The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

  ILL-PLANNED INSURANCE SCAM

  A British woman was intent on claiming insurance money for the theft of her expensive ski pants in Erpendorf, Austria, in 2003. So she marched down to the police station to report them stolen, forgetting that she was still wearing them.

  STORE THIEVES FORGET THE BUTTER

  Two Brazilian store thieves, who stole bread, milk, soft drinks, biscuits, chocolates and some $10 in cash from a shop in 2002, returned five minutes later because they had forgotten to steal some butter. Unfortunately for the pair, the police were there at the time investigating the first robbery.

  BRAWLING GRANDMOTHERS DRAGGED APART IN STORE

  Two grandmothers on mobility scooters had to be separated by staff after getting into a fight at a supermarket in Crawley, West Sussex. The warring women, who were friends, apparently fell out over money and started trading blows and, according to a shelf-stacker who witnessed the fracas, “ramming each other like dodgems”.

  WARDEN LOSES PRISON KEYS

  A warden at Westville Correctional Facility, the largest prison in Indiana, misplaced two master keys to the prison in 2002, requiring the 2,559 inmates to suffer restricted movement within its walls for eight days and the state to spend $53,000 replacing all the locks. The warden’s wife later found the keys at home while she was cleaning.

  BANK STAFF IGNORE ROBBER AT WRONG WINDOW

  Wearing a balaclava and brandishing a pistol, a man burst into a bank in Feldmoching, Germany, and demanded cash – but the staff refused to answer his demands because he was standing at the wrong window. He fled empty-handed complaining about the appalling service in the bank.

  SNAP-HAPPY BURGLARS LEAVE VITAL EVIDENCE

  Two burglars who broke into a home in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in 2004 helped police catch them by taking photos of each other with a camera which they then left behind in their stolen getaway vehicle.

  MEN GO BANANAS IN COSTA RICA

  Two men caught with $372,000 in cash in a briefcase near the Costa Rica–Panama border in 2008 told police that the money was simply to enable them to buy some bananas. Bananas cost $1.65 a pound in Costa Rica.

  JUDGE BITES DEFENDANT ON NOSE

  After defendant Bill Witten had sworn at him for refusing to reduce his bail on a charge of grand larceny, Judge Joseph Troisi, of St Mary’s, West Virginia, took off his robes, stepped down from the bench and bit him on the nose. Judge Troisi resigned from the bench shortly after the 1997 incident. He was said to have had a history of courtroom outbursts.

  THIEVES TRY TO SQUEEZE COW INTO CAR

  Thieves in Malaysia tried to steal a cow by stuffing it into the back seat of a saloon car. Villagers spotted the would-be rustlers and gave chase, whereupon the driver lost control, crashed into a tree and ran off.

  BODY LOTION THIEF FAILS TO MAKE CLEAN GETAWAY

  A shoplifter who hoped to make a clean getaway with 75 bottles of body lotion stuffed down his pants was easily caught by store detectives because his five-gallon haul made it virtually impossible for him to run. After a store clerk had spotted him feeding bottles of lotion through the zip in his pants, the suspect was apprehended following a brief chase at a shopping mall in Springfield, Massachusetts. Officers were then unable to fit him into their patrol car because his pants were bursting at the seams and he could not bend over. Sgt John Delaney said the man’s legs were “extremely chafed” when he was taken into custody and added: “He needed the use of some of the stolen items.”

  SATANIC INTRUDER FORGETS WORDS OF CHANT

  In 1993, an 18-year-old man held a woman captive in her home in Hawaii and began uttering a satanic chant. Halfway through the chant, however, he forgot the words and told the woman that he was going to the public library to look them up. While he was away she managed to break free and call the police who arrested him in the “Occult” section.

  SECURITY CAMERA SHOPS INEPT THIEF

  A woman from Conklin, New York, let herself into the store where she worked while it was closed and then went up to the security camera, turned it off and stole $4,700. It would have been the perfect robbery had police not found the tape in the security system showing the woman letting herself into the store where she worked while it was closed and then going up to the security camera and turning it off.

