Fugitive Owing $560,000 in Child Support Apprehended Over Maraschino Cherry Mischief 

Full disclosure: this story doesn’t really make sense and that’s precisely why I’ve *ahem* cherry-picked it for blogging. It also might be based on an Encyclopedia Brown story, I don’t know, I haven’t read them all.

So, CBS reported on Thursday that Joseph Stroup, an American man living in Canada who has managed to evade authorities for 20 years and owes $560,000 in child support (he is known to some as “America’s most wanted deadbeat dad”), was finally arrested in Calgary thanks to a phantom cherry pit. I’m just gonna tell it to you straight, what reportedly happened.

Stroup, who was living under the name Joop Cousteau (bravo), was a regular at a restaurant called Bears Den, in Callgary, where one day, out of the blue, he ordered something he’d never requested before: a Cherry Coke with eight maraschino cherries in it. This was in November.

According to restaurant owner Scott Winograd, Stroup received his drink and immediately began claiming that he’d damaged some dental work after biting into a cherry pit (but Maraschino cherries don’t have pits as they are primarily for skewering with spiky drink stirrers).

Stroup allegedly returned the following day with “handwritten” paperwork from his dentist, at which point Winograd, fearing a lawsuit, started looking into this Cousteau fellow, and, some detective work later, discovered his true identity. He then contacted U.S. authorities.