America's Dumbest Criminals

by Daniel Butler

  And that’s when she hit him.

  “She must’ve hit me twenty times before I finally blacked out,” Svenson said later, after regaining consciousness. “I had just finished telling her that I wasn’t going and sat down to take my shoes off. That’s when she came up behind me, throwing lefts and rights.”

  He probably wishes that he had gone to the rally with his wife that night. Badly battered Bjorn suffered multiple injuries from the salvo of fists that rained on him during the surprise assault—a broken nose, a fractured skull, a fractured cheekbone, damage to his cornea, and severe cuts and bruises.

  The subject of the rally that night was the problem of domestic violence.

  DUMB CRIMINAL QUIZ NO. 367

  How well do you know the dumb criminal mind?

  While robbing a gas station, the attendant asked the robber for a favor, and the robber complied. Did the attendant ask him . . .

  (a) to hem his pants?

  (b) to let him make one phone call?

  (c) to play the guitar accompaniment for “Dueling Banjos”?

  (d) not to rob the store?

  If you answered (b), then you know the criminal mind. The attendant at the Reno, Nevada, gas station was nothing if not bold. “Remember,” he told the man who was holding him up, “every victim is allowed one phone call.” The robber agreed, and the attendant called the police. Before you could say “reach out and touch someone,” the Reno police were asking that dimwitted robber to do them a favor: “Would you put your hands in these cuffs, please?”

  70

  Don’t Pull That One on Me

  Although excuses for speeding are more numerous than pocket protectors at a slide-rule competition, this excuse just didn’t add up. When an officer clocked a woman driving in excess of twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, he pulled her over.

  He leaned into the driver’s side window and observed the female driver of the car clutching painfully at her jaw. She mumbled to the officer. “I’b just cum from da dntest an wud goink homb ta git ma med-cine.”

  After about ten minutes of painfully slow translation, the officer finally deduced that the woman was speeding because she needed pain medication after a long session with her dentist. For some reason, the officer just wasn’t buying her story.

  “Maybe I better run a check on your license,” the officer said, setting his bait. “I seem to remember a woman with this name who was wanted in an armed robbery.”

  The woman’s eyes grew huge and indignant, and her mouth flew open. “Why, I have never been so insulted in all my life. How dare you accuse me of being a common—”

  Then her hand flew to her mouth as she realized she had spoken very quickly and very articulately . . . and that the officer was not likely to overlook her very rapid emergence from the effects of the Novocain.

  She was right.

  The officer gave her a “tibket”!

  71

  Left Holding the Bag

  One balmy Florida evening, Officer Joe Briggs noticed a car weaving down the road. The radio was blaring and the heavy bass vibrated the windows in Joe’s cruiser. When the driver of the sound machine crossed the double, solid, yellow center line, Joe had seen enough. He popped on his lights and pulled the vehicle over.

  The driver failed every field sobriety test in a laughable manner. He was arrested on a D.U.I. charge. His female passenger, however, was released and free to go. The arresting officer called dispatch to phone a friend of the passenger to come get her. But while he was calling he noticed that she bent down, retrieved a small plastic bag from the hem of her pants, and quickly stuffed it down her blouse.

  The officer now needed a female officer to search the suspicious passenger. But while he was making that call, the passenger made a run for it. The officer tackled her before she got too far, clapped her in handcuffs . . . and noticed the several other plastic bags of marijuana that had fallen out of her pocket while she ran.

  She was arrested for possession of an illegal substance because she had more than one ounce of marijuana . . . and less than an ounce, apparently, of smarts.

  72

  The Wrong Guy

  A man who had been involved in a hit-and-run . . . ran. He knew he was drunk, and he also knew that getting caught would mean a second conviction of driving under the influence. So he got out of his vehicle, stumbled to the next intersection, and flagged down a car at the stoplight.

  “I’ve been in an ‘accidentally,’” he drunkenly explained to the driver. “I need somebody to drive me home.”

  The driver of the car looked at him thoughtfully. “All right,” he finally said. “Get in.”

  The intoxicated hitchhiker couldn’t believe his luck. How often do you find such a willing accomplice on the first try? After just a few fumbles he got the car door open and climbed in beside his Good Samaritan.

  But then the drunk man noticed something was wrong. True, his head was spinning. But he could swear that the driver had immediately made a U-turn and headed back in the direction of the accident.

  “Hey, man, what are you doing?” he asked weakly.

  The undercover cop reached under the seat and pulled out his identification and badge.

  “Buddy,” he said, “this just isn’t your day.”

  73

  When You Gotta Go

  Captain Pete Bell of the Pensacola (Florida) Police Department was patrolling a nice suburban area when a speeding car ran a stoplight right in front of him. Captain Bell gave chase.

  When he had the car pulled over, he approached the driver’s side and prepared to write out the ticket. “Sir, I’m going to have to give you a citation for running a red light and speeding.”

  “Yeah, I know,” the man said. “But I’ve gotta go! I’ve gotta go!”

  Bell was a little taken aback at this guy’s apparent lack of concern, even if he was in a hurry to get somewhere.

