"That Famous Middle Name"

Factual Questions
1

Does anyone have a collection of these columns or can tell me how to find one?

2

What is it? I can’t find anything like a column titled “That Famous Middle Name” when I search. Please explain this to us.

3

This short thread on “Wayne” was all I could find but I swear there was more: The middle name "Wayne" and bizarre violent incidents - Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS) - Straight Dope Message Board

4

O.K., I remember reading about the supposedly large number of murderers named Wayne. I don’t think there’s a collection of columns about this. I don’t think there was more than one thread in the SDMB about this. Again, what columns are you talking about, mellsworth_denver@yahoo.com?

5

News of the Weird made murderers whose middle name was Wayne a regular feature in its weekly columns.

Three books were collected from the columns: The News of the Weird (1989), More News of the Weird (1990), and Beyond News of the Weird (1991). A fourth book, The Concrete Enema: And Other News of the Weird Classics was published in 1996 but I don’t know if it has new content or is just a selection from the first three.

The column is still going at the link given above and still mentions Waynes but you’ve have to dig through their archives or do a Google search.

6

Thanks - that must be where I remember it from.

7

Here is a list of 225 murderers whose middle name is Wayne:

A large proportion of them are from the southeastern U.S. That may only mean that Wayne is a common middle name there, while it isn’t very common elsewhere. Some websites claim (without giving any numbers) that more specifically, Wayne is a common middle name among white families in the southeastern U.S. whose income is below average. I have no idea if any of those claims are true. I don’t even know if the list given in the link I just gave is an accurate list of murderers whose middle name is Wayne.

Here’s another SDMB thread about this topic:

8

News of the Weird was in many of the same alternative weeklies as The Straight Dope, so I immediately knew what you were thinking of, and why you conflated it with the Dope.