
, makes no mention of Don LaRose. His other site,
DonLaRose.com
, contains an eight-chapter book that Williams calls his “amazing story of survival.” Is it true? No one—perhaps not even Williams himself—knows for sure (he’s said that some of the details of his ordeal are still murky). Either way, it’s a chilling read:

    I also have a recurring dream which is always the same, but with some variations. In each dream I am either tied to, or strapped to, a wooden chair, an arm chair or a recliner. In each dream the electrodes are attached to my head and I am begging them not to do it. And in each dream, when the switch is thrown, I scream as loudly as I possibly can because of the excruciating pain.

LINGERING QUESTIONS

• Where did he get the name Ken Williams? From a teenager who was killed in a car accident in 1958. Authorities aren’t sure how LaRose was able to acquire his Social Security Number.

• Were there ever any “Satanists”? Police have found no evidence of their existence outside of Williams’s stories—and even those are sketchy. Shortly after his secret came out, he wrote on his Web site, “Since my unveiling on Wednesday, I have revised this report to delete portions of the story designed to keep people from following my trail.” But now that the story has been told in media outlets all over the world, who knows if the Satanists will ever catch up to LaRose/Williams, or if they existed in the first place.

CELEBRITY FLIP-OUTS

You may have heard Christian Bale’s profanity-laced tirade on the set of Terminator:
Salvation.
You may have seen rapper Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 VMAs (not to mention Mel Gibson’s and Michael Richards’s racially fueled blow-ups). Here are some other stars who lost it
.

C
RAZY LOVE
In 2009 former Hole singer Courtney Love was at a party in New York City when she had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately for a partygoer named Sebastian Karnaby, he accidentally walked in on Love while she was sitting on the toilet with her skirt down around her ankles. Karnaby quickly turned and left, but Love got up, pulled up her skirt, and chased after him, repeatedly screaming, “I’m gonna get you f***ing thrown out!” She then jumped on his back and tried to drag him over to the security guards, claiming it was he who attacked her. They believed him…and asked Love to leave. “She was like a possessed woman,” Karnaby said afterward. “I never wanted to see Courtney Love on the toilet. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

MESSAGE FROM HELL

In 2007 Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, once one of Hollywood’s golden couples, were divorced and battling for the custody of their 11-year-old daughter, Ireland. A court had granted Baldwin a prearranged phone call with Ireland, but she didn’t answer. He was told to leave a message at the beep, and boy, did he ever: “I’m tired of playing this game with you. You have insulted me for the last time! You don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being. I don’t give a damn that you’re 11 years old or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do!” Baldwin ended by calling his daughter a “rude, thoughtless little pig.” The tape was leaked to the press and played all over the news, prompting an explanation from the actor: “I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now. You have to go through this to understand.” Baldwin later revealed that he contemplated suicide after the tirade but didn’t do it because Basinger might have considered his death a “victory.”

State with the most UFO sightings: New Mexico. Runner-up: Wisconsin
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LINE DANCE

In the semifinals of the 2009 U.S. Open tennis tournament, Serena Williams, ranked #2 in the world, was two points away from losing the match. Williams served, but the line judge—a small woman sitting to the side of the court in a chair—ruled that Williams’s foot had touched the line (a call that’s rarely made, especially at the end of a tournament). That cost her one point. Williams—known for her fierce but reserved demeanor—went ballistic on the judge, yelling, “I swear to God, I’m going to take this f***ing ball and shove it down your f***ing throat!” The umpire docked Williams another point for the outburst…and that cost her the tournament.

I HATE H***ABEES

While filming a scene for the 2004 movie
I Heart Huckabees
, actress Lily Tomlin was on the set, sitting behind a desk and taking orders from director David O. Russell, who kept changing her lines and the way she was sitting. “For Christ’s sake,” Tomlin finally said, “Let’s just take it one f***ing line at a time instead of changing everything—do it this way, do it a different way.” Outraged, Russell started yelling and ran up to the desk and swept all of the props onto the floor. “Okay, bitch!” said Russell. “I’m not here to be f***ing yelled at. I worked on this f***ing movie for three f***ing years, and I don’t need for some f***ing **** to yell at me in front of the f***ing crew! I’m trying to f***ing help you, bitch! Go f*** yourself!” Then Russell kicked a waste basket into a wall. Tomlin’s co-star, Dustin Hoffman, fled the set. Tomlin remained in her chair and calmly said, “You go f*** yourself. Go f*** your whole movie.” Russell left the set and could be heard yelling all the way down the hall. He soon returned and yelled at Tomlin some more. Then the crew left the set, putting an end to the day’s filming. After the movie was released (to so-so reviews), both Tomlin and Russell tried to downplay their fight. Tomlin even claimed it raised the energy level of the production. “I’d rather work with someone who’s human and available and raw and open.”