STORE ROBBER WEARS HAT WITH HIS NAME ON IT
James Newsome might have got away with robbing a Fort Smith, Arkansas, convenience store – if only he hadn’t worn an orange hard hat with his name on it. The store clerk remembered Newsome’s name on the hard hat and spelled it for police. The hat was later recovered from a trash bin at the company where Newsome used to work. Before Newsome was sentenced to ten years for aggravated robbery, the prosecutor pondered: “Could he have been smarter about the way he tried to cover things up? Yes he could have.”
MAN IN RABBIT COSTUME ARRESTED FOR ARMED ROBBERY
A man dressed in a giant blue rabbit costume – and his shotgun-wielding accomplice – were arrested following a failed armed robbery in Farsta, Sweden. The pair tried to force their way through the security doors of a currency exchange office, but quick-thinking staff managed to shut the second of the two doors in their face, forcing the gunman to flee and the bunny to hop it. Two suspects were arrested shortly afterwards.
BURGLAR LEFT HANGING UPSIDE DOWN IN WINDOW
Burglar John Pearce thought nothing of turning his victims’ homes upside down, but the shoe was on the other foot in 2008 when the house he had broken into turned him upside down. Attempting a daylight raid on a house in Dartford, Kent, he smashed the upper pane of the front window with a hammer, only to get the lace of one of his training shoes caught in the window frame as he tried to climb through. Unable to extricate himself, he was left hanging upside down in the window for more than an hour as a crowd of 30 neighbours and passers-by assembled to heap ridicule on him. When the house owner, Paul Ives, eventually arrived home from work, Pearce tried to claim that he had spotted someone else raiding the house and had selflessly attempted to catch the burglar, getting stuck in the process. However his chances of being believed were not helped by the fact that he still had the hammer in his hand. After calling the police and paramedics to put Pearce out of his misery, Mr Ives said: “He was screaming at us to get him down and we were all saying, ‘I don’t think so.’”
SUSPECTS IN HOT WATER OVER ATM THEFT
Columbus, Ohio, police arrested two men at five o’clock one morning in 1996 and charged them with tearing an ATM out of a bank’s wall and attempting to carry it away in the trunk of their car. When questioned about the incident, the suspects tried to convince officers that the ATM was a washing machine.
FAKE ID WRECKS WOMAN’S SCAM
A Dorchester, Massachusetts, woman tried to obtain credit in 2002 by using a stolen driving licence and a stolen credit card for ID. However her plan failed primarily because, while she was black, the picture on the driving licence she produced was that of a white woman.
ROBBER IN DRAG IS $5 WORSE OFF AFTER BUNGLED RAID
An armed robber in drag made such a mess of a restaurant hold-up that he finished up $5 out of pocket. Dressed as a woman in a blonde wig, pink top and sunglasses, the raider walked into a café in New Orleans. He ordered two doughnuts but after handing over a $5 bill to pay for them, he suddenly produced a handgun from his bag and pointed it at the girl sales clerk. When she instinctively screamed, he ran off – without taking any money or his doughnuts. A worker behind the counter said she could tell straight away it was a man rather than a woman, adding: “It was kind of weird.”
THIEVES STEAL HAUL OF FAULTY GOODS
A gang of determined thieves smashed their way into a warehouse near Swansea, Wales, in 2002 and made off with a haul of TV sets, video recorders and DVD players – unaware that the goods were all faulty as the warehouse was used specifically to store items that were being returned to the manufacturers.
FUGITIVE THREATENS TO SUE OVER POLICE INCOMPETENCE
On the run from police in the winter of 2002, Harvey Taylor hid in woods near Mattawamkeag, Maine, for three nights, during which time he contracted severe frostbite and lost several toes. When he was finally captured, he announced his intention to sue Maine police for not arresting him quickly enough.
