Man disappears during arrest, so deputies take girlfriend's mom instead

After months of lying to detectives, Elias Jesus Rosado, of Moon Lake, seemed cooperative and accepting of his fate. He just wanted to go inside his house Wednesday morning to put on some shoes before being taken to jail.

The deputy relented and said okay, get your shoes.

Then Rosado, 21, wouldn't come back out.

And then he disappeared.

Rosado slipped inside the house on Burton Street in Moon Lake Estates with his girlfriend's mother, Elizabeth Mae Harlow, 61, according to a Pasco County Sheriff's Office report. From outside the deputy saw Rosado roaming the house, smoking a cigarette. He changed his shirt and talked on the phone with his girlfriend, the report said.

Then he was gone.

Elizabeth Harlow was taken to the Land O'Lakes jail on an obstruction charge and released that same day on $150 bail. Rosado, a dishwasher at Sonny's Barbecue who is on felony probation for aggravated battery, remains at large.

Read the whole story here.

Erin Sullivan, Times Staff Writer

Bag of decaptitated animals found outside Sheriff's Office

A bag containing headless animals and pocket change found outside the Indian River County Sheriff's Office may have been someone's attempt to place a curse on the Sheriff's employees, according to investigators.  TCPalm reports that someone found a black bag outside the office on the morning of February 13.  Inside the bag were a white baby goat and a brown chicken, both decapitated. Deputies found a quarter, a nickel and four pennies on the goat's belly.  Tags with numbers and the date Nov. 11, 1996 were found on the ears of the goat's severed head, according to the police report.  The investigation continues.

Virgin Mary image appears on doggie door.

Ted Biszko of Pensacola was getting ready for a yard sale...when he suddenly noticed something...unique.  On his doggie door.  An image of...wait for it...the Virgin Mary.

"I sat down and looked at it more and you can see there's a flower over her right eye like shes got a band of flowers underneath the veil," Biszko told WEAR ABC 3.  "Then I noticed her hands, her fingers were sticking up like she was praying. Then I noticed there's a glow around her, a little white glow."

Biszko said he'd recently coated his dogs with flea spray.  The image might be a result of flea spray and dirt.  But the  timing, to Biszko, is eerie.  His brother had just died about a week ago, and he lost his sister not long before that.  "Their (sic) just sending me a message. I wouldn't get a postcard from them. It's definitley (sic) a sign that somebody up there is letting me know that something good is going on.

"You're never going to get a dog to paint you a picture like this."

Unfortunately for all of us, there doesn't seem to be a picture of this apparition on the TV station website.  So we'll just use our collective imagination.

Residents spooked by animal and chicken heads

Residents of Vermillion Estates, described by Ocala.com as a quiet subdivision in southeastern Marion County, are a bit on edge due to the ongoing appearance of disembodied animal and chicken heads by a stop sign adjacent to the neighborhood.  A neighbor told the newspaper that the goat, pig and sheep heads "were strategically positioned" so drivers turning into the neighborhood could not avoid seeing them.

A Marion County Sheriff's deputy who came to the scene November 23 reported seeing the goat head and the pig head in a disposable aluminum cooking pan.  The following Wednesday, a resident called police to report the appearance of a chicken head in the same location.  The deputy returned, saw the chicken head, and wrote in his report that the chicken's internal organs were found nearby, in a Styrofoam bowl.  Beside the bowl, he said, was a piece of paper containing chicken or bird feathers along with a palm leaf.

According to police, two more chicken heads were found by the stop sign on Thanksgiving, and a resident reported seeing yet another one Friday.  "Are our dogs, horses and cats next? I mean, what's going on here, I would like to know," she said to the newspaper.

Deputies -- who aren't sure whether it's a prank, a religious practice or something else -- would also like to know.  For the time being, they are photographing the bizarre scenes for documentation.

Man says he was robbed by four shirtless, braless women in overalls

TCPalm reports that an 18-year old Stuart man told police he was robbed early Saturday by a group of five blond women.  Four of them, he said, were wearing overalls.  Without shirts or bras.  The fifth one -- whom he described to police as heavy-set -- was wearing a white shirt with her overalls.  She's the one who detained him by grabbing the handlebars of his bicycle.  The shirtless, braless ones -- described as thin -- then surrounded him and relieved him of the $100 that was in his back pocket, he told Martin County Sheriff's deputies, who were unable to locate any of the women in the immediate area.

A grim surprise in swimming pool

A Winter Garden resident came home Friday afternoon to find a sport utility vehicle, with two bodies inside, in her swimming pool, according to OrlandoSentinel.com.

Investigators said there were no skid marks leading to the screened-in pool.

The SUV is registered to someone in the neighborhood.

Mystery of the traveling pants (and debit card) solved

Deputies found a stolen debit card in the pants of a Collier County teen who had been trespassing at a Wal-Mart on Monday, Naples Daily News reports. But the teen was not sure who owned the card. And he didn't know how the pants, which he found in his van, got there.

When deputies located card-owner Deborah Cahill, they were told that the missing card had been used to make several purchases. Cahill feared she may have left the card at Marsala Pizza over the weekend.

Deputies discovered that the teen worked at Marsala Pizza and later arrested him.

20 years later, his Naval Academy ring is found

Twenty years ago, retired Navy Capt. Robert E. Riera lost his 1969 Naval Academy ring in a Pensacola motel room. Recently, a Pensacola coin and jewelry dealer spotted the ring in a bulk lot of scrap gold he was melting down and he rescued it. An earlier Naval Academy graduate came to see the dealer about buying some gold and was willingly pressed into service to help locate the owner, the Pensacola News-Journal reports. With the help of the secretary for the Naval Academy Class of 1969, the owner of the ring was located. He lives in Maryland. The dealer plans to deliver the ring when he attends a coin convention in Baltimore later this month.

Clues to mysteries lie in murky canals

Remember the strange tale of the man who had been missing for 15 years who was found in a South Florida canal, his bones still strapped into the seat of his Mercedes coupe? Detectives say they know there are answers to more mysteries hidden beneath the murky waters of 2,000 miles of canals in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.

Indeed, clues to some mysteries have already been recovered. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office has about 50 sets of unidentified remains, several of them pulled from canals. The canal where the man was found is considered a hot spot for people to dump cars -- either stolen or abandoned for insurance fraud. It is seven miles long and runs along a narrow two-lane road. There are places where a car can hit the water and weeds and can't be seen from the road.