America's Dumbest Criminals

by Daniel Butler

  58

  Camera Hog

  An officer in Indiana told us of a very photogenic crook who insisted on arranging his own close-ups. This criminal specialized in safecracking. He was highly skilled, extremely thorough, and—at the same time—incredibly dumb.

  Our safecracking star had targeted a small local business that kept more than seven thousand dollars in cash in a safe. There were no alarms, and the safe was an older model, relatively easy to crack. But when the criminal arrived at “work,” he discovered a couple of video surveillance cameras in the building.

  That wouldn’t do. After all, nobody likes to work with someone watching over his shoulder, right? So our resourceful crook set about making his workplace more comfortable. He found a ladder, climbed up with his screwdriver, and proceeded to take the lens off each camera.

  Now, the big problem with most video surveillance is that you really can’t get close enough for a really good picture of the criminal’s face. The quality is not that good, and the perpetrators are usually too far away for the ceiling-mounted cameras to capture a good image. But our star safecracker took care of that problem for the local police. While he diligently worked with his screwdriver right in front of the camera, he also provided the officers with the best close-up they’d ever seen—right down to the smallest wrinkle and mole. Meanwhile, the camera across the room was providing a full-length view of him working on the first camera.

  The video was picture-perfect, and the safecracker was quickly apprehended.

  Smile—you’re a dumb criminal!

  59

  Another Crime of Passion

  It’s an age-old story of love, lust, and automobiles— with a new twist brought on by the current Age of Litigation.

  A young couple became amorous in a car parked along their town’s notorious Lover’s Lane. They were in the throes of passion when another car pulled in slowly in front of them. The driver considerately turned off his lights. But then, trying to back up in the dark, the new arrival bumped into the lovers’ car.

  The couple sued the other motorist’s insurance company for child support. The lovers claimed the fender bender outside the car caused another little accident inside the car. The bump from the untimely collision allegedly caused them both to momentarily “lose control”—and the result was an accidental pregnancy.

  That’s one for the record books—the first and only case (we hope) of a fender bender resulting in a “love child.”

  60

  Once Bitten, Twice Bitten

  Sergeant Doug Baldwin in Pensacola, Florida, was dispatched to assist in a high-speed car chase. He responded immediately and soon was hot on the tail of the speeding vehicle.

  Suddenly, the suspect’s car veered off to the side of the road. The driver’s door sprang open, and the driver bolted from the car. By the time Baldwin could get out of his own car and follow on foot the suspect had disappeared.

  A search of the fugitive’s car uncovered a quantity of drugs. Now he was wanted for possession, speeding, and resisting arrest. But he was nowhere to be found. An extensive canvass of the area proved fruitless. After hours of searching, the officers were ready to call off the search, but Sergeant Baldwin decided to again check the area.

  Looking behind an auto mechanic’s shop, Baldwin heard something. It sounded like a man whispering “ouch” and quietly cursing. Officer Baldwin traced the sound to a car up on blocks. He bent down, looked underneath the car, and saw a bare-chested man twitching wildly on the ground.

  The officer called to the squirming man, who identified himself as the suspect. “You’re under arrest,” Baldwin said.

  “Okay, but hurry up!” the man pleaded. “You’ve got to get me away from all these mosquitoes; they’re about to bite me to death!”

  Sergeant Baldwin dragged the man from under the car and saw that his skin was as bumpy as a rhinoceros’s hide from mosquito bites. He handcuffed the suspect and was leading him out of the fenced compound when, from out of nowhere, two security dogs appeared and jumped the bad guy. They bit him several times before Sergeant Baldwin could run them off.

  Between the mosquitoes and the dogs, the man had about one hundred bite marks on his body. It was a bad case of “overbite”—and a stellar example of taking a bite out of crime!

  61

  All Aboard!

  When Nashville police officers Andy Wright and Jeff Cherry observed a possible drug buy in a known high-drug-sales area, they approached the man who had made the buy. But when they began to question him, the criminal struck Officer Cherry in the face and took off running. The chase was on.

  For nearly half a mile, the officers pursued the suspect on foot. Then he ran down an embankment and over some railroad tracks into a rail yard, crossing just in front of a long freight train, Cherry said.

  Officers Wright and Cherry came to a sudden halt as a train barreled down between the officers and the suspect. Says Cherry, “The train separated us from him, but we knew he couldn’t run up the other side because more police were coming from that direction.”

  The two officers knelt down and watched the unbelievable scene that unfolded.

  “Looking under the train, we could see the suspect standing there. We watched him closely because we might lose him if he simply ran next to the train,” Cherry said.

  Instead, standing perfectly still, this genius reached out and tried to grab the handrail on the train, which was moving at about forty miles per hour. It immediately knocked him to the ground and bounced him about ten feet down the tracks.

  “We couldn’t believe he did that. It’s amazing that his arm wasn’t yanked off,” Cherry says.

  The rocket scientist staggered to his feet and tried to jump on the train again. From a standing start, he just sort of threw his body up against the moving train. It knocked him down once more, only more violently this time. This time he didn’t get up. His second attempt to jump the train had left him unconscious.

