Missing Girl Big Fat Hoax

hat police officials are calling a "cruel hoax" perpetuated by a "big fat bitch" from "some Podunk town out in BFE" came to an end last Thursday with the arrest of Donna Lynette Walker, a 35-year-old Kansas woman. Walker had contacted the parents of missing Indiana girl Shannon Sherrill only days before, claiming to be the missing girl and renewing hope for the family after 17 years of grief.

Six-year-old Shannon disappeared in October of 1986 while playing hide-and-seek outside the family home in Indianapolis. Authorities had all but given up hope over the years, as leads failed to materialize and it became less and less likely that Shannon simply took hide-and-seek very seriously. Walker's call last week seemed to the family to be a miracle, but quickly turned out to be the shitty kind of miracle that people usually aren't referring to when they speak of miracles.

With the arrest came disturbing-yet-hilarious details about Walker's past. According to several poor bastards who identified themselves as her friends, Walker has frequently made crank phone calls in disguised cartoon voices ever since childhood, and as an adult her talent for being incredibly and flamboyantly full of shit has led to police records in California, Kansas, Virginia and Nebraska for making bizarre threatening calls, forging checks, reporting false fire alarms, placing bomb threats and using stolen credit cards to pay her telephone bill. Few involved can take even these charges seriously, however, since Walker often disguises her telephone voice in a spot-on stuttering impersonation of Porky Pig.

Friends of Donna Walker are at a loss to explain her motivation in contacting Shannon Sherrill's parents, or how they could possibly be this hard up for friends. All agree, however, that the Sherrills probably should have taken Walker's claims of "What's up Doc? I'm your kidnapped daughter!" with a grain of salt.

"I'm not surprised," said friend Kelli Wauch, who wasn't surprised. "I met Donna through a group where you go for support or if you're happy you go there and Donna is somebody who thrives off of other people's pain so it didn't surprise me that she did these things because she told me about a girl missing in Indiana and it being her parents and saying something along the lines about that and I just kind of blew it off because it didn't make any sense," rambled Wauch, prompting this reporter to slap her across the mouth in hopes of coercing a coherent quote.

That rambling narrative, coupled with the fact that Wauch has had to change her telephone number twice during the month she has known Walker to stop the tirade of threatening phone calls made in cartoon voices, begs the question of why Wauch still identifies herself as Walker's friend. Rather than sift through another verbal train wreck of a response, however, this reporter is satisfied to chalk it up as some kind of weird Kansas thing we're not meant to understand.

In Indiana, Walker faces a felony charge of identity deception and a misdemeanor charge of false reporting, as well as a life-long series of disappointed looks from the entire human race. In addition to contacting the missing girl's parents, she also repeatedly contacted the police regarding this case, posing alternately as two different women, the missing girl's husband, and a diminutive hunter with a speech impediment.

Attorney Billy Rork insisted that Donna Walker did not feel she'd done anything wrong, despite the fact that she is twelve years older than Shannon Sherrill would be today in addition to the minor details that Walker was never kidnapped and is in no way related to the Sherrills. Rork also communicated that Walker didn't feel like going to prison or being held in any way accountable for her actions. Additionally, she didn't feel like Italian or Thai food, though those details seemed less important in the big picture.

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There are truly frightening times to be a Democrat. We're sort of at war, the economy sucks, and there's a man with the IQ of a salad fork in the White House, threatening against all rational comprehension to be reelected. And it seems unlikely any of the current Democratic challengers will be able to suavely slip their tongue into the voting public's ear the way Bill Clinton did in 1992. Some Democrats thought Howard Dean might be able to pull off the trick, until he slipped and accidentally stuck his tongue up Iowa's ass on mistake, and now nobody trusts or even wants to think about where that tongue has been.

So what now? Thank God for Clark, right? If you can't sweet talk your way into a girl's panties, it never hurts to wow 'em with a uniform, right? Chicks dig a man in uniform; it reminds us of being forcibly acquired by an invading army or something. It's all genetic memory, hard to argue with that. So good, Clark can run for president, kick Bush in his National Guard-deserting ass, and then we won't have to wonder if we're watching Spitting Image or You Can't Do that on Television every time we turn on a presidential speech. Cool.