THIEVES STEAL ROLLERCOASTER
Thieves in Bischofsheim, Germany, stole an entire rollercoaster in 2006. The 20-ton big dipper was on its way to a local funfair when it was stolen from a truck. “We have no idea what the thieves could possibly want with it,” said the police.
MAN LASHES OUT WITH ANGER MANAGEMENT FOLDER
After harassing and punching an innocent 59-year-old woman at a bus stop in Minnesota, Justin John Boudin then attacked an elderly man who tried to intervene, hitting him with a blue folder. As he ran off Boudin dropped the folder, which was found to contain his anger management homework. The 27-year-old had been on his way to his anger control class when he lost his temper.
THIEVES STEAL BIKER’S FALSE HAND
A motorcyclist who lost his right-arm following a head-on crash with a bus in Bristol, England, in 2007, had his prosthetic hand stolen while he was visiting his girlfriend. Jack Baker parked his Suzuki outside his girlfriend’s home and left the $800 hand gripped on the handlebars, but to his amazement when he returned to the machine the hand had vanished. “It was the first time I had left my hand on the bike,” said the 19-year-old ruefully. “I thought I was only going to be ten minutes, but I ended up staying for two hours. It’s frustrating because my hand’s no good to anyone else.”
SUSPECT HAD BAG OF POT STUCK TO FOREHEAD
Police in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, nabbed a real pothead in 2009 when an officer spotted a man inside a convenience store with a small plastic bag of marijuana stuck to his forehead. They said the man had earlier been seen peering inside his baseball cap, but when he looked up again the bag was stuck to his head. The officer peeled the bag off and placed him under arrest. Police confirmed that the sweatband of a baseball cap is a popular hiding place for drugs.
ROBBER ASKS FOR GUN BACK
A Chilean man bungled a 2002 store robbery when the shop owner grabbed his gun. The raider ran off, went home, showered, changed into smart clothes and returned to the store later that day to ask politely if he could have his gun back.
COPS TARGET NEWSDAY TRUCKS IN REVENGE MISSION?
The day after Newsday published an exposé on police staffing and wasteful spending, more than a dozen of its trucks were issued with tickets by Nassau Highway Patrol officers. The newspaper said its fleet usually received one ticket every few months, so suspicions were aroused in April 2000 when its delivery vehicles were the target of 14 out of the15 tickets issued on the Long Island Expressway over a period of a few hours. The police dismissed the figures as “coincidence”.
ROWDY NUNS ARRESTED
A group of 17 Orthodox nuns were arrested in Romania in 2008 for creating a public nuisance during a procession in Iasi for the naming of a new bishop. As well as their unruly behaviour, the nuns also received a caution for calling the arresting police officers “sons of Judas”.
FORGER IS LET DOWN BY SPELLING
A Jacksonville, Florida, woman was arrested in 2002 as she tried to cash a forged $498.35 cheque drawn on the Frist Unoin bank.
ROBBER THROWS TANTRUM DURING RAID
A robber wearing a werewolf mask held up a Subway sandwich shop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2007, claiming that he had a gun hidden under a paper bag. But the two employees on duty were unimpressed and refused to hand over any money, whereupon the robber threw a tantrum. Petulantly ripping off his mask, he stormed out of the shop, complaining: “I can’t believe you won’t listen to a man with a mask and a gun!”
FORGER FAILS TO CASH IN ON COMPANY NAME
An optimistic 18-year-old dockworker at Roadway Express in Dallas, Texas, tried to cash a cheque made out to the company. He went to the bank and produced photo ID giving his name as Mr Roadway V. Express. After appearing to accede to the request, the bank manager said: “OK, Mr Express, I’ll be right back.” Instead he called the police who arrested “Mr Express” for forgery.
JAMAICAN POLICE HUNT STOLEN BEACH
Police in Jamaica were investigating the theft of an entire beach in 2008. An estimated 500 tru
ck-loads of white sand were stolen from a planned resort at Coral Springs, forcing developers at the resort to put their plans on hold. With rivals in the tourism sector the chief suspects – because a good beach is a major asset to hotels – police carried out forensic tests on other beaches along the coast to see if any of them contained the stolen sand.
