Lighter side...

How Facebook is helping solve crimes now...

Jonathan G. Parker, of Fort Loudoun, Pa., was recently arrested for breaking into a woman’s home and stealing two diamond rings. Police tracked Parker down after discovering that he had checked his Facebook page on the victim’s computer and forgotten to log himself out.

In an unprecedented journalistic coup, the Berkeley County sheriff’s department has provided the New Yorker’s Cartoon Lounge with a full list of the evidence in the case pending against Mr. Parker. We can only hope that our full disclosure of the evidence will not in any way affect the ongoing investigation or the future jury trial.

The full list of evidence:

• Parker’s Facebook page was open on the victim’s computer.
• Parker left a to-do list on the victim’s refrigerator, reminding himself to rob her.
• Several detailed charcoal self-portraits of Parker were found in and around the victim’s bathroom. We have reason to believe Parker used the bathroom mirror as a visual aid in drawing the self-portraits. We have no reason to suspect that an accomplice was in fact the artist, while Parker posed, primarily because Parker signed each portrait several times.
• Parker’s passport, driver’s license, and birth certificate were found in the drawer from which the diamond rings were taken.
• Two copies of an autobiography titled, “Jon Parker, International Diamond Thief” were found on the victim’s dining-room table. The book-jacket design appeared to be a collage of Parker’s fingerprints.
• Detective Hudson, upon searching the victim’s trash, found more than thirty pieces of crumpled paper on which Parker had been obsessively practicing his signature.
• Parker had changed the victim’s answering machine message to say, “Hello, you have reached Jonathan Parker, but only for the time being. Don’t leave any messages for me here after 3:30, because I will be done stealing the diamonds by then. Thank you, and have a safe weekend.”
• All of the photos on Parker’s Facebook page were of him stealing the diamonds.