  “Well,” Bell said, “you’re going to have to wait until I write this ticket.”

  “I know,” the man exclaimed, “but I’ve gotta go—I’ve gotta go!”

  “Sir, what’s your hurry?” the officer questioned.

  “Oh, I’ve gotta go!” came the groaned reply.

  “I know you’ve gotta go—but where?” asked Bell.

  “I’ve really gotta go,” the man screamed, one arm involuntarily clutching his abdomen. “I have diarrhea. I don’t think I can hold it any longer.”

  Suddenly realizing the situation, Bell quickly tore off the ticket and handed it to the man.

  “Here, sir. There’s a restroom right across the street at that service station. Have a nice day.”

  Well, at least now the guy had something to read while he was in the bathroom.

  74

  Go Figure . . .

  An officer in Florida told us about a dumb criminal who showed up too late to be caught in a “sting”—but still managed to work his way into jail:

  “The sheriff’s department had set up a fake pawnshop that bought stolen goods. We videotaped all our transactions for several months, then shut the whole operation down and arrested thirty or forty people who had sold things to us. That sting attracted national attention, and the press was having a feeding frenzy—almost non-stop coverage—because the audio and video were so good. We recovered everything from sets of silverware to an eighteen-wheeler.”

  About a week after the pawnshop sting had been closed, sheriff’s department personnel went in to unload their equipment and dismantle the operation.

  “We arrived in an unmarked cruiser car that, of course, clearly looked like a police car, with antennas and all. We used a huge truck from the jail with the jail’s name printed on the side, two guards, a couple of prison trustees to do the hard labor, and a couple of plainclothes deputies.”

  Then the bearded man reached into his pocket and pulled out three stolen Social Security checks. “I’ll sell these to you for ten cents on the dollar.”

  They pulled up to the �
��pawnshop” to find a bearded man sitting on the front steps. He looked at the entourage, recognized one of the undercover agents who had worked the operation, and signaled him to come over.

  The agent strolled over to the guy and asked, “What’s up?”

  “Where’ve you been?” the bearded man asked.

  “We’ve been around. Why?”

  Then the bearded man reached into his pocket and pulled out three stolen Social Security checks. “I’ll sell these to you for ten cents on the dollar.”

  Needless to say, they soon had that man in handcuffs. But as they were putting him in the squad car, the officer couldn’t resist asking him a question.

  “Didn’t you recognize the police units and the security guards and the truck with ‘County Jail’ on the side?”

  “Well, yeah,” the dumb criminal answered. “But I just figured you’d stolen the truck and were bringing it down here to sell.”

  75

  Stop That Thief and Step on It!

  A nervous crook sat at an Illinois tavern knocking back beers to “get up his nerve.” The beer only managed to shut down his brain while the crook’s body went out to rob a nice home. Totally anesthetized, our crook set about breaking into a beautiful ranch house. He tried to pry open a sliding glass door, but he used too much force and broke the glass, cutting himself in the process. The occupant of the house, an older woman who was a very sound sleeper, didn’t hear a thing.

  Finally, the dumb criminal managed to let himself into the basement. But then he realized he had dropped his flashlight in the yard and couldn’t see a thing. Feeling his way around and bumping his shins with almost every step, he managed to find some laundry to tie around his cuts and then to feel his way up the stairs to the first floor.

  By now the poor burglar was tired, bleeding, bruised, and still very drunk. He still wanted to rob the house, but first he needed a minute just to lie down and rest. So he felt his way along the walls of the hallway, slowly opened a door, felt his way in at coffee-table height, and finally located an open area where he could lie down. Unfortunately, he got a little too relaxed and soon succumbed to slumber.

  At two in the morning the householder woke up and felt a need to visit the bathroom. She swung her legs around to the floor, felt for her slippers, stood up . . . and stepped right on the face of the burglar, who had chosen the floor beside her bed for his nap. He was so far gone that he didn’t even stir.

  The old saying, “Let sleeping thieves lie,” did cross the lady’s mind. On second thought, she called the police and had the bumbling intruder arrested anyway.

  76

  The Twenty-Eight Daze of February

  Paul Marguiles, a Nashville police officer, gave America’s Dumbest Criminals this story about a man with a short-term memory about long months:

  On February 25, 1995, Marguiles and his partner stopped a car with a temporary license plate on it in a known drug-traffic area. In Tennessee a temporary tag, as it is known, is made of paper and carries a handwritten expiration date on it. Upon closer examination, they noticed that the tag had been altered from its original expiration date of 2-17-95.

  “It did look quite convincing,” Marguiles recalls. “The problem was that he had changed the date from 2-17-95 to 2-37-95. It doesn’t take a math major to realize that there are only twenty-eight days in February, not thirty-seven.”

  A search of the vehicle yielded some crack cocaine and a small pipe used to smoke the drug. The car was confiscated, and the driver was arrested for simple possession of a controlled substance, alteration of an auto tag (which is a felony), and driving with a suspended license.

  The driver was especially upset when he realized the crack was in the car.

