Back before the dump behind the Statue of Liberty’s back had been turned into a state Park, the Protohippy (as luck would have it, a first cousin to the Uberhippy) was on one of his bench warming breathers between stretches of serious crime and hard time. He’d taken his son to the wasteland on the Hudson for a day of fishing. The Protohippy got a shovel from the trunk of his car and began to dig in the grainy, grimy soil in a search for worms to use as bait. He unearthed an old these-boots-are-made-for-walking example of feminine footwear. Sliding the flat metal of the shovel under the boot, he lifted it out of the hole and then tossed it to one side. As the dirt inside the upper portion of the leather crumbled and fell out, a human leg bone was to be seen.
As the sense of honor of career criminals finds particular outrage in violence against women and children, the Protohippy did something that he’d regularly would not; he called the police. Once the cops determined who it was that had summoned them to the scene, the Protohippy found himself in handcuffs being brought to the station.
After a day of questioning, the Jersey City Police were certain that the Protohippy had indeed just happened upon the grisly find. When they went to release him, long after the first officer had gone off duty, it was found that none of the standard keys would work in the cuffs. For some hours more, calls were made to various precincts to find some way to release the prisoner. Finally, a motorcycle cop was located who said that he had keys that would open anything. Anything is very hard to prove, but he did have a key for the cuffs on the wrists of the Protohippy that day.
