Dealing with the Barking Mad

It's not my habit to comment on current or pending investigations, Dear Reader, but in this case I thought I would make an exception.

Actually, it's not that I am commenting so much on the investigation but the subject.

She's fucking nuts!

Not just quirky or eccentric but a full-on tinfoil helmet-wearing candidate for a fitted straightjacket.

Cathy Weeks (not her real name) is currently part of an insurance investigtion pertaining to several claims she has recently made that seem to strongly resemble earlier claims made (and declined). All the claims revolve around a vehicle which she has subsequently onsold but, for a while, appeared to be the target for mischief by a secretive Chinese criminal organisation (ie one of the Triads).

According to Cathy, anyway.

Her vehicle would mysteriously be found damaged by Cathy in the mornings; sometimes with body damage, or worn out clutch, or some other malicious interference.

But say what you will about those Triads, they always politely returned the vehicle after taking it.

Courteous to a fault, those wily Orientals!

Anyway, because of these concerns, the insurer wished for Cathy to be interviewed. Cathy, however, had some othe ideas and, in fact, seemed to be trying to assert control over the investigation by making a number of demands as to how it proceeds. She wouldn''t be interviewed until I had all the police files (she has made 5 complaints over last few weeks) even though this might take up to a month to process.

She had been told that she must be interviewed by me before the claim can go any further but she would not be swayed. The delay is the insurer's problem, not hers, she vocally stated a number of times.

Okay. Now, in the course of conversations with the insurer and myself, Cathy has claimed:

• to be deaf, but can lip read (and use a phone, amazingly)
• to suffer panic attacks and anxiety
• to have no immune system (why she didn't want to speak to me when I was sick, earlier)
• to have ganglia (which is why she should be home with her feet up instead of providing me with a statement)
• to be afraid of the dark
• to have been recently assaulted
• to have been the victim of a number of thefts or interferences with her property
• to have been told by the police to move out of the city for her own safety

But then, against all expectation, Cathy phoned to state she was amenable to be interviewed so the necessary arrangements were made. The insurer insisted I take a female witness and not deal with Cathy by myself (for my protection, not hers).

Cathy showed up in a borrowed vehicle exhibiting some panel damage. She claimed that she'd parked this vehicle, on loan from a friend, outside a fast-food restaurant for a short time and came back to find it trashed. The mysterious attacks against her continue it would appear...

Rather than go through the interview, which was long and torturous, here are some of the claims made by Cathy in that time:

• Her vehicles have been interfered with by the 'kids' of the city, working on behalf of the Triads
• Cathy knows that the Triads are involved because she was living near where a prostitute was murdered several years ago (the offender has been caught and is neither a member of the Triads, nor even Asian) and 'they' were doing it then
• She has also been targetted by a particular gang (who usually operate in another part of the country and do not have a presence here) and she knows it is them because they all drive a particular make/model of vehicle of the same name as the gang
• This particular gang have tried to kill her several times by forcing her off the road
• They installed some kind of kill-switch in her vehicle that was activated when a man made a throat-slitting gesture to here as she was out driving one day (the vehicle just died)
• The Police have told Cathy to get out of town for her own protection
• The Police told Cathy to investigate the Triad involvement as everyone seems willing to talk to her and they would keep a media black-out on the case while she did so.
• Cathy had been poisoned by the Government and is no longer able to take any kind of medication
• Cathy didn't get a $2.5million settlement because her (first) husband, daughter, father, and lawyer all lied in Court.
• People (her family etc) try to get her to take lithium and venlafaxine but she refuses because of the chemical toxicity she suffered by government
• The campaign against her by the Triads or whoever has been going on for around 30 years
• Cathy suspects it may have had something to do with her first husband's family who were Italian mobsters who had ripped off the Vatican before coming to this country

And there was more. Much more.

Most of it made no sense and was unconnected to anything else but I asked the questions and got as much information as Cathy was able to provide because I wanted to show the insurer the extent of her paranoid delusions.

What do I believe is happening?

Hard to say but I would not be surprised at all if Cathy were damaging her own vehicles and had no recollection of doing so, then tying the events into her bizarre fantasy world.

I don't know how the insurer is going to deal with this one. After all, the damage is very real, it's just that the cause is difficult to determine.

And probably not the Triads.