Take for example Francis Guerra, the reputed Colombo mobster charged with two murders and an alleged beating of a Staten Island pizza owner.

Guerra is an in-law to the owners of L&B Spumoni Gardens, one of Brooklyn’s celebrated pizzerias most famous for their perfect sicilian slice. The Square, a Staten Island restaurant that slings a similar square pie, is owned by Eugene Lombardo. Authorities are accusing Guerra of giving Lombardo a beat down for The Square’s copycat recipes. Lombardo told the Daily News that such a beating never happened and that “If they did, they better have a gun.”

Photo by Matthew Staver/The New York Times

It probably goes without saying that I’ve been sort of captivated by the escapades of Randy Quaid and his wife Evi of late. The kooky pair were arrested last week in Marfa, Texas for skipping out on hotel bills and various other sorts of activities involving swindling people out of money. New details about the Quaids emerged today, and it’s all just downright wacky.

The Daily Beast reports extensively on the Quaids today in a somewhat disturbing piece by Diane Dimond. who says that when James Davis, a deputy sheriff in Presidio County, Texas, pulled over the Quaids rental car, things turned quite ugly, particularly with Evi:

“It was a psychotic episode with her,” Davis says. “Evi was slapping at and pulling at officers, not really assaulting but resisting full on … fussing and fuming. I finally got a hold of her, put her down on the hood of the car and put the cuffs on behind her back.” Randy, apparently realizing the severity of the situation, tried to help officers get his wife to calm down.

After the Quaids were booked and photographed, deputies drove them to the bank to withdraw money for their $20,000 bond because, “Frankly, we didn’t want them in our jail overnight.”

Perhaps the strangest part of last week’s incident was that it wasn’t that strange. Davis, for one, had witnessed her act before: “I’ve had a few episodes in the past with her when she shows up screaming at [Marfa city] council meetings. I get called in to keep the peace when she’s around.” And the couple has recently left behind a trail of allegedly unpaid bills, from ritzy hotels to trailer parks, accountants to private detectives, the latter hired to exact revenge on several enemies and to help figure out, in the words of P.I. Becky Altringer, “who was trying to kill them.”

Dimond’s story goes on to note a host of disturbing incidents highlighting the Quaids paranoia-fueled obsession with outside forces they believe are trying to kill them and their show business associates, but this little anecdote provided by the private detective hired by the Quaids to spy on their perceived enemies takes the proverbial cake:

Evi told her on an almost daily basis that she and Randy were “going to end up like Phil and Bryn Hartman”–a reference to Saturday Night Live Star Phil Hartman who was shot dead in his bed by his drug-plagued wife Bryn, who then killed herself. The private investigator, whose firm, Aerial Investigations, is owed $17,000 by the Quaids, says she worries Evi’s premonition might come true.