They decided to lock him away in a mental hospital, but it wasn't enough. When Lewis found out that Prince Charles was visiting New Zealand in 1983, he attacked an orderly with a knife trying to break out. The cops even found plans to murder the prince hidden in his room -- and since this was a mental ward, we don't know want to know what he wrote them with.

A decade passed, during which Lewis went from Nazism to Buddhism and from dissident to plain ol' crazy criminal. But when the queen planned to visit again in 1995, the government took no chances. Police went to his domicile, told him to pack a bag, offer no resistance, and come with them ... on a fabulous ten-day all-expenses-paid vacation to the remote Great Barrier Island! There, Lewis and his girlfriend spent the entire time blowing taxpayer money on fishing and kayaking. He even wrote that he "almost felt like royalty" -- which in retrospect could've been a suicide note.

But you can't keep this kind of bumbling conspiracy a secret forever. The cover-up was partially exposed in 1997 by a former cop, but the New Zealand government only admitted to it in 2018, after Stuff wrote an expose on the whole ridiculous affair. As for Lewis? Well, he gave up trying to assassinate royals and mellowed out a bit. By which we mean he robbed a bank with a ninja sword, led police on an epic chase into the Outback, jumped a 30-foot gorge with his car, and finally escaped capture by clinging to the underside of a bus for 200 miles.

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See, Universal Studios was also the home of the Universal Music Group's vault, which contains a priceless collection of master tapes from legends like Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Limp Bizkit (time will cement their place in history). Or it used to contain them. Every single one of the roughly 500,000 original song titles in the vault went up in flames. And because Universal preferred to not to get slapped with 500,000 lawsuits and contract disputes, they decided to keep it quiet.

While privately acknowledging that "lost in the fire was, undoubtedly, a huge musical heritage," Universal went to great lengths to pretend it was not that big of a deal. In public, UMG only admitted to losing a handful of tapes from artists nobody remembered anyway. Plus, all those tapes had been backed up elsewhere (in fact, not even 10% had been digitally copied). And when artists like Steely Dan and Bryan Adams started getting suspicious, Universal gave them the ol' runaround -- switching tapes, lying to their sound engineers, the whole nine yards.

The cover-up worked for years, but UMG made two mistakes. In 2014, when Universal Studios was split from the rest of the company in an acquisition, the greedy record group sued the estranged studio for destruction of property, creating a lot of incriminating paperwork. Even more hare-brained, UMG then fired its chief archivist, who simply walked that paper trail straight to The New York Times. The newspaper exposed the disaster in June 2019, and the suing hasn't slowed down since.

David McNew/Getty ImagesYou can see the full list here just to confirm that yes, every band you like was effected.

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This tale of rampaging cellulite vampires became the only talking point in the country for weeks. But some remained skeptical, especially those who remembered their folklore. Except for the plastic bottles, this lard larceny was almost beat-for-beat the same story as the old Peruvian legend of the Pishtacos -- a murderous band of fat-stealing demons who prowled the South American countryside during the time of the Incas.

Eventually, the whole greasy house of cards came crashing down when investigators discovered that all evidence of these fat-filching fiends had been fabricated. The scandal rocked Peru and caused the suspension of lead investigator Felix Murga. And while the real reason for the tall tale was never uncovered, many officials noted that the story came out remarkably close to allegations that Peruvian police had murdered 47 suspects in a single town in two years. Surely, it's better to be known as the cops who cried wolf than the cops who're actually a bunch of wolves in sheep's clothing.

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But a man will only buy that explanation for so long until, for one reason or another, he finds cause to check. For his Gordian Knot approach, Farouk was dragged in front of a medical tribunal, which ruled that the doctor had embarked upon "a series of deliberate acts designed ... to cover up the fact you had made an error." And so, for messing with a man's scrotum, he was given the sack in 2016. He deserved that pun, but you, gentle reader, did not.

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At that point, Pineda and her colleagues started suspecting a cover-up -- a "Piss-Gate," if you will (no, not that one). Rumors about Pissgate engulfed the base, including wild conspiracy theories that Pineda herself was the pee-sniper, having watered her boots to set up her superiors. Kind of like a version of A Few Good Men you'd only find in the water sports section behind the beaded curtain of a video rental store.

Officers claimed that supporting Pineda was met with reprisals, including withheld pay. Similarly, when a major filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the base's head of security had been ordered to end the case and destroy the evidence (since it pointed at Colonel Navin), he was told to back down. Another officer ordered a meeting to warn the base that soldiers who ask questions aren't "honorable, red-blooded Americans." With that kind of authoritarian talk, morale quickly took a nosedive.

It wasn't long before someone leaked the scandal to the press, which at last prompted a proper investigation from the U.S. Air Force Inspector General's Office. And while Pineda never truly got answers, inspectors did establish "a culture of reprisal, or at a minimum the perception of reprisal" in her wing, and forced a disgraced Major General Garrison to step down. Hopefully right into a suspiciously wet boot.

E. Reid Ross has a book called BIZARRE WORLD that's on store shelves as we speak. Or you could order it now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble and leave a scathing/glowing review.

For more, check out How Trump's Pardon Of Joe Arpaio Is Normal And Also Super F***ed Up:

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