Funny thing in the South...

So, I'm sitting in court this morning reading up on my local happenings and there was an interesting report in Sunday's paper. Seems a man came to the police station last week saying he had been kidnapped.

Actually, that in and of itself, wouldn't be that interesting: happens more often than it should. Here's what was interesting: He tells the police he was kidnapped at gunpoint and held so the kidnappers could pray for him.

That's right, two women and one man held the victim at gun point for several hours so they could pray for him. ( Apparently, I don't just live in the belt buckle of the Bible belt, I live in the spurs of the cowboy boots of the bible belt. )

The man escaped later that night, but didn't go to the authorities until the kidnappers threatened to do it again. The police said point blank they had dealt with all the parties in this case before and they didn't believe him. However, when they went to investigate, not only did the physical evidence match up- the man told them one of the women had fired the gun into the ceiling- but the women confessed. In addition, a neighbor saw the police at the house and turned the guns the women asked her to hold for them over to them.


The police also stated that the man made other claims which were far more outlandish but the police would not repeat those claims. I heard one of those claims was that the women had blessed a necklace and told the man that if he did drugs again, God would make it grow warm on her neck and she would know he was doing drugs.

I think he mostly went to the police because he was afraid of her necklace. I guess nothin ruins a good high like worryin' your old lady already knows about it.

Reminds me of a story I heard where the police got a man to confess by putting a colander on his head with some wires going to a copy machine. They put a piece of paper that said "you're lying" on the glass of the copy machine and told the man he was hooked up to a lie detector. They then proceeded with questioning. Whenever they felt he wasn't being truthful, they would press the button and out would pop, "you're lying." They extracted a confession rather quickly.
I wonder, of course, at the validity of a confession extracted that way.... All the way around- legally, truth wise and morally.