January 4, 2010 | lists

Along with swapping last year’s Babes and Brontosauruses Creationist Calendar for the current edition, it is customary as the year passes to read itemized lists of what the media found notable about the year that has just passed: 2009’s Top 10 Celebrity Restaurants Closed Down By Health and Hygiene Boards, Top 10 Children Adopted By Celebrities, Top 10 Incidents Involving a Hostile Celebrity and Someone Earning the Minimum Wage.

Undoubtedly the most depressing of these are the yearly lists of notable deaths, which remind us that no matter how great one’s success, and how gaudy one’s personal jewelry collection, there is no way to avoid having to take that final, unaccompanied walk down that dark hallway. A black market passport and a one-way ticket somewhere you can wear flip-flops and develop melanoma can put you beyond the tax man’s reach, but death, even for those living in the very best postal codes, is inescapable.

There is admittedly something cheap and shallow about mourning someone you’ve never met, and who would have likely whistled over his security detail if you had ever attempted to do so. But provided one keeps it dignified and does not go Princess Di wild with grief, it’s understandable and a credit to the legacy of the individual that one spares a thought for the recently deceased, something along the lines of, “Damn, now that is someone I would not have wished dead”, or perhaps something slightly more sentimental.

This year saw the deaths of some great artistic talents. The media painted Michael Jackson as a cross between a Catholic priest whose records the Vatican would fight to have remained sealed and a boy scout troop leader who does not respect sleeping bag autonomy. Then he died, robbing tabloid newspaper headline writers of a lifetime of coming up with rhymes for the nickname they gave him: “Jacko on his backo”, possibly after a fall, or “Jacko wants a snack-o”, had the king of pop gone on to a heavier, Elvis-like end. MJ joined John Updike and the great Irish balladeer, Liam Clancy, and others worthy of tributes and “hear’s to him” toasts at bars.

Focusing on the deaths of such inspiring people, however, is looking at the glass half-empty when it comes to celebrities reaching their expiry dates. Sure, some wonderful, creative forces were extinguished, but what about all the lousy people who died — those who sucked a bit of goodness out of the world every time they drew a breath? When a murderer, some sociopath who contributed nothing but horror to the world, bites it, for example, shouldn’t we be staging a production of Riverdance and/or Mamma Mia! on that person’s grave?

Our culture frowns upon any sort of flippancy regarding death, much less a celebration when rotten people go, as most people fear it. It is, after all, the worst thing that could happen to a guy apart from being locked in a portable toilet during an outdoor music festival. Death may be frightening and terrible, but there is no better tool for pulling weeds in the garden of humanity.

Here we look at 10 people who died in 2009 who should have had express stickers stuck on their caskets.

10. Oral Roberts

Oral Roberts was a pioneer among grafting, televangelist preachers. He was corralling poor hopeless wretches into circus tents for a laying on of hands – one on the head and the other on the wallet – long before Benny Hinn ever had need of a comb-over.

Along with bankrupting manufacturers of crutches and wheelchairs everywhere he went, Roberts also claimed that he could raise the dead. And that was one of his more modest boasts; to get funding for a medical centre in his name, he told his supporters that a 900-foot-tall Jesus had asked for it to be built — presumably before destroying Tokyo. It’s a mystery why the Nazarene would make this request in such a showy manner, especially since the medical centre in question shut its doors eight years later. Roberts also once famously told his viewers that God might issue a recall on him if the faithful did not pony up a certain amount of money by a certain time.

Such incidents paint him as a cynical, money-grubber who was willing to spout the wildest lies to line his own pocket, but there is a slim possibility that he did sincerely believe every delusional word that came out of his month. Regardless, he makes this list for a lifetime of sucking up the money of people who no doubt could have found a better use for it and for planting the dangerous notion in people’s heads that prayer and modern medicine are equally capable of healing people.

Also, not surprisingly for a man named Oral Roberts, he knew his way around a human orifice or two, as he makes clear in this hilarious YouTube clip.

9. Ryan Jenkins

VH1’s “Megan Wants a Millionaire” had one of the most ludicrous premises in reality television history: 17 wealthy men compete for the affections of a woman (right) who was previously best known for placing fifth on Bret Michael’s Rock of Love and suing Sharon Osbourne. These 17 men could have found women with a similar caliber CV by bribing their way onto the jury of a vodka-cooler chug-a-lug/wet T-shirt/name-that-diet-pill contest. Somehow the show’s producers did manage to round up 17 well-heeled men to compete, though if Ryan Jenkins is anything to go by, background checks were lower on their list of priorities than the need to produce quality television.

