So an off duty police officer, Josh Wright, notices this guy, Joseph Anthony Hill, and his wife, Lisa Hill, trying to force their way past a greeter with "a cart full of TVs and a computer." The officer flashes his badge, Joseph Hill claims its a fake, and continues his attempt to escape from the store. That doesn't work out so well as Hill was promptly tackled and arrested. Now here's where it gets weird.

After watching her husband get arrested, Lisa Hill fakes a heart attack and amnesia, claiming that she did not know who her husband was. A witness spoke up and refuted that claim stating that the couple had been together in the store. Lisa Hill then flew into a rage and attacked the witness in the parking lot, but the witness soon gained the upper hand after stabbing Hill in the arm with a pocket knife. The Hills were eventually hauled off to prison and, most certainly, to hillbilly infamy. [Al via Fark]

It's his second pardon! The first time, he was convicted of bribing a previous president of Korea and then pardoned by another president all together. [WSJ]

Craig 'Lazie' Lynch has been rising to folk hero status after absconding, in early September, from a prison in Suffolk Bay. (England! Which frees us up to celebrate him, because NIMBY.) He's been daring the cops to come find him with defiant photographs, and detailing the corporeal pleasures associated with freedom, ever since:

mmm i just had a 12lb venison steak. Roasted veg and chips, bangin meal.

I feel stuffed but still got room for the j.d's . Hope you enjoyed the meal babe's. We'll have to eat here again. Now to drive home in this shit weather. Hope we make it cos i'm ready to get in bed and un wrap somethin for afters x x.

Craig 'Lazie' Lynch Is thinkin, which lucky girl will be my first of 2010!!

Here's how he celebrated Christmas. The middle finger is blurred because I was forced to rely photographic middlemen, since Lazie hasn't accepted my friend request. (If my friendship is rejected by an escaped convict so indiscriminate as to send Facebook messages to the police, it will truly be a low point in my social networking career.)

YES YES i fuckin made it to Xmas i beat their fuckn system and i love it. I love you all my family my friends my lovers and all my supporters and fans i love the whole lot of you x x your the best merry xmas merry xmas merry xmas ho ho ho.

If any of you was doubtin my freedom. Here's proof. How the fuck could i get my hands on a bird like this in jail. ha ha.

But will Lazie last until 2010? His yuletide updates invited press coverage and a ramped up manhunt, with Facebook disabling various accounts and delivering data to law enforcement. To get around this—and to avoid the "haters and racists" populating his comment sections—Lazie has constructed a Byzantine web of personal profiles and fan pages, each with varying degrees of privacy.* At last count, he had 7300 fans and 1300 friends. He's skittish, too. A recent update read, "Oh No sirens!! Its happening," only to turn into a sigh of relief when the sirens weren't for him. A recent, baleful update reads:

well what can i say fellow friends. The run is nearly over. Sorry some of you had to find out like this. I know some of you might take offence that i never told you personally. But you know me. I Trust No One. Its the only way to be.

If we have learned anything from Hollywood fugitives, it's that the desire for human connection is always what does the lone wolf in—and Facebook udpates count. Lazie, woefully aware of this premise, announces in his bittersweet About Me: "You'll have a laugh with me but it will end in tears. It always does." Just don't pull a gun or anything when they come to get you, because then we'll feel like total jerks for cheering you on.

Click below for screengrabs. [DailyMail] [LondonTimes] [Facebook] [Facebook]

* Hiding from law enforcement with privacy settings is theoretically pointless, but the fact that this strategy has worked for three months suggests Suffolk cops are actually that out of touch. Also, after successfully evading the authorities for this long, if he is thinking anything at all, it is probably, "Gawd, am I so baller, I think I'll take another topless picture and brag about my sex life some more." Successfully evading The Man is a known ego boost and aphrodisiac.

The Montgomery DA already tweets about legal events—sometimes seriously and sometimes with incredible humor—so this new program will just be expanding on that habit. I may not live in Montgomery Country, or Texas for that matter, but I'll be following along to see if he keeps up this mix.

What I do wonder is whether this will really be a crime deterrent as the county hopes. While the tradition of newspapers publishing the names of individuals busted for DWIs or DUIs has been going for years, no one seems to care about a bit of local shame. Could easily retweetable blurbs actually make someone think twice about driving like a loon? Or will this have about as much of an effect as tweeting mugshots? [Twitter via PC World]

A sexting case in Plainfield, Illinois (a lesser-known site of the sexual revolution) has "exploded into the largest sexting case Plainfield police have ever encountered." A 16-year-old girl sent out less savory pics of herself to "a male acquaintance" (?), and being presumably a 16-year-old guy, the shots didn't stay secret for long. Apparently over half the student body has seen them, parents, police, PTA members and probably President Obama are all freaking the fuck out, and really, this could be the end of the noble American experiment. Note: The source has several hundred photo galleries linked underneath the story. Do not be fooled, none of them contain nudie pics of 16-year-old girls. [WBBM]

Fake? Maybe. But still a must-watch for aspiring idiot thieves, lest they make the same mistake. [Break]

After Heene's wife confessed to her part in his grand hoax, we knew that punishment would come. Sadly it's in the form of a mere 20 days of jail for Mayumi Heene and 30 days for Richard Heene. Mr. Heene will also be serving an additional 60 days in a work release program and four years of probation during which he is forbidden from "profiting from the Balloon Boy hoax."

I sincerely doubt that this is the last we'll hear of Heene, but let's enjoy the four years of quiet, shall we? [TMZ]

A 55-year-old woman taking care of a 13-year-old boy apparently got drunk, and when he wouldn't stop playing Xbox 360, she hit him over the head, and then stabbed him in the stomach with a kitchen knife. She says he stabbed himself.

