78 Year-Old Mystery Man's Stop in Junction City, Kansas Leads to $15 Million Cash, Hundreds of Pounds of Pot

78 Year Old Pot Bust DefendantWhen police in Junction City, Kansas, stopped a beat-up pickup truck for speeding in June 2013, the driver got a lot more than a traffic ticket: The stop led authorities to Massachusetts and Arizona, where they said they found about $15 million in cash, almost 400 pounds of marijuana and ledgers detailing drug deals going back to 1992.

The driver, Marshall Dion, told police he was a retiree from Tucson who was living off his $690-per-month Social Security check. He also said he had left his drug-dealing days behind, but federal authorities say he was still going strong at age 78 as a key player in a large marijuana operation. In his truck, police found $828,220 in cash. . .

Much of Dion’s life is a mystery. Public records show he has lived in Boston; Portland, Maine; Grand Junction, Colorado; and Tucson, Arizona. He told police who stopped him in Kansas that he was headed home to Tucson from Pennsylvania, where he had met with his accountant.

Dion, now 79, appeared to live frugally, despite the millions authorities found and two homes he owned in Arizona. When he was stopped in Kansas, he was driving a 2002 GMC Sierra with an old refrigerator and other junk in the truck bed. . .

In 1985, Dion crashed a single-engine plane he was piloting in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, and Dion broke both his ankles. When sheriff’s deputies arrived, he was crawling along a muddy field as bills floated in the air, said Cathy Baxter, then a deputy sheriff. ‘‘This guy didn’t even admit there was any money on the plane. He said, ‘That’s not my money. I don’t know where that money came from,’’’ Baxter said.

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Charles Manson Gets Marriage License

Photo Credit: AP / California Department of Corrections

Photo Credit: AP / California Department of Corrections

Mass murderer Charles Manson plans to marry a 26-year-old woman who left her Midwestern home and spent the past nine years trying to help exonerate him.

Afton Elaine Burton, the raven-haired bride-to-be, said she loves the man convicted in the notorious murders of seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate.

No date has been set, but a wedding coordinator has been assigned by the prison to handle the nuptials, and the couple has until early February to get married before they would have to reapply.

The Kings County marriage license, viewed Monday by The Associated Press, was issued Nov. 7 for the 80-year-old Manson and Burton, who lives in Corcoran – the site of the prison – and maintains several websites advocating his innocence.

Burton, who goes by the name “Star,” told the AP that she and Manson will be married next month.

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AC/DC Drummer Busted for Trying to Have Two Men Murdered

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

He wanted a dirty deed done cheap — now he might be on the highway to hell.

The drummer for the iconic rock band AC/DC has been busted for trying to have two men murdered in New Zealand.

Founding member Phil Rudd’s waterfront home was raided and the “Hell’s Bells” rocker was hauled into a jail on a slew of charges including attempting to procure a murder, threats to kill and possession of meth and weed.

Rudd, 60, appeared in court Wednesday and was released on bail. The names of the people he allegedly wanted killed were not released.

His lawyer lashed out in court and said that the media just wanted to get photos of Rudd “at his worst,” a report said.

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Never-Ending Pasta Pass Holder Eats $1,510 Worth of Food in 6 Weeks

Photo Credit: Fox NewsA North Carolina man is working hard to get the most out of his Olive Garden Never Ending Pasta Pass.

Alan Martin was one of the lucky 1,000 people who in September raced to buy one of the all-you-can-eat passes.

Over the past six weeks, Martin has eaten at Olive Garden every day, twice a day, totaling up to 95 meals and ringing up $1,510 worth of food, according toFox 8 WGHP.

Now when he goes into the restaurant, Martin told WGHP that the waitstaff treat him “like a celebrity.”

The pasta pass, which Martin bought for $100, is good for all of the pasta, salad, bread and Coca-Cola drinks a person can eat during the seven week period, which runs until Nov. 9.

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WATCH: This Robotic Penguin Chick is Doing Undercover Work in Antarctica

Photo Credit: YouTubeIf you’re going to build a robotic spy, you might as well make it a cutie — especially if it needs to go incognito in crowds of adorable penguin chicks and their parents.

Researchers report in Nature Methods that they’ve created a new tool for penguin research: A furry fake penguin perched atop a remote-controlled rover.

A fiberglass penguin seemed to frighten the penguins, but the final (fuzzier) version passed muster.

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Google’s New Computer With Human-Like Learning Abilities Will Program Itself

Photo Credit: WikipediaIn college, it wasn’t rare to hear a verbal battle regarding artificial intelligence erupt between my friends studying neuroscience and my friends studying computer science.

