Another true...er, woo crime story...

[onager]

As often mentioned, I am a huge fan of the true-crime show "Snapped" on Oxygen.

This week, the featured perp was Ms. Marni Yang of Chicago. A Google will give you the whole sad story, so I'll just hit the highlights here...

Because Ms. Yang knew the Internetz is 100% anonymous, she went to an online bookstore and ordered 2 how-to books on building your own pistol silencers.

She also cleverly bought a pre-paid phone to call her accomplice, knowing that purchase couldn't be traced either. Cough...

Then she lay in wait until her romantic rival, Rhoni Reuter, left for work. And blew her away. Ms. Reuter was 7 months pregnant. When the cops found her body, her hands were crossed across her abdomen trying to protect her unborn daughter.

Even I can't snark at this. It was a horrible crime, but not unpredictable. Yang had a long career of stalking and threatening various people in her life.

But the accomplice? Oh, boy, can I snark about her.

Meet Christi Paschen, who met Ms. Yang two decades ago at...a psychic fair! Paschen was an expert tarot-card reader, who eventually gave Yang her card readings for free.

Yang even got a reading just before she set out to murder Reuter. Paschen enthused that Yang had drawn the Sun card, which guaranteed her "project" would be a success.

Later, Paschen helped nail Yang by using Other Ways Of Knowing. Electronic ways, that is - she wore a wire and duped Yang into confessing on tape.

But if you doubt Paschen's awesome powers, check out some of her testimony in court:

Christi Paschen, a critical prosecution witness, also claimed when questioned by defense attorneys that she is a psychic who was recruited in the 1970s by an Army general into a secret military unit.

"He recruited me for a program they were working on that included psychics," Paschen said, adding the purpose of the purported unit was to "look for intelligence information."

She testified that in a final Middle East mission with the unit, all its members were killed except her--and that the Army "erased" most of her memories of the purported incident.

Erased her memories! Those bastards! I hate when that happens. Good thing she at least remembered that she was personally recruited by a General - wow! And everyone in the unit was killed except her.

You can find many photos of Paschen online, but let me save you the effort. At the risk of the dreaded Body-Snarking, I can report that Paschen looks like the love child of Rush Limbaugh and Jabba The Hutt. She is a very...large woman.

On a secret military mission, the only possible use for Paschen might have been as a spare sandbag.

Then there's this...

Yang's attorneys then called Waukegan police Detective Charles Schletz, who testified Monday that Paschen admitted to him while he questioned her in March 2009 that she was never in the military and had made that up to prop up her resume as a psychic reader.

Oh.