There were four bidders for the 1.2 acre, 3,000-square-foot beachside four-bedroom home, which sold last Friday. But the Wall Street Journal reports thatRoth, who heads the Vornado Realty Trust, won out. Maybe he just gets a kick out of the idea of living amid the ghosts of all Madoff's crazy coke parties—according to the New York Daily News' account of a lawsuit filed this week, Madoff's operation was an "animal house with 'a culture of sexual deviance' that often hosted drug-fueled parties featuring topless waitresses who wore little more than G-strings." Madoff referred to cocaine as "North Pole."

And the beach house does have an early-'80s Bolivian-marching-powder vibe to it. Can't you can almost see a skinny half-dressed blond rooting around on the floor behind that toilet, looking for glassine bags?

Via ABC News, just enjoy these:

"As soon as you walk into it, there is an understated elegance you don't see from the outside." - Roland Ubaldo of the Southern District of New York Marshal Service

"Buyers were extremely enthusiastic about the location of the house and its potential and not at all put off by the fact that it was Bernie Madoff's house." - Pamela Liebman, CEO of Corcoran group real estate.

"People recognized the value of the property, the home, the incomparable views and nice, easy access to the beach." - Joan Hegner, the broker who ran the sale.

So, you know, just like every other real estate sale in which the buyers do not want you to have any idea whatsoever who they are. Probably because of the tawdry Formica they just purchased.

Yesterday, ASSME's Drew Grant contended that the Montauk Monster was a dead raccoon that some weirdo friend of hers had set on fire and launched on an inflatable raft from Shelter Island two weeks before Monty was discovered. She had pictures to prove it. But we were dubious, citing the circuitous route through Shelter Island sound that the raccoon would have to take to reach its destination at Ditch Plains Beach on Montauk. Crucially, we didn't know where, precisely, on Shelter Island the "viking funeral" took place.

Now we do. According to Newsday, which spoke to the still-anonymous varmint-burner, the revelers were on Shell Beach, on Shelter Island's southwest side, when they launched the raccoon on its trip to destiny. As you can see by the accompanying map, for the raccoon to eventually reach Montauk, it would need to either wend its way to the east through a narrow channel and around the southern tip of Shelter Island (the red line), or head northward through an equally narrow and longer channel (the yellow line). Then it would have to jog either to the north of Gardener's Island (the green line) or the south (the red line again), and do a U-turn around the tip of Montauk to arrive at Ditch Plains Beach by July 12, two weeks after the burial took place.

We were skeptical yesterday, when we gave Grant's story the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the raccoon was launched from the eastern side of Shelter Island. Knowing now that the journey started on the far side of the island, and that Ranger Rick would have had to thread the needle to get to Montauk, made us moreso. But we called an expert to find out for sure.

"Is it possible?" said Jay Tanski, a specialist with New York Sea Grant, a NOAA-affiliated research organization that monitors the Long Island coast. "Yes. It could happen. But whether or not it would be normal, or had a high probability—I'd be hesitant to say. It probably would have washed up somewhere else first."

But! The available data on currents in the area actually do support the Flaming Raccoon Hypothesis. This map of surface currents around Long Island shows that—contrary to our earlier scoffing—a drifting object could easily be swept out of Shelter Island Sound, around the tip of the south fork, and southwest to Ditch Plains Beach. But no similar data could be found for surface currents inside the sound and around Shelter Island, so we can't know for sure the likelihood that such an object could be carried around to the north or south of the island from Shell Beach. Tanski told us that wind would be the prevailing factor in such a scenario—if the winds weren't right, we can rest assured that Grant's hypothesis is wrong.

But the winds were right! According to historical weather data from a National Weather Service station in nearby Bridgehampton, on 12 of the 14 or so days last year between the launching of the raccoon and Monty's discovery on July 12, the winds were blowing out of the southwest, west, or northwest—which would have pushed our plucky and singed friend roughly in the necessary direction to get him to Montauk.

What other evidence is there to assess the likelihood of Grant's theory? Well, her friend told Newsday that the raccoon-burning was part of an ancient Indian ritual called Nanapaushat:

There's a yearly custom we do called Nanapaushat that a lot of people in Shelter Island do. It's like an Indian custom around July 4th, where you do a lot of games and celebrate," the 32-year-old man said by phone Thursday. "At some point you gather all the dead on your property and surrounding area and you cremate them, to celebrate the cycle of birth and death."

That sounds highly implausible, and Newsday basically called bullshit on it, quoting a long-time Shelter Island resident saying they'd never heard of it. And it also conflicts rather strikingly with the explanation Grant's friend gave to her yesterday:

Now, my friend isn't the type to take dead animals and set them on fire and float them off in the sea (he's vegan), but, in his words, "this creature was honored with a viking funeral, not merely exploited for crass entertainment." Basically, though, they were just being dumb. "In the interest of full disclosure," he admits, "this did happen shortly after a waterboarding endurance competition, and just before a clothespins-on-your-genitals challenge."