One rather outrageous fellow would mention the possibility of a computer takeover, and off they went. The neuroscience-savvy would awe at the potential of such hybrid technology as the CS majors argued we have nothing to fear, as computers will always need a programmer to tell them what to do.

Today’s news brings us to the Neural Turing Machine, a computer that will combine the way ordinary computers work with the way the human brain learns, enabling it to actually program itself. Perhaps my CS friends should reevaluate their position?

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The Moment When a Guy Told Obama ‘Don’t Touch My Girlfriend’ (+video)

Photo Credit: APPresident Obama found himself in an unusual situation Monday.

As he was casting his ballot early in Chicago, minding his own business behind the voting booth, a young man walked by and warned him “don’t touch my girlfriend.”

The girlfriend, Aia Cooper, who was voting in the booth next to Obama, was humiliated, to say the least. “I really wasn’t planning on it,” Obama joked with the woman. “There’s an example of a brother just embarrassing you, just for no reason whatsoever.”

“And now you’ll be going back home and talking to you friends; what’s his name?” the president asked.
“Mike,” Cooper said.

“‘I can’t believe Mike. He’s such a fool,’” Obama said, impersonating the woman


More ABC news videos | ABC Health News

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Goliath Encounter: Puppy-Sized Spider Surprises Scientist in Rainforest

Photo Credit: Piotr Naskrecki Piotr Naskrecki was taking a nighttime walk in a rainforest in Guyana, when he heard rustling as if something were creeping underfoot. When he turned on his flashlight, he expected to see a small mammal, such as a possum or a rat.

“When I turned on the light, I couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing,” said Naskrecki, an entomologist and photographer at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.

A moment later, he realized he was looking not at a brown, furry mammal, but an enormous, puppy-size spider.

Known as the South American Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi), the colossal arachnid is the world’s largest spider, according to Guinness World Records. Itsleg span can reach up to a foot (30 centimeters), or about the size of “a child’s forearm,” with a body the size of “a large fist,” Naskrecki told Live Science. And the spider can weigh more than 6 oz. (170 grams) — about as much as a young puppy, the scientist wrote on his blog. [See Photos of the Goliath Birdeater Spider]

Some sources say the giant huntsman spider, which has a larger leg span, is bigger than the birdeater. But the huntsman is much more delicate than the hefty birdeater — comparing the two would be “like comparing a giraffe to an elephant,” Naskrecki said.

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Residents Ask 'Illegal Pete's' to Change Name (+video)

Three weeks shy of opening his newest Illegal Pete’s in Old Town Fort Collins, restaurant owner Pete Turner came to Fort Collins on Wednesday to listen to a crowd of concerned residents who asked that he change his business’ name.

The Boulder-based restaurant with six locations in Boulder and Denver is modeled after Mexican food from San Francisco’s Mission District, specifically over-sized burritos. The name Illegal Pete’s, Turner said, is a literary reference to a bar in a novel he read as an English major in Boulder. “Pete” also refers to his own name and his father’s. When he started the restaurant in 1995, Turner hoped the name would be ambiguous enough to spark people’s interest, perhaps referring to counterculture activity.

But on Wednesday, 30 or so community members explained the negative context of the word illegal, or the “I-word,” as some referred to it, and its importance, down to its use as the name of a restaurant.

“Since I know the context, and I have been labeled with (the word illegal), it makes a huge difference to me,” said Lucy Gonzalez, 25.

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Robot Can Perform Brain Surgery Through the Patient's Cheek

Photo Credit: CNETFor a percentage of epilepsy patients, medication is less effective at controlling seizures, or it doesn’t work at all. For these patients, there is another option: brain surgery. This is usually a deeply invasive procedure, wherein the section of the patient’s brain is either removed, stimulated or disconnected; afterward, recovery can take up to three months.

A robot five years in the making by researchers at Vanderbilt University may be in line to make the surgery less time consuming, less invasive and with a shorter recovery time.

The area of the brain involved in epileptic seizures is the hippocampus, which is located in the lower regions of the brain. The surgical robot developed by mechanical engineering graduate student David Comber and mechanical engineering associate professor Eric Barth enters the brain from underneath by going through the patient’s cheek, carefully negotiating gaps in the bone. This is not only a shorter route, it also avoids drilling through the skull.

The working prototype involved the development of a shape-memory alloy needle — that is, an alloy that can remember its original shape and return to it when heated after being deformed — that can operate along a curving path. The robot also needed to be able to operated from inside an MRI machine, which creates a strong magnetic field.

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