The show was pulled when Jenkins, a contestant on the program and by some accounts a finalist, became the target of a manhunt after his wife was found brutally murdered, her fingers cut off and teeth pulled out in a failed bid to delay identification of her body. (She was later identified by the serial number on her breast implants.)

Jenkins offed himself in a BC hotel room, but not before writing a suicide note in which he did something not completely unheard of in the realm of rich boys who behave horribly – he passed the blame. Jenkins reportedly expressed no remorse in the note, blaming his wife’s infidelities for the turn their lives had taken.

8. Patrick Tracy Burris

Javier Bardem’s character might have made the area along the Texas-Mexico border No Country For Old Men, but Patrick Tracy Burris made Cherokee County, South Carolina no country for men and women, young and old.

Burris went on a six day killing spree that began with a 64-year-old peach farmer, followed by an 83-year-old woman and her 50-year-old daughter four days later, and ended with 45-year-old man and his daughter the following day. Burris was shot and killed by police during an attempted robbery a few days after his final killing.

Burris had finished an eight-year prison sentence only a couple of months before he went on his killing spree, which isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d want to bring up at a talk exhorting the ability of the penal system to rehabilitate criminals. He also had a record that was reportedly over 25 pages in length, thick enough for him to have used in one of his brutal murders. Assuming that there was more than one charge per page, and that the majority of these did not have to do with blocking parade routes and littering, it’s hard to work out how Burris made it back into circulation.

7. Benson the Large Carp / Gidget the Taco Bell Dog

To carp colloquially, is to complain, which is what we’re going to do about the hubbub generated for something that usually ends up on a plate with a slice of lemon. A minor celebrity at 64 lbs (or 26 lbs lighter than the average Hollywood starlet), Benson was the biggest carp in the UK—though not anywhere near the size of monstrous invasive species that are currently emptying the Great Lakes of all fish, the Asian Carp. It’s a good thing, in a way, that most fish in the Great Lakes contain enough chemicals to make your own thermometer. Asian Carp can leap 10 feet into the air and have been known to knock out fishermen—-Benson was not in that category. He was still an impressively sized specimen in his native England though, symbolic of the plus-sized excesses that are at the heart of the rot of Western civilization. What’s more, he wasn’t a particularly smart fish; Benson was caught more often than a professional bodybuilder on drug screening tests by anglers eager to take their photos with him, which the carp must have found kind of patronizing.

Commenting on the carp cashing in its chips, an official, said: “I can’t stress how famous she was in the angling world”, which is kinda like being the leading light in the competitive arena of bathroom fixtures. Speaking of bathroom visits…

Taco Bell did for Mexican food what Olive Garden did for Italian fare—-nothing. Like other barely consumable goods that require the annual GDP of a mid-sized African country to market, Taco Bell was in the business of selling faux food often indistinguishable from dog food, and used a dog to do it, which could be some kind of in-joke, we’re not sure. A dog this small also conjures up unpleasant images of rodents accidentally being wrapped up in burritos.

The catch-phrase spouting spot barked his last bark and made his last run for the border (or the nearest tree) in the summer of 2009.

6. John Couey

A sure ticket to making it on this list is to commit a crime so heinous that it prompts new legislation. Such is the case with John Couey and Jessica’s Law, named after the nine-year-old girl he raped and murdered.

Couey had a long criminal history and in 1991 was convicted of fondling a five-year-old, but released early. Many critics blame this lax early treatment for giving him the opportunity to reoffend, 14 years later, with the rape, kidnapping and murder of a child. Jessica’s Law is a blanket term applying to legislation in many states that seeks first-degree-murder-like penalties for anyone convicted of a sexual offence against someone under 12.

Such laws have their detractors who worry that it might impinge on the freedoms of those who do not prey on children. We’ll leave such debates in the able hands of the writers on Law and Order: SVU, but few would argue that having a person of John Couey’s predilections off the census rolls is a bad thing. A Florida jury agreed, sentencing him to death, but fate jumped the queue and he died a fate far worse than lethal injection — at least if its name is any indication — anal cancer.

