A Bronx branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank was robbed twice yesterday and once this morning in the mind of Andy Scherer, 27. Scherer, a tax consultant, does not own any firearms and has never committed a violent act. Recently, however, he has fallen prey to increasingly savage and vivid daydreams in which he binds and gags the employees and customers of his local bank branch at gunpoint and, after emptying the vault and firing shots that cause mass-cowering, makes a spectacular getaway on rocket-powered rollerblades.
At 2:43 a.m. last night, Rosemary Gonzalez, 43, of Deerfield, Illinois, briefly considered setting her cheating, unemployed husband Armando on fire as he slept, but gave up her plan when she realized she was out of lighter fluid and there were no stores open. Her thoughts then shifted to a copper colander she had seen on sale earlier in the day at Crate & Barrel.
Tom Maxwell, 38, of Reno, Nevada, willfully and forcefully generated a mental image of a naked Sharon Stone without the actress’s consent, which he then projected onto his wife Patricia as they were having mechanical, partially clothed sex sometime after 10 p.m. last Thursday. The illicit illusion lasted approximately two-and-a-half minutes, after which Maxwell’s powers of imagination failed and he fought back an overwhelming desire to weep.
Elaine Younger, an administrative assistant at the Oakland Discount Tire Outlet, contemplated stealing a box of blue ball-point pens, a stack of post-it note pads, and other minor office supplies this past Friday afternoon during her 3 o’clock break. The 51-year-old native then remembered that she still had not used up the supplies she had filched from her last place of employment. At this point the words, “Oh God, my pap smear results!” flashed through her mind, obliterating all thoughts of petty theft.
Robert Michaels once again decided this morning that kidnapping was the only way to resolve in his favor the ongoing custody battle with his ex-wife, Clarice. He mentally rehearsed a detailed plan to abduct his two children, Bob, Jr. and Lindsay, from the parochial school they attend in Great Neck, Long Island, going over the fine points out loud with local barman Tony Mendiola. The plan became clearer after the second beer, but somewhat fuzzy after the fourth, and all but disappeared from Michaels’ consciousness after the seventh. Michaels, 49, is now resting quietly in the back seat of his car.
A series of highly obscene and abusive calls was nearly made over the past four days by a Gary, Indiana woman who works as a receptionist in the administrative office of Ronald Reagan Elementary. Helen Blossey, 58, came within seconds of making the calls at least several dozen times, being stopped only by incoming calls at the switchboard, which she had to answer. On each occasion, Blossey was prepared to unleash a stream of profanities upon whatever stranger picked up her randomly dialed call. Police have yet to discern a motive.
Randall Gillispie, 31, mentally stalked his coworker, Anne Schwartz, for the eighth time this month in what has become an obsessive evening ritual for the Bridgeport, Connecticut resident. His imagination followed her home after she got off the 5:32 express train two stops before him. He pictured her entering her apartment while he loitered nearby, incorporeal and impotent, unable to mentally enter her home because he had never actually been inside it and thus could not clearly picture the interior.