GRAVEDIGGER STEALS BODY PARTS TO MAKE ASHTRAY
Gravedigger Keith Chartrand pleaded guilty in 2007 to stealing human body parts – a skull and a leg bone – from a cemetery in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and taking them home to make an ashtray and a pipe respectively. Commenting after the hearing, the cemetery superintendent said that although Chartrand was a “good worker”, he would not be returning to his job there.
CITY PANICS OVER PENIS THEFTS
Panic spread through the Congolese city of Kinshasa in 2008 after sorcerers were accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises. Victims claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear and would then try to extort cash from them with the promise of a cure. The topic soon dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings. “I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke,” said Kinshasa’s chief of police, “but when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. I say, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it?’”
TYPO VIGILANTE CORRECTS UNGRAMMATICAL SIGNS
A self-styled typo vigilante toured the United States in spring 2008, wiping out grammatical errors on government and private signs. Jeff Deck persuaded a coffee shop clerk to remove an unwanted “e” from “Sweedish” and was given permission to correct a Hollywood “stationary” store’s display to “stationery”. But there was no goodwill when he was convicted of defacing a 60-year-old hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park. Deck and an accomplice, Benjamin Herson, used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its correct place with white-out, and added a comma. The pair were banned from national parks for a year.
MAN TRICKS WOMEN INTO TAKING OFF THEIR TIGHTS
A 40-year-old security guard from Teignmouth, Devon, was convicted of deception in 2006 after fabricating stories about car repairs in order to trick women into taking off their tights. Glyn Hatcher told the women he needed their tights to repair his fan belt, claiming that he was too embarrassed to buy them from a shop. He was finally caught after approaching the same two women twice.
SAFE ROBBER SAYS HE’LL CALL BACK
When an armed robber burst into a Chicago shop early one morning in 2008 and demanded the money from the safe, the staff told him there wasn’t much cash at that time and in any case they didn’t know the combination. Unfazed, the bandit gave them his phone number and told them to call him when the owner arrived. Receiving the call, the robber returned around noon . . . to find that police officers were also waiting. One of the shop workers said: “He told us to call him back when the owner returned with the money and he was going to come back and rob him.” Police Lt Scott Schwieger added: “No one could make this up.”
MAN STOLE 1,613 ITEMS OF LADIES’ UNDERWEAR
Garth Flaherty of Pullman, Washington State, was sentenced to 45 days in prison after a police raid caught him in possession of 1,613 pairs of panties, bras and assorted women’s underwear. His haul of nicked knickers weighed 93 pounds and filled five garbage bags.
ROBBER ASKS CASHIER FOR DATE
A Romeo robber in Genoa, Italy, was caught after he returned to the post office he had held up the previous day and asked the cashier for a date. The robber had forced 21-year-old Lucia Marcelo to hand over money at gunpoint but could not get her out of his head and revisited the scene of the crime the next day armed with a big bunch of flowers and an apology and asked her out. But she didn’t fall for his charms and while keeping him talking, she activated a silent alarm connected to the police station.
FAMILY MOVES AFTER GUARD DOG STOLEN
A family in Wigan, Lancashire, decided to move after being burgled on 20 separate occasions. The last straw was when their guard dog was stolen.
CARJACKER WAS HARDENED CRIMINAL
Fleeing from the scene of a failed carjacking in Reno, Nevada, a male suspect ran into a building, only to become stuck in a freshly poured concrete floor.
BOY ASSAULTED WITH HEDGEHOG
A New Zealand man was fined in 2008 for assaulting a 15-year-old boy with a hedgehog. William Singalargh picked up the animal and threw it at the boy from a distance of 15 feet, causing a large red welt and several puncture marks on his leg. A police sergeant revealed that Singalargh had been arrested after the incident in the North Island town of Whakatane and been “charged with assault with a weapon – namely the hedgehog”.
