… but this is one of those stories… those Sorceror’s Apprentice stories… those Strega Nona stories… those shaggy dog stories… in which more and more things pile up and it gets crazier and crazier until you have to laugh. UD has to laugh, anyway.
So all day on and off she’s been following the story of Marcello DelCarlo, a biochem professor at Rush University in Chicago (his faculty webpage was up earlier today; let’s see if it’s still there) whose morning began with a domestic battery charge. His girlfriend says he shook her violently.
That’s bad, certainly, but not bad enough, professor-behaviorwise, to get you mentioned on University Diaries. (Yes! It’s still there!)
Then, when police looked through his apartment, they found
… more than a dozen cardboard tubes filled with an explosive substance and capped with plaster … One of the devices ignited as police bomb and arson investigators tried removing it, causing a small fire that was quickly extinguished by the unit’s fire sprinkler system, according to prosecutors and witnesses. The block-long building was evacuated, and the remaining devices were taken from the home and destroyed.
Although the professor scoffed that they were merely little firecrackers he’d fashioned for July fourth, the police added to his domestic battery misdemeanor “felony possession of an explosive or incendiary device.”
And then when the police talked some more with the girlfriend, she told them “he made the explosives and traded them for meth.”
Oh. And:
On Monday a Cook County judge set DelCarlo’s bail at $225,000. He is currently serving a sentence of six months of court supervision — a form of probation — for a January conviction for misdemeanor possession of ammunition without a valid firearm owner’s identification card and possession of an unregistered handgun.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:21AM
I thought that the chemistry folks knew how to do meth directly in the first place!?
(I myself topped my chemistry wizardry at making aspirin and paracetamol in a chemistry competition in highschool, and, believe me, when I noticed that many of my classmates made colored powders in lieu of these supposedly white substance, I thought that homemade chemistry for human consumption is probably very unwise.)
April 20th, 2010 at 8:55AM
Sounds like an episode from Breaking Bad.
April 20th, 2010 at 11:47AM
DM, meth labs emit a strong smell that would alert neighbors in an apartment building.
April 20th, 2010 at 2:15PM
@Tamara: A chemistry prof can probably “cook” in a university lab on weekends. Does meth smell like organic chemistry as usual, or does it emit a specifically recognizable smell?