So in the course of the day we've gone from Viking hijinks to an ancient Indian ritual. The only reference to Nanapaushat—or any spelling variant we could think of—that we could find was in "Watcheer, Or Roger Williams in Banishment," an epic poem written in 1843 by Job Durfee, the former chief justice of Rhode Island's supreme court. Durfee's poem refers to Nanapaushat as moon-god worshiped by the Naragansett Indians, whose territory included Rhode Island and parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. But not Shelter Island so far as we can tell.

So what does it all add up to? We don't know. Grant's theory is certainly plausible if not likely, and shouldn't be discounted out of hand. But the narrow channels the raccoon would have to negotiate without washing ashore, not to mention the shifting and preposterous-sounding explanations for the raccoon-burning, give us pause. We'll follow Grant's lead on this one: Yesterday she was sure that she'd found the answer to the enduring mystery of the Montauk Monster, writing "now we know: It wasn't a viral marketing stunt at all, but just some kids setting fire to a dead animal and then pushing it off to sea with a watermelon and some floatie wings." Today, quoted in Newsday, she wasn't so sure:

"I'm dubious but it's almost so outrageous to not to be true," said Grant, 25, of Brooklyn. "If they went out of their way to make this up, they really went out of their way, and they held onto the photos for a very long time."

So we'll stay dubious, too.

It was a raccoon! Or so she says. We're not so sure. Grant didn't really do too much sleuthing to come up with her theory—the man who claims to be responsible for creating the monster literally fell into her lap:

It was with this kind of Scooby-gang luck that I happened to be sitting at a cafe yesterday, talking to an old friend who I hadn't seen in a year or two. After casually mentioning that I was in the business of media gossip, he off-handedly let this little bomb drop, "Oh yeah? I was one of those guys behind that Montauk monster thing last summer."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The friend, who remains unnamed, told Grant that in June of last year, on the weekend before July 4th, he and some friends on Shelter Island happened across a dead raccoon. These are very strange people we are talking about: They had just finished a "waterboarding endurance competition," which we can only assume had something to do with surfing and not Mancow Muller hijinks, and later entertained themselves with a "clothespins-on-your-genitals challenge." So it should come as no surprise that they proceeded to place the raccoon carcass on an inflatable duck along with a watermelon and some scraps of cloth, set the whole contraption aflame, and send it out to sea for a "proper viking burial."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.It sounds fantastical, but the young man provided Grant with photos of his escapade. So what does this have to do with the Montauk Monster, you ask? Well, it came ashore 15 or so miles away at Montauk on July 12, two weeks later, according to Newsday. (Grant says the monster was discovered "three days" after her friend set the raccoon on fire; but the latest that could have happened on the weekend before July 4 last year was Sunday, June 29, which would mean the discovery took place 13 days later on July 12.) And various experts and non-experts have repeatedly speculated that the monster was a raccoon.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Moreover, the photographs provided by Grant's friend show a string wrapped around poor Ranger Rick that appears to be attached to his right wrist. And though the resolution is too low to be conclusive, it does look like there could be a band of some sort of cloth material wrapped around the same paw. Both of these would correspond to the cloth that seems to be wrapped around the monster's right paw.

And the crucible of a "viking funeral" would neatly explain the monster's puzzling hairlessness, as well as the apparent crispiness and discoloration of its skin, which to our eye suggests a roasting of some sort—though that could simply be a function of the creature having baked in the sun on the beach.

And detailed, specific knowledge of a deceased raccoon having been set afloat near the site of the monster's discovery and just days before the event certainly lends credence to the raccoon theory, which was promulgated by celebrity naturalist Jeff Corwin and science blogger Darren Naish.

But there's one reason why Grant's tale is all wet. Her friend says the raccoon was set afloat from Shelter Island. But the Montauk Monster was discovered on Ditch Plains Beach, which is on the ocean side of Montauk. If we assume the scenario most favorable to his version of events—that it was set afloat from the eastern side of the island—for the raccoon to have made it to Ditch Plains Beach it would have had to drift eastward somewhere in the neighborhood of six miles, then either north or south another six or so miles to avoid an island, then another 10 or 12 miles east to the tip of Montauk. Then it would have to hug the coast and whip around the tip of Montauk, doing a U-turn to the south, and then to the southwest for four miles before arriving at the beach. We're not certain of the prevailing currents in the area, so we won't say it's definitive. But it certainly seems like an unlikely journey.

So as far as we're concerned, the mystery remains unsolved. Nice try though!