  ARMED POLICE RAID COWBOY PARTY

  Armed police officers swooped on a Wild West fancy dress party in Castle Donington, Leicestershire, in 2009 after receiving a report of people walking around with guns. Roy and Val Worthington held the party at a local pub to celebrate renewing their wedding vows and had previously informed the police that they and around 80 of their friends would be sporting Stetson hats and toy guns for the occasion.

  FORGETFUL TV BURGLARS GO BACK FOR THE REMOTES

  Two men were arrested for burglary in 2001 after unwisely returning to the house in Tallahassee, Florida, from where they had stolen two TV sets a short while earlier. By the time they returned to the scene of the crime, police officers were already there. The reason the burglars went back was because they had forgotten to steal the remotes for the TVs.

  POLICE SEARCH FOR MISSING CONES

  Police in Scarborough, Yorkshire, announced that they were declaring an amnesty in 2004 in the hope of recovering their traffic cones. They had just three left from an original allocation of 300 in 1999. Chief Inspector Ken Gill said: “It seems people love to hoard them.”

  PRISONER RELEASED EARLY BECAUSE TOO FAT FOR CELL

  Prison authorities in Canada were forced to release a 450-pound drug gang member less than halfway through a five-year sentence because he was too fat for his cell. Michel Lapointe – known as Big Mike – could not fit on his chair in his Montreal cell and his body hung over six inches on either side of his prison bed.

  STAFF ATTACH ELECTRONIC TAG TO PRISONER’S FALSE LEG

  A British prisoner was able to dodge a curfew after staff attached an electronic tag, which was supposed to monitor his movements, to his artificial leg. Tony Higgins, who was on home release from a jail in Redditch, Worcestershire, got round the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew simply by taking off his false leg. As a result he was able to go to the pub unmonitored for two weeks. When prison staff were alerted to their blunder, they transferred the device to his other leg.

  TENNESSEE COURT GETS “JURY POOL FROM HELL”

  A group of prospective jurors summoned to listen to a case of Tennessee trailer park violence in 2005 was described by defence attorney Leslie Ballin as the “jury pool from hell”. Immediately after jury selection began, one man stood up to announce: “I’m on morphine and I’m higher than a kite.” When the prosecutor then asked if anyone had ever been convicted of a crime, another would-be juror revealed that he had once been arrested and taken to a mental hospital after almost killing his nephew. He said he had been provoked because his nephew refused to come out from under the bed. Then another potential juror disclosed that he had alcohol problems and had been arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer. “I should have known something was up,” he added. “She had all her teeth.” A fourth man said it probably wasn’t a good idea if he served on the jury either because “in my neighbourhood, everyone knows that if you get Mr Ballin (as your lawyer) you’re probably guilty”. He was not chosen. For the record, Mr Ballin’s client was found not guilty of hitting her brother’s girlfriend in the face with a brick.

  DRIVER CHARGED WITH FARTING ON POLICE OFFICER

  Arrested for drink driving at South Charleston, West Virginia, in 2008, Jose Cruz was escorted to the police station to have his fingerprints taken. There, police claimed that Cruz passed gas and fanned it toward an officer, an action that led to an additional charge of battery, although this was subsequently dropped. Those present remarked that the odour was very strong while Cruz claimed that his request to use a washroom had been denied.

  SMALL-TIME CROOKS HIT SWEDEN

  Thieves have been robbing long-distance coaches in Sweden by sneaking dwarves into the
luggage holds inside sports bags. Once the holds are closed, the little people climb out of their hiding places and rifle through the belongings of unsuspecting travellers. They then take their loot back to their sports bag, climb back inside and wait to be collected by another gang member when the coach reaches its destination. A Stockholm Police spokesman confirmed: “We are looking at our records to identify criminals of limited stature.”

  THIEVES SNATCH BULL SEMEN

  A farmer in Smithburg, Maryland, returned to his property in 2005 to discover that a 70-pound tank filled with bull semen had been opened and the carefully collected sperm of nearly 50 bulls – valued at $75,000 – was missing. A police spokesman said the raid took a lot of spunk.