THIEF HAS IDENTITY CRISIS
With a haul of stolen security cameras, a thief in Garden Grove, California, was worried that police might be looking for his distinctive white Mitsubishi pickup truck having spotted it on surveillance video. So he decided to switch vehicles – and made the police’s job a whole lot easier by stealing another white Mitsubishi pickup truck
BURGLAR ASKS VICTIMS FOR HELP WITH STEREO
A burglar in New Mexico was arrested after he telephoned the homeowners to ask how the stereo system he had recently stolen from them worked.
ROBBER CONVICTED BY SILLY WALK
An armed robber who was part of a gang that targeted jewellers’ shops in and around London was convicted in 2000 because of his odd way of walking. John Saunders, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, could not disguise his bandy legs and rolling walk, described by one detective as “like an old outlaw who has left his horse behind”. The prosecution called a podiatrist, an expert in the science of lower body movement, who told the jury that less than five per cent of the population had the same distinctive legs and bow-legged gait as Saunders.
MAN SMEARS BUTT IMPRINT ON WINDOWS
A 35-year-old man used lotion or petroleum jelly to make greasy imprints of his naked behind on windows of stores, churches and schools in Valentine, Nebraska. Dubbed the “Butt Bandit”, Thomas Larvie targeted at least eight buildings in 2007 before finally being caught in the act. Police remained baffled by his motive, as no theft was ever involved.
KFC CUSTOMER TAKES THE BISCUIT
An employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken store in Mill Valley, California, ran a lucrative sideline handing out marijuana with the food to people who knew that the secret pass phrase to obtain drugs was to ask for “extra biscuits”. The scheme fell to pieces the first time a customer actually wanted extra biscuits.
GHOST HELPS ACQUIT MURDER SUSPECT
Two letters that were apparently dictated by a ghost helped acquit a Brazilian woman of murdering her lover in 2003. The letters, written by a medium who claimed to be in contact with the victim, were used as evidence in the trial of Iara Marques Barcelos. The medium claimed the spirit had revealed that Barcelos was innocent.
CROSS-DRESSING THIEF FAKE BREAST CLUE IN HUNT FOR
In 2008, police in Port St Lucie, Florida, were on the lookout for a cross-dressing man who snatched a 74-year-old woman’s purse. Their main clue was a condom filled with water that the suspect left behind at the scene of the crime and which he had been using as a fake breast. A witness told officers the thief was wearing a short denim skirt and black tube top, and that he fled in a silver car with two other male cross-dressers.
HYPNOTIST HITS MOLDOVAN BANKS
A string of banks in Moldova were robbed by a hypnotist who put cashiers into a trance before making them hand over thousands of dollars. He would then bring them back out of the trance, leaving them with no memory of giving him the cash.
MAN HIDES IN TOILETS TO COLLECT WOMEN’S URINE
A 22-year-old man from Houma, Louisiana, was arrested in possession of four plastic bags containing women’s urine. Police said his modus operandi was to disable the flus
h mechanism of a ladies’ toilet in a department store after lining the bottom of the bowl with plastic. He would then come out of hiding from a neighbouring stall immediately after a woman used the toilet and collect her urine, which he would proceed to label with appropriate descriptions such as “old woman”. According to reports, the police had yet to establish a motive.
CROOK BEGS FOR JAIL RETURN
An Italian crook begged to go back to jail in 2008 to escape from his nagging wife. Prison bosses in Naples had freed Luigi Folliero to serve the second year of his two-year sentence for theft under house arrest but after just two days he fled back to Ponte San Leonardo jail and pleaded to be allowed to return to his old cell because he couldn’t stand being at home with his wife.
BURGLAR IN SPICE AND SAUSAGE ATTACK
The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books) Page 31