Plum Island studies the deadliest sorts of animal viruses, and kept spilling its stash of foot-and-mouth disease for decades until it finally contaminated a neighboring farm in 1978 (it only admitted this recently). Whoops. But also the lab maybe invented Lyme disease, possibly with captured Nazi scientists, which is why the virus first showed up in 1975 in Lyme, Connecticut right across the water.

Also, remember how West Nile Virus suddenly entered North America in 1999 via areas immediately surrounding Plum Island? Yeah.

In 1999, the lab really wanted permission to mess around with human-compatible diseases. So it had Judy Miller write one of her "OMG we're all going to die from scary clouds if we don't do this thing" articles in the Times. But no one wanted to perish in an anthrax mist created by incompetent government scientists so instead the lab gave up.

And perhaps decided to specialize in weaponizable mutants!

Think about it: First the Dover Demon was spotted within 150 miles of the lab in the late 1970s. Then, the Department of Homeland Security privatized the island's guards, making monster "escapes" even easier. In 2006, a stronger, faster, more furry hybrid made it all the way to Maine, where it feasted voraciously on pets until hit by a car and photographed by AP. Now the Montauk Monster has washed ashore close to the island, and the lab can't get its story straight, except to say they had nothing to do with it. But really, if you're building a secret evil monster army, and just lost one of your experimental "marines," what else are you going to say?

Hollywood already knows all this, which is why an effects studio has already started mocking up replicas of the Montauk creatures for the inevitable Oliver Stone expose:

(You can buy this on eBay, by the way.)

Read the blog post (below) that will convince you to finally purchase a large shotgun. Or maybe you'd rather die??

[Wonkette]

Highlights from PlumTV's interview are above, the full video is here. Note that the presence of the photos on one of the women's cameras is treated as evidence the picture was not Photoshopped. In fact, with proper formatting it's likely possibly to copy any image to a memory card and load it onto a phone. Just saying!

Here's the NEW PHOTO of the creature shown in the segment:

From the mailbag:

One corespondent believes the creature to be a model created by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini to promote "some company or movie or whatever." A sample of her work:

More evidence for the raccoon theory from an anonymous emailer! Not sure why the text cuts off so abruptly.

Also, it's still not a sea turtle.

And this thing has been haunting people for YEARS, in the demon shadows of wooded night:

My friend Sachit, Alex and myself can swear that we saw this creature one night around 1 o’clock in the morning during the summer. At first we thought it was just two people making out, then possibly a empty trash bin rolling in the wind on it’s side but then we saw a shadow of a creature that immediately jetted away from us up the shoreline. It was fast and couldn’t of been anything simple like a dog or a deer. We told this story to a lot of our friends and family over the past two years and every time they see our serious faces and feel our concerns everybody listened to our story and tells us how the hair on the back of their necks stand up every time. My friend Sachit was the first one to email this picture to me with the subject of the email saying “they found our monster”. I forwarded it to my brother and father and my brother told me to email someone about it. Well, here I am emailing you. Damn, I’m glad I could get that off my chest. Now my story can only be interesting to the people that heard it before this picture came about. Very cool.

More Photoshops! From an email tipster:

From Pope John Peeps II in the comments:

Be careful out there everyone. This monster had to come from somewhere — or SOME THING!

[Plum TV via Guest of a Guest]

UPDATE: From Newsday, a new photo of apparently the same carcass:

The picture-taker, Ryan O'Shea of Brooklyn, told the paper:

"Everybody I showed her pictures to said it looks like a dead dog," O'Shea said.

"But looking at the claws, and at the teeth in the front, it looked like it could be something else, something vicious."

It was relatively small, roughly 2 1/2 to 3 feet long, he said.

"I kept thinking, 'Boy, I hope its mother isn't around."

The mystery only deepens!

The tattoo on the Lady's ankle looked to be around 20 years old, which means, in our estimation, it had graced her body for about half its her life. Near her foot a pink fuzzy (through age not design) Playboy bunny was well on its way to looking like a koosh ball. Above it, a line of Japanese characters spelled something or other. We can almost guarantee Lady had no idea what it said. By this point anyway, the point was moot. Not even Haruki Murakami (or some other hyperliterate nihonjin) would be able to decode the mess of black marks above the bunny.

Lady, meanwhile, spent most of her time screaming at her boyfriend about how he should be careful with her Louis Vuitton bag in the back seat. Funny, because I think I saw her yesterday emerging from that fake bag cave underneath our office with the same tote, so, it's neither real nor of great sentimental value. On these points, however, we thought it best to remain silent. Dude thought it best to totally disregard her Banshee-like tirades and hung his dry-cleaning onto one of the handles. His weekend clothing, by the way, consisted of one blue blazer, one pair of black slacks and a pink-and-blue striped shirt.

Were they heading up for the Clinton breakfast on Sunday or the Giuliani bash at the Southampton Hospital on Saturday? Either way, their presence bodes ill for our country and for our humble Crosby Street.