Archive for November, 2004

Woman’s dying secret yields corpse

Reuters

SOMERVILLE, Massachusetts (Reuters) – A mother’s deathbed confession has led police to a dead body in a storage locker freezer, and officials say the corpse may be that of the woman’s husband whom she murdered more than a decade ago.

The woman apparently told her children as she was dying that their father had not died in a car crash as they thought but that she had in fact killed him and that his body was in a rental storage facility in Somerville, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

Family members then contacted police, who searched the facility and found a large freezer wrapped in duct tape and giving off a strong odour. Inside, they found the remains of what they think was a man.

Local prosecutors said the man may have died as a result of a domestic homicide that took place more than a decade ago in California. The body was thought to have been shipped from California to Massachusetts, where it has been in storage since at least 1998.

Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley’s office did not identify the woman, who has since died.

Coakley’s office said on Thursday it would contact law enforcement authorities in California as part of its investigation.

Tags: ,

Hooters, Rival Argue Over Stealing Ideas

Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. – Hooters of America and a rival restaurant chain began arguing in federal court over who has rights to the concept of using scantily clad women to sell food and beer.

Atlanta-based Hooters of America accuses Ker’s WingHouse of Kissimmee of poaching the idea coined when it opened its first sports bar in Clearwater in 1983, Hooters lawyer Steve Hill said in opening statements Wednesday in Orlando.

“The evidence will show WingHouse has copied the Hooter girl almost from head to toe,” Hill said. “For want of a better expression, the Hooter girl is our Ronald McDonald.”

But Crawford Ker said he based his chain on Knockers, a failing restaurant with an all-female staff in Largo that he took over after retiring from the NFL, according to pretrial deposition.

He opened his first restaurant in 1994 and now has 15 locations, including five in the Orlando area. The chain had revenues of $26 million last year.

“Hooters wants to use the court system to accomplish what it can’t do in the marketplace. It’s going to ask you to create a monopoly,” Ker lawyer Don Conwell said Wednesday. “They’re a 25-year-old chain. There’s new blood coming into town and they’re not up to the competition.”

Hooters said in a trade dress infringement lawsuit filed last year that Ker’s WingHouse stole everything from the design of its parchment menus to staff calendars and celebrity photographs on the walls.

Hooters said other ideas swiped by its rival include hula hoops for waitresses, Christmas lights and surfboards hanging from the ceiling and traffic-style signs on the walls warning “Double Curves” and “Caution: Blonde Thinking.”

Hooters earns more than $750 million a year from nearly 400 restaurants and that success has inspired a host of copycats, Hooters Senior Vice President Michael McNeil said.

“We believe we are defending the integrity of our intellectual property rights,” McNeil said outside the courtroom Wednesday.

Tags: ,