The last few weeks have featured a series of shocking crimes reported in the national media.

First, authorities in Antioch, Calif., discovered the victim of a 1991 kidnapping living in a shanty town constructed in the backyard of her kidnapers, Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Amazingly, the woman had borne her captor two children.

Police on the scene continue to discover new levels of horror to the situation. A handful of bones, possibly human, have been found on the property underneath the run-down maze of boxes, tarps and shoddily constructed buildings. Cadaver dogs have indicated that there are areas that could possibly hold remains under the ground. Police suspect Garrido for other kidnappings of girls around the same age, but still continue to investigate those possibilities.

As if that weren’t enough for the West Coast, a legally insane killer escaped from custody Thursday in Washington during — get this — a field trip to a county fair.

Phillip Paul was committed to Eastern State Hospital in Washington after admitting he strangled and sit the throat of a woman in 1987. He told police he believed the woman was a witch and killed her in response to voices in his head. He subsequently burned a deer carcass as a sacrifice, CNN reported.

The question of why such a man was allowed anywhere near anyone else, never mind in public, hasn’t been answered. But furthermore, he was at a county fair! He was near countless women, children and animals. Who knows what he could have done to any one of them.

According to CNN, 11 hospital employees were monitoring the 33 inmates on the trip. It’s a wonder only one of them managed to escape.

According to that state’s secretary of the department of social and health services, a review of the incident and the policy that allows patients to take trips has been launched. It seems that review should have happened many, many years ago.

When put up against these outrageous incidents, most of the crime here in Suffolk pales in comparison. The most shocking crime here lately was the getaway of two criminals with a whopping haul of $3 from the A and A Open Market in the 1000 block of East Washington Street on Friday.

That’s right — two men robbed a store at gunpoint to get less money than they could have made by begging on the street.

Police are looking for the men who pulled the heist, so if any of your acquaintances became a hefty $1.50 richer recently, let them know. Anyone with information on that crime asked to the call the Crime Line at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP. Callers to Crime Line never have to give their names or appear in court, and may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000.