Office Manager

'Whose woods these are I think I know. " In Severance , they belong to hooded Hungarian homicidal maniacs. A grisly horror comedy from director Christopher Smith, Severance takes a busload of coworkers for a British munitions company and plops them down in spooky, booby-trapped forests far from beautiful downtown Budapest. The idea was for a bit of "team-building" in a fancy rural retreat. The reality: dismemberment, disembowelment and death at the hands of a masked band of terror mongers.

My car was in the repair shop, so I was taking advantage of the rental agency's "we'll give you a ride to the rental office" service. I sat in my living room and waited for my ride. Peeking through the window every few minutes didn't hasten its arrival. So I called the agency and politely asked, "Where the heck's my ride? The guy was supposed to be here an hour ago. " Sean, the office manager, was reassuring. "Ma'am (first strike against him), the car is on its way. But just to confirm, I'll call Joe, the driver, on his cell phone to see where he is. I'll call you back after I talk to him. " I thanked Sean and waited.

John Ellingsworth walked past the hulk of a burned-out car surrounded by trash and tick-infested, roof-high weeds, resigned that the mess had been there so long it was now part of the scenery. It was not until he reached the nearby trees that he got mad. That's where someone had erected makeshift kennels for wild dogs. This is a cemetery, and the dogs' homes are between gravestones. One pressed against the final resting place of a Maude Hubbard, who died in 1921. "It's not perpetual care," Ellingsworth said last week at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia.

Are Louis and Philip Chartock simply victims of a dirty politician and a thieving bookkeeper? Or are they themselves crooks, a father-son duo who bribed a city councilman to get big favors out of Philadelphia's government? Those are the questions a jury will begin weighing this morning in U.S. District Court. The Chartocks are accused of paying former Councilman Rick Mariano $23,000 in exchange for his help on zoning and regulatory issues for their business, Erie Steel. Mariano was convicted in March of taking the bribes; he stepped down on Monday and is to be sentenced in July.

Denis Shusterman, the former Fort Washington accountant accused of embezzling $10 million from his employer, is an honorable and law-abiding man, his former office manager/lover testified yesterday. Mary Barnish, the second of three Shusterman mistresses expected to appear at his federal fraud trial, testified under a grant of immunity. From the witness stand, she reviewed Shusterman's company's books, identifying lavish personal expenses that authorities say he deducted on his tax returns.

Jill Carroll's nearly three months of captivity ended about 12:20 p.m. yesterday when she walked into an Iraqi Islamic Party office in western Baghdad and handed the front-desk clerk a note asking for help. The kidnapped American journalist, a freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor, had been abducted just a few miles away on Jan. 7 while leaving a Sunni politician's office. Her whereabouts had been unknown until a car dropped her off in front of the party's office yesterday.

An insurance company's notice of plans to double health-care premiums for an orthopedics practice short-circuited a scheme that was supplying narcotics illegally, police said. The insurance carrier, which was not named, cited an "inordinate amount of prescriptions that were being consumed" by employees at CORE Orthopaedics in Exton - mainly narcotics that were ordered fraudulently by a secretary, police said. Mary Elizabeth Semple, 30, of Coatesville, who waived her preliminary hearing on Friday, faces multiple counts of forgery, identity theft and drug violations.

Let's face it: The Day-Glo lime green ensemble isn't going to cut it in court. The baggy, ripped jeans and hoodie? Probably not impressing the judge. But for defendants who might not be able to make $100 bail, dress-up clothes are just not part of their wardrobe. That's when folks such as Janet Levey and Kim Pennington, who work in public defender offices, go into action. And they know just where to turn. Wedged into corners of a handful of these offices around the region is an off-the-rack solution to the problem of courtroom attire.

This time, Mili Della Lilley is going to make it to her high school reunion, and she will take the Ink Spots with her. Lilley manages the famous singing group, whose performance Friday will her gift to Norristown High School's Class of '49. "I always wanted to do this, but I didn't know how to go about it," she said last week from home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. This year, on the 55th anniversary of graduation, the stars aligned to...

A lawsuit seeking the removal of two Bristol Township officials was filed yesterday in Bucks County Common Pleas Court. The lawsuit, brought by 339 residents who signed a petition, asks a Bucks County judge to remove the managing director and finance officer from office for alleged negligence in the performance of their duties. The complaint identified managing director Suzanne Newsome and finance officer Dana Becker only by their positions. The petition sought to remove Mayor Sam Fenton as well, but he was left out of the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said, based on a 2003 state Supreme Court ruling that prohibits elected officials from being removed in such a manner.