Crime Blotter

ALL HANDS ON DECK! Guests at an exclusive, pre-Memorial Day yacht party off Long Island received a bit of a surprise Sunday night. A crewmember on one of the yachts involved in the festivities heard what must have been a wet thump outside the boat's cabin. When he investigated, he discovered a severed human hand on the rear deck. No one's sure who it belongs to, or where it came from. The initial guess—that it fell from a plane—was just stupid. More likely, the rotting left hand was plucked from the sea by a gull and later dropped on the boat.

Burchard Bertrand, 32, better known as the Hardhat Bandit for his habit of dressing up like a construction worker in order to rob banks, was sentenced to nine years in prison early last week. He also has to pay $19,000 in restitution. Even though he was robbing banks to support his coke habit, we thought Bertrand had real style. Other bank robbers could take a cue from him—there's nothing wrong with going about your chosen profession with a little pizzazz.

On Tuesday afternoon, "aspiring actress and model" Monica Meadows, 22, was hit in the chest by a bullet as she sat on the northbound W train. All initial indications say the shooting was most likely accidental. Of course, scores of other people were shot this week, many of them fatally, but few if any made the front pages. Then again, none of them were aspiring actresses and models.

Albert Maber, 30, was one such shooting victim. He and his girlfriend were sitting in his car on a Flatbush street at one o'clock Tuesday morning when four men approached the car and shot Maber three times. Ignoring his girlfriend's pleas, Maber drove the car back to his apartment in Sheepshead Bay, where an ambulance was finally called. He's in critical condition.

Police are guessing the shooting was drug-related, but Maber's sister, who lives with him, denies this.

On Tuesday evening, 40-year-old Thomas Citera stopped by the Citibank at B'way & 40th to get some cash from an ATM. After entering his PIN, Citera was knocked aside by a big fat lady in a floral-print dress. Before she and her accomplice could steal thousands from his account, however, Citera fought back, managing to hit the ATM's "cancel" button. The would-be thieves waddled from the bank empty-handed.

Finally, in bittersweet news, New York's so-called "Zodiac Killer," Heriberto Seda, has found love behind bars—but it may be a love he's not allowed to keep. According to a letter received by the Daily News, Seda has married Synthia-China Blast, a fellow murderer who's serving a 25-year sentence at Attica. Blast (born Luis Morales) is also suing for the right to get a sex-change operation.

While the two are said to have been happily married for a year, officials have decided to move the 29-year-old Blast to another lockup, thus interrupting, at least for quite some time, what Blast described as a "love extravaganza." They have our best wishes. o