  “We waited another couple of minutes for the train to pass while the suspect just lay there. After the last car went by, we scooped him up and took him to the hospital. They kept him overnight for observation, and he was booked on the following day.”

  The bad guy now knows the difference between a rail yard and a prison yard. Let’s hope he also studies basic physics while he’s in the joint.

  “We couldn’t believe he did that. It’s amazing that his arm wasn’t yanked off.”

  62

  Life Is Like a Pair of Brown Shoes

  An immigration officer was sick and tired of dealing with illegal aliens who would pretend not to understand any English for several hours and then suddenly speak it fluently. So on this particular evening when the agent stopped a truck filled with thirty illegals, he decided to try something different.

  “Do any of you speak English? ¿Habla Inglés?”

  Every head shook no, and every face looked very quizzically at the frustrated officer.

  “Okay, well, look, I’m really tired of this. I’m gonna shoot you all, and I’m going to start with the people wearing brown shoes.”

  As the officer drew his pistol, three men looked down quickly at their feet. They quickly and gladly accepted the role of translator for the group.

  63

  The Clothes Make the Man . . . Dumb!

  Dwayne Carver was a maintenance man at the Cedar Wood Apartments in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He had a good job, his own tools, and a blue uniform that read “Cedar Wood” on the back and “Dwayne” on the front.

  Now, if you were going to rob a 7-Eleven store, as Dwayne did, you would probably wear a ski mask, as Dwayne did. But you probably wouldn’t wear your work uniform . . . yes, as Dwayne did.

  When he approached the clerk, his face was completely covered. He even made his voice sound deeper as he ordered, “Give me all the money.” The clerk stared at Dwayne and his name tag and handed over several hundred dollars. Dwayne fled to a carefully concealed rental car that he had rented ju
st for the day so that he couldn’t be traced.

  The police arrived shortly, and the clerk was asked to give a description of the robber. “All I can tell you is that he was wearing a ski mask and a blue maintenance uniform with “Cedar Wood” on the back, and “Dwayne” on the front.”

  The two officers looked at each other. Surely not . . . no, this was too easy. Maybe the thief stole the uniform or purchased it used at Goodwill. . . .

  But it was Dwayne, all right. When the officers appeared at his apartment, he hadn’t even changed clothes. The ski mask? It was in his back pocket. The gun? It was in his other back pocket. The money? It was in his front pocket.

  You know, this guy’s story would have made a great B horror movie back in the fifties. Can’t you just picture the title now, slowly dripping down the screen?

  Now Showing: The Dwayne with No Brain!

  64

  Potted Plants

  Back in the fifties and the sixties, drugs weren’t as prevalent as they are today. And folks in small towns and rural areas were not “hip” to drugs—or so many city dealers and users thought. A dumb criminal with this attitude ran into trouble one day on the main street of a small Indiana town with a not-so-dumb police officer.

  Sitting in his squad car just watching traffic on a warm afternoon, Officer Larry Hawkins (not the same Larry Hawkins mentioned earlier in this book) spotted a Ford station wagon with out-of-state license plates—and a rear compartment full of marijuana plants.

  “I guess he just figured our little town has a bunch of backward cops who don’t know what marijuana looks like,” Hawkins said. “Well, I knew what it looked like. I just took off after him, and he didn’t run.”

  The officer pulled the station wagon over and walked up to the driver’s window. “Partner,” he said, “I hope for your sake that those plants are plastic.”

  The man just looked at the officer with a pleasant look on his face and said, “Yeah, they are.”

  “Well, I’m sure you won’t mind if I just kind of check it out.”

  For a long moment the driver just looked at the woman in the seat next to him. Finally, he shrugged. “Sure.”

  So the officer went back and opened the tailgate and pulled out seven live marijuana plants—each one in its own pot. They were full-grown plants—the top of each one bent down by the roof of the car. And they were definitely not plastic.

  The smart guy was arrested. The sheriff’s office used the plants to show schoolchildren what marijuana looks like. And Hawkins had the last laugh on this city slicker.

  “They used to make rope out of hemp, which is marijuana,” Hawkins says. “This guy had just enough to hang himself.”

  65

  Once a Soldier . . .

  Occasionally, we receive a story here at America’s Dumbest Criminals headquarters that doesn’t involve a dumb criminal, but does involve the police and their ability to defuse potentially volatile situations. There’s no criminal in this case, just an unfortunate fellow whose straw, so to speak, didn’t go all the way to the bottom of his glass—and an experienced cop who handled a delicate situation with creative efficiency.

  “Sometimes an officer has to fly by the seat of his pants,” says C. R. Meathrell, chief of the Salem City Police Department in Salem, West Virginia. “And being able to ad lib at the drop of a hat can be a real plus.”

  Several years ago, when Meathrell was a sergeant working the night shift, he was called to a rest home to take care of a disturbance. An elderly patient had refused to take his medication and had mentally reverted to his days as a private in the army. The old soldier had raised enough pure hell that everyone on his floor was awake. For well over an hour he had paced the hallway, ranting and raving about the expected German attack. The home had called the police to help them with a transfer to a nearby hospital.