  GERIATRIC BURGLARS CAUGHT IN THE ACT

  Two 78-year-old burglars were caught red-handed in Sao Paulo, Brazil, when the homeowners returned unexpectedly. The one inside the house was too deaf to hear the warning of his accomplice outside, and the lookout was not fit enough to escape.

  FLORIDA COP FIRED OVER FREE COFFEE DEMANDS

  A Florida police officer was fired in 2008 over accusations that he threatened to take his time in responding to emergency call-outs unless he received free coffee. An internal investigation heard that Lt Major Garvin, a 15-year veteran of the Daytona Beach Police, called in at his local Starbucks up to six times a night and would always barge to the front of the queue to demand his complimentary coffee laced with white chocolate mocha syrup. However when denied free coffee by the store’s new management, he allegedly told them: “I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve been getting whatever I want. I’m the difference between you getting a two-minute response time – if you needed a little help – or a 15-minute response time.” Garvin emphatically denied the accusations but failed a lie-detector test.

  NERVOUS THIEF TRAPPED BY HIS OWN VOMIT

  A young Australian robber who was so nervous during a hold-up that he was physically sick was incriminated by his own vomit. The 20-year-old lost his nerve when his accomplice unexpectedly produced a gun during the raid on an Adelaide post office. He was traced by DNA from the pool of sick.

  STOREKEEPER FIGHTS OFF ROBBER WITH SALAMI

  When a man tried to rob a Miami delicatessen in 1995, the store owner broke the thief’s nose with a blow from a giant salami. Fleeing from the store and clutching his nose in agony, the robber hid in the trunk of a car, which, unfortunately for him, belonged to a police undercover surveillance team. It was five days before the police heard his despairing whimpers.

  FEMALE ROBBER RECOGNIZED BY HER BIG BUTT

  A female bank robber was caught as she tried to raid the same German bank twice – when a witness identified her by her large butt. Following a $24,000 armed robbery in Norf, witnesses described the raider as a woman with a “very large” backside and “powerful thighs”. Three weeks later, one witness found himself standing behind what he believed to be the same bottom as they queued at the same bank. He called the police who arrested her and found a ski mask and handgun in her jacket. One bank worker recounted: “He said he recognized her bottom straight away – he’d never forget something that big.”

  PRISONER DEMANDS REDUCED SENTENCE OVER BLAND FOOD

  A Chinese criminal demanded that his sentence should be reduced because he was unhappy with the prison food. Law Kwok-hing, who was serving 20 months in a Hong Kong jail for theft, said he was struggling to adjust to life in prison because he couldn’t get spicy food behind bars. He complained: “I am a native of Hunan and I like spicy food, but there is no spicy food here.” Unsurprisingly the court threw out his appeal.

  FRAUDSTER FORGETS TO REMOVE CLOTHING LABELS

  Arrested for selling counterfeit designer clothing in Iowa in 2003, a Winona, Minnesota, man claimed the garments were originals manufactured by Tommy Hilfiger, Nike and Ralph Lauren. Unfortunately he had forgotten to remove the “Fruit of the Loom” tags from the clothes before selling them.

  FLEEING SUSPECT TRIPS OVER HIS OWN PANTS

  Spotted by police taking a pee in public in 2002, a Tallahassee, Florida, man hastily pulled up his pants, pushed the cigarette he was smoking into his pocket and ran off. His escape bid was slowed when his pants ignited, leaving behind a trail of smoke and ashes, and it finally came to an end when his pants fell down around his ankles and tripped him up.

  BUNGLING COPS ARREST EACH OTHER

  After two robbers raided a liquor store in Berlin in 2009, German police officers succeeded only in arresting each other while allowing the thieves to get away. The robbers threatened a female employee with a machete but when she opened the till and handed over the cash, the shop’s silent alarm was activated. Plain-clothes policemen arrived at the shop within minutes but ended up being arrested when uniformed officers stormed in seconds later. The shop manager said: “We all thought the uniformed police had caught the crooks, and when the plain-clothes cops tried to tell them who they were, they were told to keep quiet. It was only when one of the uniformed officers recognized one of the plain-clothes cops that they realized what had happened. They knew they had made fools of themselves and that the real thieves were long gone.”

