Tupelos Second Most Famous People

If you've been watching the news lately, you know that letters containing ricin were sent to the President and a couple of other people.

The two fellas who were suspected of sending these letters, were both from Tupelo.  John and I thought about looking them up, but one is in hiding and the other is in jail.

The story of these two guys is so complicated that the news has probably stopped covering the story.  You can't get much of a sound bite out of it, and so they move on.

The first guy arrested was labeled as an Elvis impersonator who is bipolar.  He was kind of mad at this label, because he says he also does Conway Twitty, Prince, Alan Jackson and Randy Travis.  In fact, he does a real good Randy Travis.

The letters looked like others he had signed, but his wife said he was too dumb to make ricin, and besides, he doesn't even like rice!

So, the trail led to a second guy, who teaches martial arts, Taekwando in particular, a blues singer, a karate master, an insurance salesman and a Mensa member.  He also is an accused child molester. AND, he was  a one time GOP candidate for the US House of Representatives.  Oh wait, one other thing -- he's in a rock band.

Turns out the second guy tried to make it look like the first guy did it.  But, he had traces of the ricin in his house and he threw away a face mask that had ricin on it.  For a Mensa guy, he just wasn't too smart!

These two guys have been feuding for years via email, and it has gotten real ugly.  One of the arguments has to do with some body parts found in the basement of a hospital.

Have  I lost you yet?  You can see why the press's non-Mensa heads are spinning over this one.

If you'd like to know more, check out this column by the Daily Beast: The second guy was named after J. Everett Dirksen.  Obviously, his mother had high hopes.  Oh well.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/25/paul-kevin-curtis-and-j-everett-dutschke-epic-feud-and-ricin-letters.html.

Yep, we'd have liked to have seen these two Tupelo natives, but they will probably pop up on TV again and the press will have to figure out a way to cover this story!