Ace reporter John Horde has a distressing account of nefarious goings-on in New Zealand. It was reported in various New Zealand newspapers today that a 22-year old Wellington resident has been convicted of a string of thefts from the set of "Lord of the Rings". Jeter Packson, an unemployed sheep-wrangler, had accumulated over 3,000,000 items from the set, including over 250,000 individual blades of grass from the "Hobbiton" set. Jeter, who changed his name to honour his idol, maverick Kiwi Director, Peter Jackson, had embarked on a 10 month stealing spree. Disguised as an elf in blonde wig, pointed ears and 6 inch high platform-soled boots, he had been able to wander at will around the various high-security New Zealand sets, collecting objects in a wheelbarrow. The thefts only came to light during a police search of Packson's house. Whilst investigating unrelated charges involving sheep, officers from the Wellington Constabulary discovered that Packson's basement had been converted into a shrine to the director of "The Lord Of The Rings". Amongst the objects recovered were A Hobbit's foot Gandalf's beard Fifteen copies of "The One Ring" An Orc Pod Arwen's Sword Saruman's Palantir Staff Five full sets of Elvish Samurai Armour from the Helm's Deep set The centrepiece of the shrine was an "Iron Maiden" t-shirt, a half-finished can of Guinness and two pairs of underpants, all stolen from Peter Jackson's trailer, mounted on a huge translucent white plastic pedestal. The pedestal was later discovered to be actress Liv Tyler's lunchbox. Mr. Packson was sentenced to 15 years hard labour answering Michael DeLuca's email with no remission.John Horde Thankfully, this deranged man has been brought to justice. Incidentally, if anyone has this man's phone number, could they please forward it to me - good on-set spies are hard to come by.
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