Remember that famous line from the movie "Forrest Gump?" “Stupid is as stupid does…”
Well it seems that a theoretical particle physicist at the University of North Carolina in actuality might be a smart physicist, but is the epitome of stupidity when it comes to drug trafficking or women or both.
According to the March 8, New York Times, 68 year-old Paul Frampton, a professor in the physics and astronomy department at UNC Chapel Hill, met who he thought would be his bride-to-be on an on-line dating site.
She was a bikini model from Czechoslovakia – beautiful, dark hair and eyes, natural triple-D breasts. Even her name was beautiful – Denise Milani, and “She was tired, she said, of being a ‘glamour model,’ of posing in her bikini on the beach while men ogled her. She wanted to settle down, have children.”
Sounds too good to be true… So how could a British physics professor of 30 years fall for this? Believe that a woman younger than half his age and gorgeous would want to marry him? Did the lonely life that he led cloud his thinking? Had he watched too many reruns of “The Big Bang Theory” and think maybe smart is sexy?
Whatever the reason, Frampton set out on Jan 7, 2011 for La Paz, Bolivia, where Milani was doing a photo shoot, to meet her, in spite of the fact (something scientists rely heavily on) that he had never spoken to her by telephone.
The trip had been planned by Frampton’s future bride; she had sent him e-tickets for the trip to which would take him to Toronto and from Toronto to Santiago, Chile.
Upon his arrival in Toronto, he discovered the e-ticket to Santiago was invalid. He was stranded, but only for a day.
Frampton managed to arrive in La Paz, four days after he set out, but he was too late. Milani had been called to Brussels for another photo shoot. The odds of Frampton meeting the girl of his dreams were increasing; the statistical probability of the two getting married was out of the realm.
But Frampton kept in touch with Milani by email who promised to send him a ticket to join her in Brussels. He waited patiently, working on a physics paper. Soon a ticket to Buenos Aires arrived with the promise of another to Brussels but it was not without a hitch. Milano needed a favor – “bring her a bag that she had left in La Paz.”
Frampton agreed.
The old guy telephoned a long-time physics buddy, John Dixon, who also happened to be a lawyer, and shared his story. Dixon warned him that he was being set up; that Milani was probably using him to smuggle drugs out of the country.
Frampton denied it but when the plain old black bag was dropped off at Frampton’s hotel empty, he contacted Milani and asked why the empty bag was so important. Frampton had Milani’s triple-D all natural breasts on his mind, because he bought her story that it had “sentimental value.”
At least that is the story he told the three judges he stood before in an Argentina courtroom after his arrest at Buenos Aires airport.
Frampton was returning to his home in North Carolina after nine days on the excursion that did not net him his dream girl.
But the judge didn’t buy it; apparently, even though Frampton still claims his innocence, he must’ve been in on the operation.
Text messages and emails were submitted by the prosecution, many which provided evidence that this 86 year old lonely professor may have initially been targeted as a naïve unwilling participant that was stuck by the thought of a young gorgeous model with whom he would have sex every night, but actually became well aware of the hatched scheme.
Frampton participated, perhaps blinded by the notion of being with Milani, but full well knowing what he was involved in.
Frampton, who was once an endowed chair at UNC, is now a prisoner in Buenos Aires – convicted of smuggling cocaine. The professor of graduate classes in advanced quantum physics has written an inordinate amount of papers – 452 total.
While under house arrest for his drug smuggling sentence of 4 years 8 months, Frampton has published the last four papers. Each one includes UNC Chapel Hill as his permanent address. The first three published after his incarceration at Devoto, give credit not only to UNC but Centro Universitario Devoto, Buenos Aires, Argentina and include a statement that the work was supported in part by a grant by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In his latest paper, submitted for publication Jan. 3, 2013, titled “Higgs Couplings to t,b, and tau with Flavor Symmetry,” Frampton writes at the end, “This work should have been supported by U.S. Department of Energy grant number DEFG02-06ER41418.”
Maybe somebody wised up at the DOE and cut off Frampton’s grant money.
In any case, Frampton and those who dole out DOE grants fit the phrase “Stupid is as stupid does!”
Frampton is expected to be released in May 2014. (Under Argentine law, a foreigner must serve half his sentence but can then be expelled from the country, and the penalty is then considered discharged.)
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