‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

and all through the house,
the pastor was thieving,
not at all like a mouse…

File this tale in a folder labeled “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” and cross-reference it with folders labeled “Darwin Award Grand Prize Winner” and “Idiot.” Maybe you should start a file called “Greed” too. Talking Points Memo reports that a pastor was arrested while robbing the home of a church member.

On Christmas Eve.

Silent Night, indeed.

But, not silent enough. I don’t know whether the sound of breaking glass prompted a neighbor to call the police, or the neighbor just happened to glance out her his window and spy the pastor loading a vehicle with “fur coats, designer purses and electronics.” Shame, shame, shame Pastor McGriff! You, of all people, should know that theft is a violation of the 8th commandment, and one of the seven cardinal sins. As far as I know, being an idiot is not a sin, which is a good thing for Pastor McGriff because her IQ appears to be lower than dirt.

At the time of her arrest, Pastor McGriff told the police that “a friend had sent her to pick up her coats and that her arm was injured because she could not find a key under the doormat and had to break in through the window.” When the police tried to confirm this story with the home owner, they were told that “she had not given anyone permission to go into her house or take her property.” Shame, shame, shame, Pastor McGriff! Lying is a violation of the 9th commandment (but, on the plus side, not a cardinal sin).

So far, the pastor’s idiocy count includes:

• breaking into someone’s home
• injuring oneself while breaking into someone’s home
• stealing someone’s shit
• lying to the police about stealing someone’s shit

Add to that list the facts that, afterward,

• the pastor gave a recorded interview to news reporters
• she changed her story

I don’t know what possessed the pastor to do these things. Maybe she realized – after the police called the home owner and got an account that contradicted the pastor’s story – that her initial tale was lame and needed improvement. The problem is, she didn’t merely tweak the original tale – she replaced it completely.

McGriff admits to speaking with Agnew on Christmas Eve, but says she was simply in the neighborhood later when “something” told her to drive by Agnew’s house. There, she saw two men coming out from the side of the house. She pulled into the driveway to investigate. After not finding the spare key, she went around the building, and “saw that the window was broke.”

“My mistake was, I did not call 911 and I went through the window,” McGriff said. “I just used poor judgment.”

She went in the house. “I said ‘well let me get what I know that they would probably want,’” McGriff said. She got the laptop first, and then said she saw the coats on the way out. She did so, McGriff said, to prevent the items from being taken should the two men come back. It’s what she would have done in any situation, she says.

Ah, Pastor McGriff. There are very good reasons for your rights to silence and legal counsel. Now I have to add pissing away those rights to your list of idiocies.

If the pastor thinks her second story is any more credible than her first one, she’s sadly mistaken. I’ll give her credit, though, for its intriguing components. It has mystery: who were those two men? It has the hint of a space alien: who/what was that “something” that told her to go to the house? It has danger: beware the broken glass. It has blood and gore: the injured arm. But, she gets points deducted because none of the elements fit together into a cohesive, credible, compelling account. I suspect that, unless it can be demonstrated that Pastor McGriff is mentally ill, the most cohesive, credible, compelling account is the simplest one: the pastor got greedy and acted on her greed. It’s a sordid, far too common, story. And, unfortunately for Pastor McGriff, if the story fits, the jury can’t acquit.

– the chaplain

UPDATE: Learn more about this story and Pastor McGriff here.