This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: The Bending, and Squeezing, Flexibility Edition
Welcome back to Weird and Wacky Wednesdays, where the justice system hands us material so good we couldn’t make it up if we tried. This week the universe chose a theme entirely on its own: bending. Whether you’re bending the rules, bending over backward, or bending your handcuffed body through a half-open car window, this week in law had it all.
The Okanagan Moon Over Vernon
Meet **Travis Delain Kroeker**, 42, of Vernon, B.C. – a man who turned dine-and-dash fraud into performance art, and who recently gave a Provincial Court judge the most literal possible interpretation of “bending over for justice”: he dropped his pants and mooned the camera from custody.
Travis had been running a circuit of Vernon restaurants – skipping out on chicken wings at the Kalamalka Hotel, then heading to Brown’s Socialhouse for a martini and Sauvignon Blanc, where staff recognized him and asked him to pay. He tapped his phone on the debit machine repeatedly without opening a payment app, then was kicked out. Last November he was convicted of a single dine-and-dash plus assault and released on time served — which did not slow him down.
His confession was creative: he called the Vernon RCMP, said he wanted to come clean, and ordered $150 worth of pizza from Red Swan to be delivered to the detachment as a peace offering. Officers rejected the pizza but kept the confession. That pizza order became one of his five current fraud charges.
In court, Travis fired his court-appointed lawyer, represented himself, asked a witness whether they believed in magic, and called dine-and-dash “a grey area of the law.” At a bail hearing before Judge Stanford, he threatened her life by referencing *Law Abiding Citizen* – the 2009 film in which a judge is assassinated – and when asked to clarify, he did. That earned his third contempt citation and kept him in custody.
At sentencing before Judge Guild, Travis gave both middle fingers to the camera, called the Crown prosecutor a “dumb bitch,” declared the judge “corrupt” and “evil” – and then dropped his pants. Judge Guild narrated the moment on the record: “Mr. Kroeker has now pulled down his pants and showing his naked bottom to the court on video.” Then continued sentencing. Travis received 30 days, with more charges still pending. The judge concluded that Travis’s disregard for the law “is continuing and will continue for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his life.” Remarkably, Travis had no prior criminal record before any of this began.
The Muskegon Heights Escape Artist
Kendra Aney, 38, of Muskegon Heights, Michigan, took a more athletic approach to bending this week – threading herself, handcuffed, through a half-open police cruiser window and running.
Officers on patrol found Aney as a passenger in a vehicle parked outside an abandoned business. A fingerprint scan revealed an outstanding parole violation. She was handcuffed and secured in the back of a patrol car while officers walked away to search the driver’s vehicle, leaving the rear window about halfway down.
A nearby observer watched what followed, said nothing to officers, pulled out his phone, and hit Facebook Live. The footage shows Aney checking her surroundings, then working herself headfirst through the gap with her hands cuffed behind her back, lowering one leg to the ground, then the other, and sprinting away down the street. Officers didn’t notice she was gone until one returned and looked through the empty window.
The clip went viral within hours. Police Chief Maurice Sain summarized it plainly: “The window was halfway down, and she climbed out of it.” Roughly four hours later, a nearby resident reported a break-in – Aney had allegedly entered an abandoned residence after her escape. She was found and arrested Tuesday morning, and is now facing charges of escape, felony home invasion, breaking and entering, larceny, and the original parole violation.
The rear windows of patrol cars can generally be controlled from the driver’s seat. And a bystander on a porch pointing his phone at your cruiser and laughing is, in hindsight, a signal worth acting on.
The Texas Judge Who Won’t Bend
Judge Nathan J. Milliron of the 215th Civil District Court in Harris County, Texas, is having a week. Not in a good way.
It started when audio went down during a court proceeding. A county IT technician fixed it in five seconds, made a small joke calling it a “false alarm,” then called it a “false negative.” Milliron told him not to joke around, ordered him out of the courtroom, demanded his supervisor, and was heard saying: “Jesus Christ. Sick and tired of this bullshit today.” The technician had fixed the problem, said goodbye politely, and left when dismissed.
The clip from Milliron’s own livestreamed proceedings went viral with millions of views. Houston defense attorney James Stafford, with over fifty years of practice and no prior reason to ever email a judge about their behavior, sent Milliron a measured note asking whether he’d apologized and hoping it was an off day. Milliron responded by ordering Stafford to appear before him in court, accusing him of ex parte communication despite Stafford having no active cases in his court. The Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, a number of whom are good friends of mine, have spoken out backing the IT tech and Stafford. Additional clips then surfaced of Milliron ejecting a defense attorney mid-argument.
His Facebook page, where he identifies himself as a “Digital Creator,” was found to feature a hype reel of himself throwing a lawyer out of his courtroom. Records from the Texas Ethics Commission show he is delinquent on two required filings: a $1,000 penalty for missed campaign finance reports and $500 for missing personal financial disclosures. He won his seat in 2024 by approximately 300 votes out of 1.4 million cast and is on the bench until at least 2029. He has not apologized and has not responded to media requests.
He is the one person this week who genuinely needs to bend. So far shows no sign of it.
From a legal perspective I would say flexibility is admirable when used appropriately. When it’s not used appropriately, there’s a good chance it will end up here on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays. That’s a wrap. See you next week.
