From: wlamonac@haydn.helios.nd.edu (william lamonaca)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Eating Dogs
Date: 31 Aug 92 19:00:30 GMT
Organization: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame

In article <85vpblmh@csv.warwick.ac.uk> csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~) writes:
>In article <1992Aug31.153420.15895@hubcap.clemson.edu> jlysagh@hubcap.clemson.edu (james joseph lysaght) writes:
>>I remember when I lived in Philadelphia back in High School.  There was
>>this cult group called MOVE.  They had something like 30 people living
>>in a small row home.  The had baracaded the house like a fort, installed
>>a machine gun nest on the roof, set up loud speakers and shouted
>>obscenities all night long at the neoghbors.  They were rumored for the
>>longest time to be capturing stray dogs and cats and eating them.  The
>>local news did an investigative piece on them and got pictures of the
>>people cooking and eating a dog.  Eventually the people were reported to
>>be hauling dirt our of the basement.  The police finally tried to evict
>>the people from the house and run them out of town.  This lead to a
>>shoot out that lasted 2 or 3 days involving something like 100 police.
>>The fire department brought in water canons and they tried to knock the
>>house down with the people still inside but the had built it up like a
>>fort well enough to withstand this.  They finally ahd a helicopter fly
>>over the house and drop a bomb on it.  It blew up and started a fire.
>>The firemen refuse to fight the fire until they were sure everyone
>>inside was killed by it for fear of their own lives.  They calculated
>>that from the amount of dirt hauled out of the basement of this house
>>the cult was diggin tunnels uner the city to come up inot peoples
>>basements and rob them and kill them.  They calculated that these
>>tunnles could stretch on for four city blocks so they let the fire bunr
>>everything over four city blocks around the house to assure that anyone
>>hiding down in the tunnels would be killed and not come up and kill the
>>firemen.  Then the put the fire out and rebuilt the hundreds of houses
>>they burned down and reimbursed all the fmailies for theit losses.
>>This was a poor neighborhood but the families were all given seriously
>>expensinve cars and fancy homes and all sorts of luxuries to replace and
>>compensate their losses.
>>
>>Essentially, the city moved MOVE.
>>
>>anyone else out there from Philly around this time and remember all
>>this?
>
>I'm feeling somewhat humor-impaired today, and I'm sure I'm missing something,
>and it's not April 1st...
>
>You *are* taking the p*ss, aren't you? (Please say yes...)
>
>The Wisp.
>-- 

The story is true up until the sentence beginning "The firemen refused to  
fight the fire ...".  All after that is strictly drivel.  The fires burned
down four blocks because Philadelphia was suffering under the leadership of
one of the worst administrations in its history.  They dropped incendiary
bombs on on a roof where they knew gas was being stored with no regards to the
obvious consequences.  There was a tremendous loss of life as you may well
imagine.  I never heard anything about tunnels.  As far as the families being
reimbursed handsomely- nope.  The houses that were put up were not much better
than the ones that had burned down.  In fact they were worse- they were built
on unstable ground and began to sink almost as soon as they were built.  I
never heard anything about expensive cars, etc.

I was living in Philly at the time and was following the story very closely.
I would have heard if any of that was going on.

Bill