  “I had a rookie with me who was still trying to find his way around our little town,” Meathrell remembers, “and all the way there he was plotting how we would take this guy. I had to remind him that it was just an old man with a bolt or two loose, not a Charles Manson.”

  When the officers arrived, staff members were waiting to escort them to the old fellow’s room. When the rookie and the uniformed sergeant entered the room, the old man stared at the sergeant’s rank stripes and then snapped to attention.

  “Sergeant,” he blared, “I’ve been a good soldier. Let me show you my medals.” With that, he popped open a cigar box with several figurines in it.

  Here’s my chance, Meathrell thought.

  “Private,” he barked, “we are here to get you out of enemy territory. But we must hurry; the enemy isn’t far behind.”

  The elderly “private” snapped to attention again, gathered his duffel bag, and marched out the door.

  All the way down the hallway, the sergeant called cadence, and the little group marched out the front door as if they were going to war. Five or six elderly ladies cheered. One elderly gentleman simply muttered, “Nut.”

  The elderly “private” snapped to attention again, gathered his duffel bag, and marched out the door.

  Things went well until the officers and their charge emerged from the door of the rest home. There the good “private” stopped dead in his tracks. He had spotted the fire department ambulance that stood waiting to transfer him. An attendant opened the side door and offered him a hand, but he wasn’t having any part of it.

  “It’s okay, private,” the sergeant assured him. “That’s a tank I ordered to get you safely across enemy lines. I’ll stay behind and guard our flank.”

  Like a shot, the good old soldier was up and in the ambulance. Meathrell closed the door and waved good-bye.

  As the ambulance drove away, the rookie turned to the sergeant with a slack jaw. “A tank?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Don’t gripe,” the sergeant said. “He’s on his way, isn’t he?”

  66

  A Shining Example

  To some people, image is everything. There are those who would not dream of leaving the house (even someone else’s house) without making sure their appearance was in order. And different people have different priorities when it comes to appearance. Some people can’t relax unless their hair is neatly combed. Others want to be sure their clothes are in style. For Cecil Warren, shiny shoes were everything.

  Cecil was well known on the streets of Roanoke, Virginia, as a small-time thief and occasional burglar. He was just as well known for constantly shining his shoes. It wasn’t uncommon for him to put on the spit and polish several times a day. In the end, his particular form of vanity proved to be his downfall.

  Cecil had decided to burglarize a house, and he had no trouble getting in. He simply climbed up and over the back porch. Unfortunately, this feat also required him to scramble onto the roof. And roof climbing, as one prosecutor later put it, creates “a great probability of shoe damage.” Our vain criminal couldn’t get on with the job until he made some repairs.

  Cecil escaped from the home with some five thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry, but he left behind his can of shoe polish and, more importantly, his monogrammed shoeshine rag.

  “The can of polish and that rag with the initials C. W. on it were as good as a set of fingerprints,” one detective noted.

  The vain Mr. Warren was found guilty of breaking and entering and grand larceny. He is now cooling his heels— and probably shining his shoes—in jail.

  67

  Always Wear Your Seat Belt

  Like any safety-conscious motorist, West Texan Dwight Ketchum put on his seat belt before driving off. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that the car he was driving away wasn’t his. When the police spotted him, Dwight took flight. The police gave chase.

  After a few minutes of weaving through traffic at high speeds and still not being able to shake the police, Ketchum decided to bail out from the stolen vehicle. Pulling over, he flung open the car door and attempted to get out and run. But try as he might, he cou
ldn’t free himself from the seat belt.

  The police were closing in on him fast. Too fast. Our car thief was apprehended while he was still struggling to get out of the stubborn seat belt.

  68

  Auto Suggestion

  When police officers in a Louisiana city arrived at a vehicle accident call involving property damage, the driver was still on the scene, but not exactly “with it.”

  In a state of heavy inebriation, Montel Stenson told police that he had simply lost control of his European luxury car. During this momentary lapse, it seemed, he had wiped out an entire fence and slammed into a pole.

  Officers on the scene were proceeding through their usual drunk-driver routines when Stenson suddenly went berserk. Running back to his automobile, he started it and began ramming one of the squad cars. Backing up and then hurtling forward, he continued to bash the police vehicle. He succeeded in pushing it up against a nearby garage before police were able to extract him.

  What was the reason for this bizarre attack? Stenson told police that his European-made automobile had told him to kill the American-made car.

  “I was just following orders,” was Montel’s truly dumb defense.

  69

  You’ve Come a Short Way, Baby

  With all the justified focus on violence against women today, inevitably, there had to be a twist, and America’s Dumbest Criminals found one in Milwaukee. Hardworking thirty-four-year-old Bjorn Svenson had a tough day on the job. His back hurt, his head hurt, and his exhausted legs felt like wet spaghetti. So he expected sympathy when he told his wife that he was just too tired to attend a rally with her later that evening. Being the long-suffering male martyr that he was, he insisted she go on by herself. “Just don’t worry about me.”