RIP – DON LAPRE

EXPIRED: 10/02/11 – Don Lapre, 47, had dropped out of his Massachusetts high school only to find success and fame as the ‘King of Infomercials’. He’s the guy who peddled get-rich-quick schemes, showing you his secrets for making $50,000 a week by “placing tiny classified ads in the newspaper.” Remember him?

Well, after the ‘tiny classified ad’ thing wore out its welcome, Lapre was pitching “The Greatest Vitamin in the World.” That, too, was also a sham and the FDA was on his case for years trying to get him to stop claiming that the worthless pills could do things that it couldn’t. His last attempt at business was duping people into letting his ‘company’ make one minute TV ads that “you could put up on YouTube to reach millions of people to buy your product or service.”

Eventually he was accused on 41 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and promotional money laundering. Basically, the guy defrauding at least 220,000 people out of nearly $52 million.

He was arrested this past June for failing to appear for his arraignment. US Marshals found Lapre hiding in the locker room of a Life Time Fitness location in Tempe, Arizona. He had reportedly lived in the Life Time Fitness location for two days, and was suffering from serious self-inflicted knife wounds to his groin as he tried to sever his femoral artery.

He was thrown into a holding cell to await a trial that was to begin today. The charges carried potential fines of between $250,000 and $500,000 per count and federal prison terms of between five and 25 years.

But Lapre had other ideas and took his life. He wrote on his website, donlapre.com, “I am left to fight a battle that will for sure destroy what energy I have left inside.” And with that, he took his life.

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RIP – ISABEL GUTIERREZ

EXPIRED: 06/13/11 –  Isabel Chavelo Gutierrez, 53, was riding his bike in the Texas town he lived in. He broke in to the house of a 77 year old woman and – being a registered sex offender – wielded a knife and prceeded to rape her. During the rape he died. A big FUCK YOU to you, Gutierrez.

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RIP – PAUL SCHAEFER

EXPIRED: 04/24/10 – Paul Schäefer, 88, was a former Hitler Youth who grew up to be a corporal in the Nazi party and when World War II was over, he stayed in Germany so he could carry on hurting people as a child molester.

When he got accused of his pederast ways in 1961 he fled for southern Chile and started cult-like Baptist ministry there.

And although he denied allowing Chile’s secret police to use the enclave as a centre for torturing left-wing dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s, he did indeed have close ties to Chile’s elite during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule during the military dictatorship of the time.

RIP – VIVIAN BLAKE

EXPIRED: 03/21/10 – Vivian Blake, 54 was born poor and should have died poor, but didn’t.

He grew up in West Kingston, Jamaica and against the odds was granted a scholarship to a private high school, St. George’s College. Blake was a smart kid and was going to do well in whatever he chose to do.

Unfortunately, he chose to make it big in the drug trade and eventually started dealing marijuana and cocaine, eventually expanding his network nationwide.

RIP – VIVA LEROY NASH

EXPIRED: 02/12/10 – Viva Leroy Nash, 94, was, as his attorney claimed, a “doddering old man, who can’t hear, can’t see, can’t walk, and is very, very loony.” That may be so, but in reality Nash held the record as the oldest American on death row, a record he relinquished due to his death from  natural causes. Sly little fucker.

RIP – JAMES VON BRUNN

EXPIRED: 01/06/10 – James Von Brunn, 89, was a white supremacist and Holocaust denier who went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and shot Stephen Jones, the security guard, dead.

He never lived to stand trial, but if he had, he would have surely gotten the death penalty.

RIP – EVAN CHANDLER

EXPIRED: 11/05/09 – Evan Chandler, 65, who in 1993 made $20 million from Michael Jackson in a molestation lie and chose to live in Jersey City, NJ. That might be even bigger news than the fact that he blew out his brains in his luxury apartment overlooking the Hudson River.

RIP – ANTONIO PELLE

EXPIRED: 11/04/09 – Antonio Pelle, 77, was better known as ‘Ntoni Gambazzaone’ but regardless of what you called him, one thing was true: he was one of Italy’s most powerful mafia leaders alive, having been on the list of Italy’s 30 most wanted criminals.

No longer.

Pelle was a senior leader of the Calabrian mafia, ‘Ndrangheta, in the area of San Luca on Italy’s southern tip. The ‘Ndrangheta has become one of the most powerful criminal organisations in Italy, with the expansion of its international drug trafficking activities in Europe and other parts of the world.

With such a big job come’s a lot of stress. And that can lay heavy on your heart. ‘Ntoni Gambazzaone’s heart was no different.