I’ve got an eye doctor’s appointment today, so I’m being a little lazy again. I thought I’d dabble a bit in true crime.
This is an odd one, as it is from that Canadian program “The Fifth Estate”, but deals with a case in the United States: Dixon Illinois, to be exact, which is a little far south to be considered Southern Canada.
The town’s Comptroller, Rita Crundwell, embezzled an estimated $53 million between approximately 1990 and 2012 (when she was indicted). That seems to me to be an astonishing amount of money, especially for a town with a population of about 15,000. (That’s close to $2.5 million a year.)
And did she spend it on moving to a country without an extradition treaty? Nope. She spent it on…quarter horses. Supposedly, she became one of the leading quarter horse breeders in the US: at least, until she was indicted, tried, and sentenced to 19 1/2 years in prison.
I personally am kind of baffled by this: there’s nothing wrong with raising horses (though stealing money from taxpayers is objectionable) but if you’re going to do it, why not raise whole horses? Why raise just a quarter of a horse? What can you do with a quarter horse?
(Yes, I will be here all week.)
Bonus: True confession, I have not watched this yet, but “All the Queen’s Horses” is a longer documentary about Rita Crundwell and the Dixon fraud.