5 Inadvisable Places People Were Caught Having Sex

5 Atop a Ferris Wheel

In 2016, Philip Panzica and Chloe Scordianos entered the High Roller Ferris wheel on the Las Vegas strip. This Ferris wheel is huge — tallest in the world until 2021 — and its enclosed compartments perhaps provide the illusion of privacy. But when the two of them starting taking off each other’s clothes, some people in nearby compartments took out their phones and recorded them on their phones. A security guard yelled at them to stop (stop having sex, not stop recording), and when they didn’t, police intervened. 

The couple was charged with “committing intercourse acts in public.” Keep in mind, a ride on this wheel takes 30 minutes, so one might argue that couples are obligated to attempt intercourse at some point.

It appears the two were set to plead it out and likely wouldn’t have been punished too harshly. Then, a month later, Panzica was shot dead.

During that month, Panzica had scored a paid TV interview about the tryst, and he’d been bragging about the $4,000 that had netted him. Then he got into a car one day with his stripper girlfriend (a different woman from the one from the Ferris wheel) and two friends of hers. The friends shot him in the back and robbed him. 

Some theorized that the girlfriend was in on the plot and was taking revenge on him for cheating, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. She narrowly escaped being shot herself. The killers went on to get caught, because as they drove away, the ended up crashing into a barbecue restaurant, hurting an elderly couple. 

Every couple in this story ended up getting hurt, sadly. 

4 Bed, Bath & Beyond

You might have seen a comic going around, featuring a couple showering in a bathroom then having sex in a bed. Only in the final panel do we see that this whole thing is happening in an Ikea.

Like all comics, this depicts something from real life. The true-life version happened in a New Jersey Bed Bath & Beyond in 2017, and the couple were two men, both 28 years old. In their defense, the guys were high at the time. Wait, scratch that — according to lawyers, marijuana possession didn’t count as a defense but was, in fact, an additional crime. 

Employees called police, who hauled the men out, but they later discovered a new wrinkle: The guys were hosts for that contagious mite known as scabies. That meant the entire police station needed to be fumigated. It also meant police were forbidden from disclosing the men’s names, under HIPAA. 

Bed Bath & Beyond said that they removed the bed in question from the store. They didn’t, however, say that they destroyed it, so if you bought a bed from New Jersey around then marked “used just once,” that explains all the itchy holes currently in your scalp. 

3 Inside a Whale

The blue whale is the biggest animal to ever exist on Earth. You’ll likely never see one in person (particularly if you live in Arizona), but you do stand a single shot at seeing one’s preserved body. You just need to visit the Natural History Museum in Göteborg, Sweden. 

The “Malm Whale” beached itself in Sweden back in 1865, and a taxidermist preserved it for future generations. This doesn’t mean he pickled the corpse, flesh and all, but rather that he removed the skin and treated it, removed the skeleton and treated that, then wrapped the skin around a wooden frame. 

During the whale’s first years of exhibition, they set it up so its giant mouth hinged open and closed. Visitors could climb inside, which didn’t quite provide a realistic tour of a whale’s internal anatomy but took them to a decorated room within, which was still fun. Then, in the 1930s, a couple went and had sex inside the whale. 

From then on, the museum decided to keep the mouth shut. Except for on Election Day, which is a time of orgies for all. 

2 Next to a Church

If you’re planning on setting up an illegal brothel, experts recommend discretion. For example, you might do what some entrepreneurs in San Diego did and title your business “Ocean Spa,” claiming just to offer massages. Some people will know exactly what a massage parlor really does, but police may still ignore you.

However, Ocean Spa had the misfortune of setting up shop right next to where a church had offices. Church members informed police when the sounds of loud sex interrupted their Bible study sessions. Apparently, though, that alone didn’t make them call the police. Spa employees also tried propositioning students of these classes, who weren’t ideal sales targets. 

The city shut down the spa last month. Authorities didn’t quite hurry the case along. They spent multiple years on it, and this year, officers spent 125 hours visiting the place, in what we trust was a very hands-on investigation.

1 In the Church Itself

Let’s not pretend that sex is just something the outside world inflicts on churches. In October 2020, someone passed by Peter and Paul Church in Pearl River, Louisiana, and spotted people having sex inside — on the altar.

One of the people having sex was the priest, Father Travis Clark. The second person was a professional dominatrix. The third person — yes, this was a threesome — was also a dominatrix as well as an established porn actress. Clark had set up lights and a camera and was filming the whole thing. The witness who peeped in through the window filmed it as well, for evidence, which suggests they were the real criminal in all this, but because the trio were having sex in front of a window in view of the street, the city claimed they were guilty of obscenity under the law.

Police started by just arresting Clark, but when they discovered that the whole thing was consensual, they arrested the two women as well. Ultimately, the dominatrices pleaded guilty to misdemeanor institutional vandalism, while obscenity landed Clark with a fine and probation.

The longer punishment for him was being permanently defrocked, which is a word that doesn’t here refer to the stripping one does immediately before shooting an adult video but to being expelled as a priest. More had to be done, however, to rid the church of the stain. The archbishop ordered that the defiled altar be destroyed and burned, and that a new one be consecrated in its place. 

It’s true, Clark and friends committed an offense against God. But Satan high-fived everyone involved, and that guy knows how to have a good time. 

Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for more stuff no one should see.