Cold Cash
In Decatur, Illinois, a house had been burglarized by someone familiar with the family—and familiar with where they kept their money. The cash was all in change—rolls of quarters, dimes, and nickels. And kept in the freezer.
During the investigation, one of the detectives was doing the necessary legwork of asking people in the neighborhood if they had seen or heard anything unusual or suspicious the night of the burglary. One person had noticed a car that was parked in the rear of the residence that evening and was able to provide a rather vague description of the vehicle.
Following up on that sparse lead, the investigator stopped by a neighborhood gas station and asked the attendant on duty if he’d seen a car that fit the vague description or seen anyone that might have looked suspicious to him that night.
“Well,” the clerk mused, “there was one fella who came in the station that night and paid for his gas in rolled change. I remember because the money was cold, real cold, like it had been in the freezer or something.”
Bingo! The detective asked the attendant if he could identify the man if he saw him again.
“Sure, I could,” the man stated. “He comes in here about every day or so and buys gas.”
The detective handed the clerk his card.
“If that guy comes in here again, I’d like you to get his license plate number.”
The very next day the clerk called with the tag number of the vehicle, and the suspect was quickly apprehended.”
“Can you believe it?” the detective asks. “I mean, the guy didn’t even wait until the money had warmed up before he started spending it—and he only went one block away.”
99
Bloodhound Blues
During the two years that Dan Leger worked undercover down South as a narcotics officer, he had more than his share of dumb criminal encounters. And he was constantly amazed at the “cop folklore” circulated among criminals—the widespread misinformation about the law and police procedure. He tells this story about his all-time favorite dope:
“I was working undercover narcotics, deep cover. I looked like the nastiest of the nasties. I infiltrated the independent bikers and tapped into some large distribution systems. Over the course of a few months I made several buys from a fairly large supplier. We got to be pretty good acquaintances.”
One night Leger and the dealer were sitting around talking, and the dealer got going on the subject of how undercover cops work. Leger could hardly keep a straight face as he listened to the man’s ignorance.
“I can always spot a cop,” he bragged, “the way their eyes move around a room and the questions they ask.”
Then he went on to relate an old hippie myth that originated in Berkeley or someplace similar. The gist of it was that years ago a city council somewhere decreed that undercover officers had to identify themselves as police officers if they were asked a direct question three times.
“Sort of defeats the purpose of going undercover, you know?” Leger laughs. “Now, if that were the law everywhere, you wouldn’t have any undercover officers, because they would all be dead now. But this guy has heard this story, and he lets me in on the secret: ‘This is the trick the cops don’t want you to know. If you ask an undercover cop three times if they’re a cop and they don’t tell you, then it’s entrapment, and the case gets thrown out.’
“It’s really hard to look impressed when inside you’re laughing your ass off, but I nod my head like I’m committing his every word to memory.
“Then he did it. He really pissed me off. He said, ‘I can smell a cop a mile away.’ I was sitting about two feet away from him at the time.”
Leger had to bite his tongue to keep from saying something right then, but he knew he’d have the last laugh in the near future. And sure enough, about three weeks later he took that dealer down with a rock-solid case.
“I relished the moment,” Leger remembers. “I whipped out my badge and got right up in his face and said, ‘Guess what? I’m the Man, and you are under arrest.’ His face got as pale as a cadaver, and then I just couldn’t resist rubbing it in.
“I was an inch from his nose.
“How do I smell from here?”
100
All’s Well That Ends
One rainy night at the state penitentiary in Michigan City, Indiana, three hardened convicts escaped through a dark, muddy field. They had been convicted of everything from armed robbery to murder. Now they were armed and dangerous and had nothing to lose.
They crept up on a dark, still house. The garage door was unlocked, and they walked right into the kitchen. Creeping from bedroom to bedroom, they bound and gagged all four members of the family. One of the criminals rifled through all the jewelry boxes while another found the car keys. The third got the man’s wallet for the credit cards. Then they were off.
Back at the prison, a random bed check revealed the convicts’ escape. Soon, helicopters, dogs, and numerous state, county, and city units began combing the area. Once the family managed to free themselves and call the authorities, the police had a car description and a tag number.
Within moments a state trooper spotted the stolen family station wagon moving at a high rate of speed on the interstate. He gave chase, and the escapees made a run for it, veering across the grassy median in an attempt to lose the trooper.
As the fleeing car bounced up onto the other side of the highway, the driver lost control. The car rolled three times, and the convict in the backseat was thrown clear into the high grass. Unharmed, he lost no time disappearing into a nearby cornfield.
Two miles away at Ollie Hardison’s farm, the silent dawn was shattered by the thundering wash of police choppers overhead and the baying of bloodhounds closing in on a scent. Ollie had several hog sheds out behind his barn that were pretty well rusted out and falling down. He thought he had heard something out there just a moment before, but now he couldn’t hear anything for all the commotion.
One of the arresting officers, Larry Hawkins (the one from Indiana mentioned earlier, that is), will never forget the scene that followed.
The fleeing convict had cut through the fields off the interstate, running at top speed through corn nine feet high. When he came upon the dilapidated hog sheds, he tried to get into one. It was too small. But when he heard the choppers and dogs, the desperate man dropped to all fours and backed into the stinking hog shed.
“We didn’t know whether to turn the dogs loose on him, read him his rights, or just give him a good swift kick.”
Unfortunately for him, as he backed in, he also backed out. It seems the back of the shed was rusted out to form a perfect picture frame for the convict’s posterior, which was totally exposed. As the police encircled the shed, the convict’s rear was positioned in a most peculiar way for arrest.
“He really thought he was totally hidden. He looked like an ostrich with his head in the sand. He held perfectly still and we just sort of stared at this big rear end sticking out of that shed. We just had to laugh. We didn’t know whether to turn the dogs loose on him, read him his rights, or just give him a good swift kick.”
Good sense and professionalism prevailed. The officers and Ollie Hardison were the only ones to get a kick out of the situation. And they did—no ifs, ands, or butts.
America's Dumbest Criminals Page 11