Headline - Exploding Boats
Dinner Cruise Boat and Prisoner Transport Passengers Detonate Bombs on Each Others’ Boats
New York, NY -The “Skyline” dinner cruise boat and a penal transport ship (”The Tiffany”) transferring over 50 prisoners to the Downstate Correctional Facility exploded simultaneously in the Hudson River near the Holland Tunnel yesterday evening. All 263 passengers on the two boats died.
Joseph Gonzalez, Chief of Police, revealed a chilling twist in the tragedy. During the evening before each of the two boats left dock, their hulls had apparently been secretly laden with tons of homemade oil drum explosives, essentially rendering each vessel a huge bomb. And, as the villain who hatched this plan announced shortly before the explosions, the passengers of each boat had been given the detonators for the other boat.
“We think this may have been a sort of disturbed test of the limits of human morality in the face of self-preservation,” said Gonzalez at a press briefing this morning. “This would seem to be in line with the way the suspect does his thing.”
According to police, the suspect is the Jester, a sort of super criminal, who has never been caught despite garish face paint, clownish wardrobe, and his having literally publicly threatened the entire city on television.
After the boats had departed from shore, leaving behind the safety of land, it seems the Jester announced over radio to the passengers on the two vessels that each was provided the detonator for the other. If the passengers on one of the boats wouldn’t trigger the bomb on the other, the Jester allegedly stated, he would destroy both boats 25 minutes later.
Both ships exploded within 11 seconds after the announcement, as the passengers apparently raced as fast as they could to activate their detonators, essentially doing so at the same time.
“The Jester is still on the loose and is considered dangerous and only mildly amusing, despite his name,” said the Police Chief during the briefing. “Very mildly.”
Directly after the explosions, police did apprehend one man dressed in black rubber near the scene, but released him after determining that he was a harmless eccentric.
“He said he was trying to catch the Jester. We asked him if he had any idea where the Jester was, and he replied no but that he thought he would just walk around and hope to run into him,” said Gonzalez.
The Jester at the Police Chief’s press briefing this morning. Police have still been unable to apprehend him.