Inflatable Dinosaur

Honestly, if you have five minutes, you have to read these. They're from today's ProJo. Sometimes they say television shows are 'ripped from the headlines,' but reading these it seems like the headlines are 'ripped from the movies'.

Police allege 18 involved in a 'criminal enterprise'

After 30 years, new clue in mystery of missing mobster

If you don't have five minutes, here're a couple choice excerpts:

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The flea market owner, Lloyd Morse, 50, of 46 Cliffdale Ave., Cranston, was also arrested, accused of acting as Pari’s “criminal partner.”

Morse’s prior claim to fame was a publicized feud with Cranston City Hall over the city’s efforts to force him to take down a 25-foot inflatable gorilla in his yard. The disagreement prompted Morse to add an inflatable dinosaur to his menagerie and to run for mayor as an independent in 2004 with the slogan, “It’s Gorilla Warfare in Cranston.”

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A key witness in the trial was Scanlon’s girlfriend — Sandra Surprise. She testified that she saw Pari divert Scanlon’s attention in the social club by punching him in the face. Then, she said, Merola approached him from behind with a handgun and pumped a bullet into the back of Scanlon’s head.

A second witness, Edwin DiFonzo, testified that he helped Merola wrap the body in plastic garbage bags and stuff it into the trunk of Merola’s red Cadillac. Another witness, an FBI informant, told the jury that Merola came to his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., and told him that he had killed Scanlon because he was a “stool pigeon.”