Fredericton — DNA evidence collected from several flooded homes in the Fredericton area have confirmed what investigators feared most: the flooding was not an act of God.
Hair samples and partial fingerprints have come back from the lab and proved conclusively that escaped American convicts Marv Merchants, 60, and Harry Lime, 75, of Chicago are to blame for the rising water levels in the capital.
The two bandits, who were at large, arrested, at large again and subsequently imprisoned once more in the early 1990s, were reported to have escaped a New York area prison for a second time a few months ago. On the lam since just after Christmastime, Harry and Marv, or “the Wet Bandits,” as they’re more commonly known, have successfully evaded arrest ever since. Though the FBI allegedly lost their trail shortly after their escape, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have now confirmed that the duo crossed over the New Brunswick border into Canada around three weeks ago, where they have been wreaking havoc ever since.
“Their M.O. is unmistakably clear,” RCMP investigator Holden Malone told The Manatee, referring to the Bandits’ calling card of leaving the sinks in the homes running after they’d completed ransacking so to flood the area and erase any evidence of their presence. “We just weren’t initially able to identify it due to the sheer scale of events.”
The flooding in the sleepy province of New Brunswick has set records across the board, and in some places even surpassed the near legendary marks left by the flood of 1973. The best explanation that anyone could come up with before was that God must’ve been super pissed off at someone in New Brunswick, more specifically the Maugerville area. A task-force had been put together to determine who it could possibly be, and though a whittled down list of ne’er-do-wells had been submitted to lead investigators, the recent DNA evidence has rendered all their work in vain.
“It may have ultimately been a waste of time,” Elmer Flood, spokesperson for the task-force said, “but at least it kept us focussed on our ultimate goal of finding someone to blame for all of our misfortunes.”
Though historically Harry and Marv have always worked alone, some investigators have theorized that there could be a third member of the crew now involved, someone investigators believe could be the reason for their overwhelming success.
“It’s a possibility we’re certainly looking into,” Detective Malone said. “If you look back over the case files from 1990 and ’92 you’ll see that those two have never really had any degree of success. Logic tells us that something had to have changed, and that logic has led us to our newest suspect, Kevin McCallister.”
McCallister, 37, spent some time in the United States military working on the bomb squad before being medically discharged and starting his own construction company. Police have been so far unable to reach McCallister, and when they contacted his mother for some hint of his whereabouts, she informed them that she lost track of her youngest son many years prior.
No way Merv is younger than Harry !