AROUND THE NATION
Rare Dime Auctions For $1.6 Million
PHILADELPHIA — A dime made in 1873 has cost someone a pretty penny: It sold for $1.6 million at auction.
An anonymous bidder won the pristine coin, said Chris Napolitano, president of Stack’s Bowers Galleries, which auctioned it during an American Numismatic Association convention. With a 15 percent buyer’s fee tacked on, the final price for the coin was $1.84 million, he said.
The rare coin was minted in Carson City, Nev., during a one-day run of dimes.
The 1873-CC “No Arrows” Liberty Seated dime was auctioned Thursday night. It’s part of the Battle Born Collection, which contained one of every coin struck in Carson City before the mint there closed in 1893.
All 111 pieces were auctioned off Thursday night, fetching a total of nearly $10 million.
Subject of Book Returns to Jail
NEW ORLEANS — The subject of the best-selling nonfiction book “Zeitoun” about a nightmarish incarceration during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath has been accused of plotting to murder his ex-wife, her son and the husband of her longtime friend.
Abdulrahman Zeitoun, 54, faces charges of offering $20,000 to a fellow jail inmate in exchange for the killings. Zeitoun has been jailed since late last month on charges that he beat his wife, Kathy Zeitoun, on a New Orleans street.
In the book by Dave Eggers, the Syrian-born businessman was described as a compassionate neighbor paddling a canoe through Katrina’s floodwaters and helping people before being arrested on false charges of looting. He was then thrown into prison for a month on suspicion of being a terrorist.
On Friday, he was being held on three counts of solicitation for murder, one charge of domestic abuse battery and one charge of violating a protective order.
Man Pleads Guilty In Child’s Murder
NEW YORK — Leiby Kletzky wanted to walk home alone from day camp, and one day last summer, his protective parents relented. They lived among closeknit Hasidic Jews in a safe Brooklyn area — a neighborhood where an 8-year-old boy should have been fine on his own.
But Leiby never made it those seven blocks to a prearranged meeting point with his mother.
On Thursday, Levi Aron pleaded guilty to abducting, smothering, then chopping up the boy in a crime that stunned the city and catapulted the insular Hasidic community into the headlines.
Aron, 36, is expected to be sentenced to 40 years in prison later this month. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and kidnapping. He had pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, and his lawyer had been expected to use an insanity defense.
Aron’s motive remains unclear, but he admitted abducting Leiby after the boy, who became lost while walking on July 11, 2011, asked him for directions. Aron said that, later, when he realized that a massive search was under way for the boy, he panicked.
5 Siblings Marry On the Same Day
MESA, Ariz. — It’s a mega wedding day for a Mesa family with five siblings walking down the aisle on the same day.
The East Valley Tribune reports the five Waldie children all got engaged within a few months of each other.
While trying to plan wedding dates with out-ofstate family and guests, dad Doug Waldie suggested they all marry on the same day.
So five of the eight Waldie children got married Friday at a Mormon church in Mesa: 28-year-old Emily, 26-yearold Bradford, 25-year-old Sydney, 24-year-old Walker and 20-year-old Brooke.
Each ceremony was separate, but the reception was scheduled for all five couples Friday night at the Falcon Field Air Force Museum.
Eighteen-year-old Andee Waldie, one of two unmarried sisters, was a bridesmaid for four of the couples.