  “The car was pretty messy,” Marguiles says, “and he apparently didn’t realize the stuff was even there.”

  The only reason he had taken the car out in the first place, he told officers, was that he really needed to buy some drugs.

  77

  Name-Brand Robbery

  A woman who walked into a Mid-Am Bank in Bowling Green, Ohio, and demanded money from the three tellers inside didn’t seem like much of a threat at first. She didn’t brandish a gun or threaten anyone with violence, according to Bowling Green Police Chief Galen Ash. (There were no customers in the bank, just the tellers and one bank officer.) She was just an average-looking middle-aged woman, with nothing really desperate or criminal about her appearance or demeanor.

  But then, suddenly, the stakes went up. The woman repeated her demand for money and brandished a small hand-held device. She claimed it was a radio remote control that at the touch of a button would detonate a car bomb outside, leveling the bank and killing them all. The bank employees glanced nervously at one another. It was not a threat to be taken lightly . . . or so it seemed.

  Suddenly, one of the tellers grew surprisingly and defiantly bold. “I’m not giving you anything,” she said as she walked out from behind the counter to confront the would-be bank robber. This courageous teller was quickly joined by her two associates, who jumped the woman, wrestled her to the ground, and held her there until the police arrived.

  What made the tellers think that the woman wouldn’t detonate the bomb?

  According to Ash, “I think their first clue was when they saw ‘Sears’ on the end of the garage door opener.”

  78

  Gone Fishin’

  A retired sheriff from a sleepy little town in East Tennessee told us this story of the famous Greenback Bank. Yes, that is really its name, and the bank was famous for it. It was also famous for the apparent ease by which it could be robbed. The bank had been hit so many times that at one point they had considered installing a revolving door. Several sweet older ladies worked there, and they never put up a fight or made a fuss, so the bank was famous among criminals for being “easy pickings.”

  But although the Greenback Bank was easy to rob, it was not that easy to get away from. You see, the bank stood on the main road, and that road was the only way in or out of town. Those sweet older ladies would give the robber the money, then just watch which way he or she went. The police would have a roadblock up and the money back in the bank before the frustrated robbers could think of three ways to spend it.

  Well, knowing this, a local fishing guide decided he would try a new approach. He would rob the Greenback Bank on foot, and by the time the police arrived he’d be long gone.

  So he did. And he was. The fisherman-robber actually got away clean.

  Now, knowing the area like he did, he believed that he had found the perfect hiding place for his loot. He stashed the money in the hollow of an old tree that had grown for years by the riverbank.

  He decided to wait until spring before retrieving the stolen loot so that no one would suspect when he “came into some cash.” Snug in his cabin, he watched the snow and ice come and then melt away, completely unaware that his money was gradually being withdrawn from the “creek bank.” All that thawing had caused the river to rise and flood the riverbank. Now the current was gradually washing away all his money.

  That spring provided a bonanza for trout fishermen downstream, who were amazed to begin reeling in truly “big ones.” The fishing guide’s business, on the other hand, quickly slumped. Who needed a guide when everyone in town could tell where to catch twenty, fifty, and hundred-dollar bills?

  Before long, the river was filled with would-be trout fishermen who had learned of the unusual way the stream had been stocked. But the authorities eventually found the source of the muddy money and put two and two together. The robber was eventually caught and convicted.

  Unlike the money that went downstream, he went up the river.

  79

  The Robber with a Lemon

  The Greenback Bank has been robbed many times over its eighty-year history, but the staff will never forget one particular robber. He wasn’t particularly bright or very violent, but he did have a remarkable car.

  The robber came i
n with a pistol and demanded money. The tellers smiled pleasantly, complied with the robber’s demands, watched which way the robber turned, then called up the road to warn the gas station attendant. The gas station attendant saw the car speed by and called ahead to the police department, who promptly arrested the suspect.

  Actually, it might not even have mattered which way this robber turned. Although the crook was surprised at how quickly he was apprehended, no one else was.

  As the officer said, “It’s not every day you see a 1961 Red Edsel that screams Arrest me! ”

  There were only two cars like it in the entire state.

  80

  A Con a Sewer

  Gary Michaels of Chicago liked the finer things in life: fast cars, fine art, and expensive jewelry—stuff he couldn’t begin to afford. But while peering through the window of the jewelry store, he reckoned his luck was about to change. This was the heist that would get him out of the hole.

  Simple: Smash the window, grab the jewelry, and run. Quickly, Michaels spotted a street manhole cover. He pried out the one-hundred-pound disk, hauled it to the window, and heaved it through. Michaels grabbed all the rings, watches, and diamonds he could carry, then took off running. Turning the corner, he almost bowled over a couple doing some late-night window shopping. Panicked, he bolted back into the street, heading for an alley, and then disappeared from sight … down the open manhole.

  81

  The Case of the Beer-Box Bandit

  Most crooks who set out to rob a convenience store plan on some sort of disguise, such as a ski mask or even a nylon stocking, to hide their faces and avoid being recognized. But one bandit in East Tennessee wore none of the above. He created his disguise right there on the spot.