I'm tired, but I had to get this out there while it's still relatively fresh.
Two clown stories in the news, and both have a midwestern angle.
First, in
frightening news from Marion, Iowa, a trio of scary clowns are apparently going around kicking in front doors (perhaps in advance of Halloween?) and punching homeowners in the face.
Now my second story.
Right about the same time I was reading about A. Paul Carlock's arrest on child pornography charges, southside bureau chief
Dena was sending me a link to
this Smoking Gun story. The Smoking Gun has an extra-creepy promo video from Klutzo's trip to the Philippines.
A. Paul Carlock, a Springfield, Illinois resident better known as Klutzo the Clown, is something of a renaissance clown. Not merely a clown, he is a
Christian Clown. He has also been a police officer, juvenile counselor, youth officer, police trainer and has served in a variety of other Illinois government jobs. Oh, yeah, he's also worked at a couple of day care centers and is an ordained minister with the
Missionary Church International.
In short, this sick bastard has had nothing but jobs giving him access to children for something like 20 years. According to
this story in the Lincoln Courier, Carlock's last marriage ended in 1984 after "an incident" forced him to resign his job as pastor at a local church. His current wife filed for divorce last week citing "mental cruelty" after clowning around with him for several years.
I had a link to Klutzo's webpage, but as of 10:45 pm CST it's no longer operational.
After a little digging, though, I
was able to come up with
A. Paul Carlock Jr.'s Amazon.com profile. These were the tags he used in
the reviews he wrote of ten movies:
According to
this story in The Daily Journal, a downstate Illinois newspaper,
In December 1986, Carlock wrote a letter to the State Journal-Register complaining about a cartoon. In the letter, he said he was a conservative Christian and not ashamed of the fact.
"I am not in favor of censorship, but do feel that far too much 'smut' has been poured into the minds of Americans by all forms of media," he wrote.
"I have spent the past 16 years in law enforcement and related professions. I have spoken with victims and offenders and have read many case histories in which pornographic materials played an overwhelming role in the events that have left lives shattered and homes broken."
Later in the letter, he wrote: "Why is it so unreasonable to assume the government has the right to protect the public from the harmful effects of pornography (especially in light of the vast amounts of evidence to support this claim)?
As in so many stories like this, it's not just the child victims of the clown who suffer. In this case, law-abiding clown Klutzo,
also known as Algonquin Village Clerk Jerry Kautz, has retired his wig and floppy shoes after being confused for the evil Klutzo.
