No easy mark: Female bodybuilder, 82, clobbers intruder
Rochester, N.Y. (AP) — An intruder didn’t count on an 82-year-old woman living alone being an award-winning bodybuilder with nerves of steel. Willie Murphy was getting ready for bed Thursday at her home in Rochester, New York, when a man pounded on the door and said he needed an ambulance, Murphy told WHAM. She called police but wouldn’t open the door. Then, she said, the man broke in and skulked through the dark house. “He picked the wrong house to break into,” Murphy said. She clobbered him with a table, poured shampoo in his face and was beating him with a broom when police arrived. “I was whaling on that man,” Murphy told the Democrat and Chronicle. “‘Cause I said to myself, ‘If it’s my time to go to hell, I’m taking him with me!’” The man got his ambulance ride, after all. He was sent to a hospital, and police tweeted a selfie with Murphy, calling her “tough as nails.” Murphy works out almost daily at Rochester’s Maplewood YMCA and said she can deadlift 225 pounds — more than twice her weight. She can do one-handed pullups and one-handed pushups. She won the World Natural Powerlifting Federation Lifter of the Year award in 2014. “She really helps dispel the myths of aging,” said Michelle LeBoo, a program coordinator at the Maplewood YMCA. Murphy is “a strong, beautiful woman” who does things “for the benefit of others,” LeBoo said. Murphy said she hopes her story inspires people of all ages.
Man found in freezer was husband
of recently deceased woman
Salt Lake City (AP) — A man whose body was in a freezer for as long as 11 years was the husband of the woman who had recently died in their apartment west of Salt Lake City, police said Tuesday. But the autopsy that nailed down his identity didn’t help investigators solve how he died, who killed him or exactly how long his body was tucked into the chest freezer inside the couple’s apartment, said Tooele Police Sgt. Jeremy Hansen. Officers discovered the body of Paul Edwards Mathers, 69, last Friday after finding his wife dead on the bed when they went there to check on her after she hadn’t been seen in two weeks. Detectives couldn’t tell from looking at the fully intact body how he died, but suspect foul play, Hansen said. The death of his wife, Jeanne Souron-Mathers, 75, is not considered suspicious. They don’t know if she was involved in her husband’s death, Hansen said. Detectives estimate the man’s body was in the freezer from between 1 and 11 years based on when residents in the apartment complex say they last saw him. The autopsy didn’t narrow down that time frame, Hansen said. Souron-Mathers had lived in the apartment since 2007 in the city of Tooele, which has about 35,000 residents and is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Salt Lake City.
Ruff ride: Florida dog bumps
car into motion, gets solo trip
Port St. Lucie, Fla. (AP) — Florida authorities say they responded to a rogue vehicle spinning in reverse around a suburban cul-de-sac with a lone occupant inside: a Black Labrador. News outlets report residents called police Thursday after seeing the dog trapped and clambering around in the car as it spun in circles in a Port St. Lucie neighborhood. Police say they think the dog’s owner stepped away from the running car and that’s when the pet knocked it into reverse. Neighbor Anne Sabol says she watched the furry speed racer take out a mailbox and a trash can. Sabol says the dog was in high spirits after being rescued, adding it “jumped out of the car, wagging his tail.” Police stopped the joyride by punching a passcode into the driver’s door. No one was hurt.
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