(Though it is kind of funny to imagine W popping out of one of those lockers and telling a knock knock joke about Health Care.)

Not so fast. Turns out there's the slight problem of Clark not having any political experience, and contradicting himself more often than Wayne Campbell. Oh, and the only state he won is Oklahoma, which is worse than losing Oklahoma. I'm serious, have you ever been there? I'd ask for a recount if I were Clark.

So the General is out. What about John Edwards? Good looking, smooth talker, former trial lawyer. Wait a minute, former trial lawyer? Jeez. He might as well be Jewish. No way Middle America is voting for this guy.

Now Democrats are riding high on the "FUCK, I DON'T KNOW. KERRY?" ticket because it's so fun to see a Democrat winning all those states, almost as cool as seeing it in the actual election, only they don't have that cool cartoon map with the states changing color. Even if he loses to Bush in November, we can always harken back fondly to that time Kerry kicked the shit out of New Mexico.

Not that John Kerry is a bad guy, I just haven't been convinced he's not already dead. You've got to admit it would be pretty embarrassing to nominate a dead man as the Democratic presidential candidate. We'd never hear the end of that. Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to go through a VHS copy of the Thriller video frame by frame to make sure Kerry wasn't one of the zombies moonwalking in the background. He does look kind of familiar.

But Kerry should at least be able to challenge Bush on his military record, since apparently Kerry got mugged in Vietnam or something. Though if he does, he will run the risk of being totally ignored by the vile liberal media, which is so biased against Bush it has virtually ignored the fact that his entire tough-guy image is based on four years in the National Guard, which is the military equivalent of going to a party school and majoring in Sex Ed. Never mind that he never even bothered to show up for the fourth year, apparently too hung over to even be in the right state.

Perhaps the liberal media could relate to Bush's slacker predicament, since they didn't really feel like following up on the story after somebody on Bush's staff "found" a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom of some army guy's shoe. It was decided this proved Bush fulfilled all his military obligations against all other contradictory evidence, because somebody had written "W" somewhere on the paper. Either that or it was an "M," nobody could tell because it's hard to say which is the top edge of a piece of toilet paper.

So maybe Kerry should just drop the whole military angle and run on the platform that he's seen death, and now knows no fear. That's kinda cool, and he's got the face to make it work. Hell, he could say he's spent a weekend playing golf with death, I'd believe it. Though things could get a little dicey if Kerry bites the Prime Minister of Japan on the neck and eats out his brains or something down the road. Best to keep an eye out for that.

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Dear commune:

How come we don’t have no national holidays for stuff that’s happened while I was alive? Was the past so great we’ve really got to be celebrating that junk all the time? Gimmie a break. I don’t even like the president, what am I supposed to do on President’s Day? Go to work by myself? Fat chance. We should have a "Remember When the Cubs Won the Pennant?" day or a "Joey Knocked Up That Hot Blonde Who Works Down at the Bottling Plant" day. That’d be fun. I’d vote for it, if I voted. But if I thought I was filling out a rebate for batteries and then it turned out I was voting on accident, then forget that! Because shame on you guys for tricking me. Damn. So pass it on.

Yours,

Jack Hargraves
Hell’s Belt, NV


Dear Jack:

Wow, it’s rare that the commune receives a letter with that level of thought, or motor oil, put into it. We thank you for taking the time to dig a piece of scrap paper out of your trunk and writing to us. And we think you’ll be pleased to know that we here at the commune celebrate holidays for any conceivable reason, including "Lil Duncan Negative Prego Test Day" and "Griswald Dreck Says It’s Bastille Day Day." It doesn’t take much to get us out of the office and into a dry martini, let’s just say that. Or a keg filched from some uppity needlepoint magazine’s office party, whatever it takes. So you’re in good company Jack, as long as you don’t ever show up here or write us again. We’ll be sure to add "Remember When the Cubs Didn’t Suck Day" and "Joey’s Fucked Now Day" to our office calendar.

the commune

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Editor’s Note: the commune is not responsible for any of the many creative ways your lover left you, we were just humming that song in the elevator and it appeared to strike a chord. So please, give the commune a break, Jake.

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