London, August 30 (ANI): The two policewomen who finally arrested ‘American Fritzl’ Phillip Garrido, for holding a girl as sex slave with his wife Nancy for 18 years, have revealed that their suspicions were raised by “women’s intuition”.
Ally Jacobs and Lisa Campbell said that they became suspicious after being approached by Garrido at the University Of California, to seek permission to hold a religious event there.
They revealed that accompanying Garrido were two “robotic” little girls he fathered with his victim Jaycee Lee Dugard.
Ally recalled that the girls were pale, as if starved of light, and extremely submissive.
What particularly disturbed her was the way the girls dressed and acted, said the cop.
“I can best describe it as they were dressed monochrome. It was almost like Little House On The Prairie,” the News of the World quoted her as saying.
“They were like robots. The young one wouldn’t move and had this eerie smile and the older one had very rehearsed answers and she didn’t very much like talking to us,” she added.
Ally further revealed that one of Garrido’s daughters even told them that there was a third girl living at his house.
The cop said: “The younger daughter told me, ‘We have an older sister aged 28.’ The older daughter said, without missing a beat, ’29′. And she seemed bothered that was even mentioned.”
Ally said that she and Lisa were certain that the little girl was talking about Jaycee.
She revealed that she even asked the younger daughter about a “tumour- like” bump under her brow, fearing that it could be a sign of child abuse.
She recalled: “She immediately replied with this very rehearsed response, ‘It’s a birth defect, inoperable, I will have it for the rest of my life.’ I’m a mother. I have two young sons and this is when my police mode turned into my mother’s mode, kind of mother’s intuition.”
Ally and Lisa said that they asked Garrido to return the next day, so that they would get some time to check his records.
Upon investigation, the cop duo found Garrido to be a registered sex offender on parole for kidnap and rape.
Recalling a discussion with Garrido’s parole officer, Ally said: “He stopped me when I said he brought in his two daughters. He said, ‘He doesn’t have two daughters.’ I felt sick.”
The discovery finally led to Garrido and Nancy’s arrests. (ANI)
Here’s how Zimbabwe’s blind cricket commentator Dean du Plessis bowls audiences
London, September 12 (ANI): He was born blind and has never seen a single match in his life, but has proved that all one requires to become a great cricket commentator is a mix of erudite descriptions of action, comprehensive knowledge of great players, faultless recall of statistics, and needle-sharp sense of timing and judgment.
Needless to say, Zimbabwean-born Dean du Plessis, 32, possesses all these attributes, and has been delivering commentaries on matches for nine years.
He has shared the commentary box in Tests, one-day, and Twenty20 tournaments involving all the Test-playing nations in worldwide radio broadcasts.
The commentators he has worked with include Tony Cozier, Geoffrey Boycott, Ravi Shastri, and Australia’s former spin bowler Bruce Yardley, who himself lost an eye.
In 2004, du Plessis and Yardley made the first ever team to deliver a commentary with a single eye between them.
It is du Plessis’s accentuated sense of hearing that makes up for being sightless.
He relies upon sounds heard via the stump microphones to tell who is bowling from the footfalls and grunts, a medium or fast delivery by the length of time between the bowler’s foot coming down, and the impact of the ball on the pitch.
He can tell whether a delivery was a yorker from the sound of the bat ramming down on the ball, whether a ball is on the off or on-side, and when it’s hit a pad rather than bat.
When the wicketkeeper’s voice goes flat, du Plessis tells him a draw is in the offing.
Though he can’t play the role in the commentary box of the anchor, du Plessis can tell from the crowd noise whether a ball has been gathered in a fielder’s hands or spilled.
“I have to work with the anchor. I am the guy who supplies, well, the colour,” Times Online quoted him as saying.
Andy Pycroft, the Zimbabwean opening batsman from 1979 to 2001, said: “The thing about Dean is the intuition. The public love to listen to him. If he has the right person at anchor to support him he is brilliant.”
Du Plessis hated the “blind cricket” he was taught to play with a plastic-wrapped volleyball at the blind school he attended.
At 14, while feeling bored one day, du Plessis tuned the radio in to a station devoted to ball-by-ball commentaries, and that was what was to change his life.
“There was a phenomenal noise in the background, 80,000 people in a stadium in India, people roaring. I realised it was cricket. I was fascinated,” du Plessis said.
He pushed his way into the commentary box at Harare Sports Club in 2001, and was allowed to try out with the microphone.
He never looked back. (ANI)