5. Antonie Dixon

There is a certian geographic chauvinism at work when it comes to high-profile psychopaths. American nutcases — Bundy, Gacy, Manson and those guys — have traditionally received far more attention than barbarous murderers elsewhere. And while occasionally a British  maniac who murders people and then arranges them in his living room so he has company at tea time does break through into the mainstream, the killer’s fame is usually fleeting.

Our fifth pick is New Zealand’s Antonie Dixon, who attacked two of his friends with Samurai swords, hacking off one of the hands of one victim, while nearly doing the same to the arms of another before killing another person with a homemade sub-machine gun (they really need to remove that how-to manual from the New Zealand library system).

Once in prison, he reportedly came to a fork in the road, picked up the utensil and used it to perform some radical eye surgery on a fellow inmate. He also attempted to stab his defence attorney, which seems unfair, as even the best mafia lawyer would have had difficulty defending someone as crazy looking as the guy in the picture above. Authorities said Dixon died of injuries he sustained banging his head against the wall.

4. John Allen Muhammad

Pre-Beltway, the biggest gas station hazard was found floating in the restroom, but for a summer, there was something more sinister to worry about while pumping your gas than a trucker airing out his junk behind his rig. As far as the business of serial killing goes, you have to hand it to the Beltway Sniper, as not only would a piece of cardboard and a rifle sticking through it make for a great halloween costume (you’re welcome) but Beltway was unique in the way he dispatched his victims. While most serial killers ply their trade in the woods with prostitutes, the Beltway Sniper and his accomplice caused AAA guidebook revisions, by doing what professional standups do all the time: killing on the road. And this not-so-comic duo proved that lonely middled age white guys don’t have a monopoly on mass murder.

3. Howard Unruh

Howard Unruh was a pioneer of sorts, but there won’t be school kids visiting historical reenactments of his work. No, Unruh was involved  in what some call the first single episode mass murder in US history, killing 13 in New Jersey in 1949. He was, like Mark Burnett and reality television, a trailblazer of a trail one wishes had never been blazed. In his case, it was that of an armed, socially maladjusted individual bent on vengeance. Basically the kind of thing that occurs about as regularly as full moons in the United States.

Unruh felt that the neighbors had been gossiping about him, which they had, but that’s beside the point, and went out one morning seeking revenge, killing men, women and children as he shot up establishments throughout town. A publican shot Unruh in the leg from the second storey of his building, but he didn’t break stride. He was finally apprehended and when an officer asked him if he was some kind of psycho, Unruh replied,  “I’m no psycho. I have a good mind.” The courts disagreed and he was locked up in an insane asylum for the remainder of his long life.

2. Fritz Darges

We bid ‘aufwiedersehen, Arschloch’, to this creep, a high-profile SS officer and Adjutant to Adolf.

After the war, Darges apparently became a used car salesman (Insert cheap joke here…but let’s just say that we’re surprised he didn’t immediately enter police college). About his former boss he said, “I must say, I found him a genius” and according to the Telegraph, Darges died still believing in the man who sent millions to their deaths in the Holocaust was “the greatest who ever lived.”

Autographing photos of oneself with Hitler (right) and proclaiming to be one of history’s greats does not suggest a likable character. That Darges never reconsidered his youthful views on the Fuhrer in the face of all of the evidence of his murdering, hellish regime earns him a place of prestige on this list.

Darges’ memoirs will be published in accordance with his will, but if you want a page turner than you can take to the beach, look elsewhere—-or better still, look to the upper right and pick up a copy of our book, as neither author has any ties to any totalitarian regimes, unless you count a membership to Blockbuster.

1. Noordin Mohammed Top

A right sick bastard, Top is responbile for more bombing than open mic night—and was the malevolent mastermind behind numerous hotel and embassy attacks  A bigger danger to hoteliers than Guns ‘N’ Roses in their prime, Top was likely responsible for orchestrating the 2002 Bali terror bombings, along with his brother-in-law (the family that slays together, stays together?).

His advances are currently being rejected by each of the promised Qu’aranic virgins, who refuse to go back to a hotel room with him for obvious reasons. If there’s a hell, we hope they have room service and that the mayonnaise has turned.

Dishonorable Mention: Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan Terrorist 1998 US Embassy bomber, Kenya

If you liked this, check out:

2008 Deaths: Those Who Will Not Be Missed

Ted Kennedy’s Top Drunk Moments

Zodiac Signs and Serial Killers

One Response | TrackBack URL | Comments Feed

1. 
   At 9:52 pm Ken said:

   Add Michael Jackson, the nasty perv.

   Reply