And the award for The Most Bizarre Collection of Sentences I’ve Ever Read In the Introductory Paragraphs of a News Story goes to … this!

James M. Mason knew his wife since she was born a boy. The janitor and former military man was a boarder in the child’s home and was treated like family.

Many were surprised when he married Chris nearly three years ago, not just because he knew she underwent sex-change surgery 13 years before, temporarily calling herself Christine Newton-John after the pop singer with the same last name. He was in his 70s, she in her 30s. He was mild-mannered; she had a domineering personality.

Then, last summer, there was another surprise: Chris Mason was accused of exercising her frail husband to death so she could inherit his retirement benefits, in an attack caught on surveillance video.