OK, we cheated on this one. The bird wasn’t the murder weapon. Even Monty Python would have a hard time working up a tale of a murder by budgerigar.
The bird was the motive for a cranky old man to kill his downstairs neighbor.
Camden County prosecutors say 65-year-old David Giordano was convicted on Monday of aggravated manslaughter in the June 2012 slaying of 52-year-old Michael Taylor.
The Voorhees Township man had been Taylor’s upstairs neighbor. Prosecutors say Giordano poured water on Taylor’s pet birds because they were chirping too loudly. The birds had been kept on Taylor’s porch.
Giordano then repeatedly stabbed Taylor with a knife when Taylor confronted him. Taylor died from his injuries at a hospital nearly three weeks later.
Giordano is expected to be sentenced next month. He faces 15 to 30 years in state prison.
via Man convicted of fatally stabbing neighbor over bird chirps – Fox 5 NY | WNYW.
Any reasonable sentence gets this homicidal crank out of circulation for good.
It would be justice indeed if he was in the next cell to the Birdman of Asbury Park or something.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
6 thoughts on “When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Birds”
“It would be justice indeed if he was in the next cell to the Birdman of Asbury Park or something.”
Yeah….the (extremely deaf and mildly sadistic MMA champ and steroid monster) Birdman of Asbury that keeps 20 Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos and a dozen Galahs. Next to just one of those, the noise of a hundred budgies wouldn’t compare. Budgies chattering away at someone else’s place is one of my favourite sounds; and I don’t even have to feed them. The most cunning thing for Giordano (gee, an Itie with a knife, who’d’ve guessed?) to do would have been to teach those little feathery dictaphones some appropriately annoying vocab…
I don’t know that the birds were budgies. Just playing the odds.
Perhaps canaries, cockatiels or lovebirds: chirps suggest something small….no way the big white shriekers can ever be said to chirp. Just one can be heard kilometres away, and when they have company they get talkative. Smart and very cheeky. We had a local flock that liked to breakfast in our huge pecan nut tree. There were more nuts than we knew what to do with, so we didn’t mind their wastefulness. The half eaten nuts and all the debris raining on the gal steel roof at 5am was annoying on weekends, but one got used to it and went fishing or crabbing. Our neighbour used to potshot them with a .22 short, but we coaxed him out of his hermit ways and he loosened up; even got himself a Filipina bride at 64 and procreated. Good onya Bruce!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82_ZJ1Y4Hhk
Of course it’s Jersey. Why’d it have to be Jersey?
I chalk this one up to not being a good neighbor. Constant racket from whatever (pet, boombox, etc) is NOT a god given right. One person’s rights end where another’s begins. I mean, fercrissakes, he probably kept them outside Because they were too loud for him inside in the first place.
Granted a knife applied to the offender is a bit over the top tho. I’d probably have done in the birds if they had driven me that crazy. Then its a civil case followed by a possible case of self defense.
It would be interesting to know what kind of birds they were. Little budgies probably wouldn’t be that big of a problem unless there were a bunch of them. I can see larger birds being a problem.
As “S” suggested, if it was a Cockatoo, or Cockatoos, that would test the patience of a deaf person. Those things can wake the dead. Macaws are plenty loud. African Greys can make some very annoying noises. Any of these guys may not “chirp”, but they can sure whistle loud, and they can scream incredibly loud as well.
I have a parrot. I took it with me to grad school, and lived in a house with roommates. It would scream from time to time. They hated it and it was a huge point of contention. I wasn’t asked to renew my lease.