Miraculously, she didn't get any jail time, just 300 hours of community service, presumably not in a youth center. [Scotsman via MaxConsole, Image via the rhumb line/Flickr]

The kit includes a camera, a control piece and a computer that hangs from the belt. Every time an officer interacts with a civilian, they are required to activate the AXON camera. Afterward, the officer can switch the camera to a "buffer" mode that records limited video, or turn it off completely. At the end of a shift, the video will be downloaded to a central server.

A leading critic of the department welcomed the cameras as a tool to provide useful evidence, but dismissed their significance as a solution to rocky police-community relations.

"The AXON project is unfortunately a positive thing right now because the level of distrust is so high," said Raj Jayadev, director of the community organization Silicon Valley De-Bug. "But it doesn't address the more fundamental problem: What stereotypes police may carry when they see people of color on the street and make assumptions about character.

Since an officer can simply turn off the device at anytime, I don't think AXON will put an end to police abuse. However, keeping a record of these interactions can do nothing but help the evidence gathering process. Trials financed by Taser are currently underway, but reports estimate that a full-fledged deployment in the San Jose area would cost upwards of $4 million in taxpayer money. [Mercury News via Crunchgear]

The tab covers the local, state and federal agencies that were called in to deal with the hoax, and seems kind of steep (do fire engines take some sort of special $10,000 per gallon gas or something?) but maybe there's a premium for captivating the nation with idiocy. However, the Heenes aren't about to pay the fine without a fight—their lawyer insists upon seeing precise documentation before paying a cent, which is reasonable. Let's hope this is the last we hear of poor, puking Balloon Boy until he writes his tell-all memoir in ten years. [Denver Post]

Uh...yeah sure. That's Peter Gamblin...G. A. M. B. L. I. N.

According to the court, Gamblin gave the victim his name and address as an "act of bravado." It took a jury only 25 minutes to convict him. Needless to say, this guy is either the world's biggest moron (next to this guy) or he has a serious asshole friend that set him up to take the fall. [Telegraph via Fark]

Previously, pilots would keep planes on the tarmac as long as possible out of fear of losing their place in the takeoff line, and an average of 1,500 flights (114,000 passengers) per year violate these new laws. Message to American, Delta, USAir et al: You want us to sit for longer than a movie, you better bring me some damn pretzels. [NYTimes]

It's unclear what the exact details of the argument which led to these lost lives were, but we do know that it was over an iPod. Supposedly David Mapu, the victim, was attempting to run away from the fight when John Chinh Vu shot him in the back. Vu was later fatally wounded by police officers and died after being rushed to a hospital.

Shooting someone over an iPod. That's the sort of thing that make me lose just a bit more of my faith in our crazy society. [King 5]

Apparently this thief grabbed all the store displays he could find, and "didn't bother to unplug any cords, so he struggled to get the monitors free." He caused so much damage during his escapade that the owner of the store stated that he would've rather "given the man cash than go through this" mess.

Geez. When someone would rather give you money than deal with the mess you leave after your burglary, it's time to find a different gig. [KSL—Thanks, Fred D!]

Apparently, Drugloos are already in use at prisons, secure hospitals, police stations and airports around the world. There are several different variations on the Drugloo theme, but get a load of the classic version pictured here. I don't know about you, but I would have trouble "performing" on this cold steel beast—but at least you are in control. Sooner or later, they are going to develop a toilet that sucks the evidence right out of you. Then you'll be sorry. [Drugloo via ChronicleHerald via Fark]

In all seriousness though, contraband cellphones are becoming a major problem in prisons throughout the country. One solution, cellphone signal jamming, has already been passed by the Senate. Bloodhound is intended to be an alternative to jamming—a device that sniffs out cellphone RF signals using a high speed scanning multi-band receiver harnessed to a DF-Direction Finding Antenna.

The problem with all of this is that prison guards would each need a detector, and they could only get results when the cellphones are actually in use. So, it seems like the best solution is still jamming cellphones en masse. In that scenario, the FCC would be required to lay out rules and ensure that legitimate communications are not blocked, which negates Bloodhound's one major advantage. [BVS and PR Newswire via Coolest Gadgets]

Needless to say, the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) is super-illegal for the average Joe to use, and the breach last month has opened up the floodgates for countermeasures. DECAF is a lightweight app for Windows that deletes temporary files, clears all COFEE logs, disables USB drives, and contaminates or spoofs a variety of MAC addresses once the COFEE software is detected. Future versions could also add features that allow users to remotely lock down protected systems.

Of course, the two guys behind DECAF have not released the source code for the app citing fears that the signatures might be reverse engineered. That means it could be riddled with software that can do God-knows-what to your computer. In this case, it's probably best to switch to Tea—or some other drink that hasn't been corrupted. [DECAF via The Register via Wired UK Image via Gimme Coffee]

It sounds like the couple sought support from their parents before handing their child to a stranger for 2,500 yuan (roughly $366), but it's unclear if that was what pushed their decision. No matter why they did what they did, in the end the pair regretted their decision, and are now attempting to get the child back.

Apparently they may actually even stand a chance of getting the child back because the fellow who purchased him raised some sort of authorities' suspicions and the toddler ended up safe and sound in the care of a welfare center. Other than a truly happy ending, all that's left missing now is word on whether the lovers are returning the cellphone they bought with the proceeds from the child-sale. [Global Times]

Note: The picture above was taken by Micah Sittig, and the cutie in it is not the child from the story.