  INEPT CROOKS STEAL WRONG KIND OF DOUGH

  An Australian “Bonnie and Clyde” were jailed in 2007 for a failed heist which left one of them with a bag of bread rolls and the other with a bullet in the left leg. Benjamin Jorgensen and Donna Hayes targeted the manager of a Melbourne restaurant but when Jorgensen grabbed what he thought was a bag of money, he found that it contained just bread. To make matters worse, his shotgun went off accidentally, putting his accomplice in hospital for a month. The judge described the two, who had expected to steal takings of $26,000, as a “pair of fools”.

  COP PULLS OVER WOMAN DRIVER TO ASK FOR DATE

  A part-time Pennsylvania police officer was jailed for 30 days in 2007 for pulling over a woman driver while he was off duty – just so that he could give her his phone number. Steven Klinger used red and blue lights mounted on the dashboard of his pickup truck to pull over a woman in Berwick. She became suspicious when he began asking her if she was married or had a boyfriend.

  CAR THIEF DETAILED CRIMES TO PROVE INNOCENCE

  A Romanian car thief kept a detailed notebook of all his thefts, including licence plate numbers and date and time stolen, so that he could prove he was innocent of any theft of which he was wrongly accused. He presented the notebook as evidence at court in 2002 to prove to the judge that he was guilty of only four of the five car thefts with which he was charged.

  WOMAN THOUGHT POLICE PURSUERS WERE AN ESCORT

  A Glenburn, Maine, woman led police on a high speed chase in 2002, reaching speeds of 80 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour zone. When she was finally pulled over, she said she hadn’t stopped because she thought her police pursuers were merely providing an escort for her as she took her niece to hospital.

  ONE-LEGGED MUGGER SENT TO JAIL

  A one-legged man in a wheelchair who tried to rob two men in the street was jailed for five years in 2007. Heroin addict Mark Milverton, 27, wheeled up to his victims in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and threatened to stab them if they did not hand over 20 pence (50 cents). The intended victims simply ran off.

  JUDGE’S MESSAGE SPARKS MEDICAL ALERT

  The clerk of the court sprang into action after reading a scrawled message from Denver County, Colorado, Judge Claudia Jordan: “Blind on the right side. May be falling. Please call someone.” The clerk immediately phoned 911 and informed the judge that paramedics were on the way, whereupon Jordan let out an anguished cry and pointed to the sagging venetian blinds on the right side of the courtroom. When stretcher-toting paramedics entered the courtroom a few minutes later, the judge interrupted the drink-driving case she was presiding over to assure people that she was fine and that all she had wanted was a maintenance man.

  GIRLFRIEND BLOWS ROBBER’S STORY

  A man made the fatal mistake of failing to brief his girlfriend properly after robbing a store in K
ansas in 1992. The robber had worn a cap and when police officers asked their prime suspect whether he owned such a cap, he answered no, at which point his girlfriend interrupted helpfully: “Yes you do. It’s in the closet.”

  MAN RETURNS FROM HOLIDAY TO FIND HOUSE STOLEN

  A Russian man returned from holiday in 2008 to find his entire two-storey house had been stolen by a neighbour. Yuri Konstantinov, from Astrakhan, came back from visiting relatives to discover that his house had been dismantled brick by brick, leaving only the foundations. The neighbour had taken the house apart and sold everything, including the bricks and window frames and all the contents, right down to the kitchen sink.

  SURPRISE FOR SIEGE POLICE

  Police in Oakland, California, spent two hours trying to flush out a gunman who had apparently barricaded himself inside his own home. After firing ten tear gas canisters into the property, officers realized the man was standing in line next to them, shouting: “Please come out and give yourself up.”

  THIEF STEALS DIFFERENT-SIZED SHOES FROM STORE

  A bungling German thief stole a pair of shoes in two different sizes and was caught when he went back to the store two days later to fix his mistake . . . wearing a jacket that he had also stolen in the same raid. The store owner in Bielefeld spotted the man trying to switch shoes and recognized him as the shoplifter because the white shoes and sports jacket he was wearing were only available in that shop. A police spokesman said: “You have to wonder why he went back into the shop in the stolen get-up.”