The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

A man was arrested in 1994 after being seen walking out of an aquarium at Seaside, Oregon, with a 25-pound lobster named Victor under his arm. The aquarium manager gave chase and eventually caught the culprit. “It wasn’t too difficult to spot the guy,” he said. “He was the only person about with a lobster under his arm.”

  TRAFFIC LIGHT THIEVES CAUGHT RED-HANDED

  Two men were arrested in Buenos Aires in 2005 for stealing traffic lights from one of the Argentinean capital’s busiest junctions. On further investigation police officers found another four sets of traffic lights that the pair had stolen from other streets. A police spokesman said: “We still haven’t really understood why they wanted all those traffic lights.”

  INCRIMINATING DNA ADDS INSULT TO INJURY

  Charles Edward Jones robbed a Miami bank in 2002 but it all went wrong for him as he made his getaway. First, in stuffing his gun into his waistband, he succeeded in shooting himself in the pants and then he was hit by a school lunch van, the impact knocking two gold teeth from his mouth. The DNA from these teeth led to his subsequent conviction.

  "ITALIAN KIDNAPPED EX-GIRLFRIEND FOR HOUSEWORK"

  A 43-year-old man was accused of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend in 2008, just so that she could iron his clothes and wash his dishes. He allegedly dragged her out of a bar in Genoa, Italy, shoved her into a car and drove her to his home, where he made her do housework.

  MECHANICAL IGNORANCE PROVES DOWNFALL

  A 45-year-old woman was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, after a mechanic informed the police that 18 packages of marijuana were hidden in the engine compartment of the car that she had brought in for an oil change. She told the police that she didn’t realize the mechanic would have to raise the hood in order to change the oil.

  MAN CUTS OFF FINGER IN DEBT PROTEST

  In despair after a judge ruled that he would have to sell part of his farm to settle an outstanding debt, Portuguese businessman Orico Silva cut off one of his fingers in court with a butcher’s knife. Retrieving documents from his briefcase, Silva noticed the knife he had recently bought and decided to slice off his index finger, using a court desk as a chopping board. He then proceeded to cut the finger into three pieces. He said afterwards: “My intention was to tear up all the case papers and splatter them with blood so I could prevent the expropriation order for my land.”

  STORE ROBBER WEARS BEER BOX ON HEAD

  A man who robbed a convenience store in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 2009 chose an unconventional disguise – he put a 12-pack beer box over his head. He escaped with around $50 worth of cigarettes, dropping the beer box as he made his getaway.

  GRAND THEFT AUTO SUSPECT ARRESTED PLAYING "GRAND THEFT AUTO"

  Sheriff ’s deputies in Florida found a suspected car thief playing the “Grand Theft Auto” video game – and they subsequently charged him with exactly that. After a stolen Dodge Durango was spotted outside a Haines City house in 2010, deputies found a man inside, playing the popular game. He was charged with grand theft auto, burglary and drug possession.

  CLOWN CRASHES INTO POLICE CAR

  The golden rule for avoiding arrest by the police is not to draw attention to yourself. A drink-driving suspect in Vancouver, British Columbia, spectacularly failed in this respect by crashing into a police car after driving erratically the wrong way down the road . . . while wearing a clown suit. Although nobody was injured in the collision, police confirmed that the clown “will have some explaining to do in court”.

  GUNMAN DEMANDS – CASH AND A WHOOPER WITH CHEESE

  A masked gunman held up a Manchester, Connecticut, burger bar in 2001 and ordered the manager to open the safe. After grabbing the cash, the hungry bandit ordered the cook at gunpoint to make him a Whopper with cheese. “That was, ‘To go,’” noted the detective in charge of the hunt for the robber.

  FARE DODGER SLAPS POLICE OFFICER WITH UNDERPANTS

  After being caught hiding in a train toilet to avoid paying for a ticket, a German man was taken to the nearest police station where he suddenly tore off his pants and started hitting an officer in the face with his underpants.

  ONE-LEGGED SUSPECT CAUGHT WITH ONE STOLEN SHOE

  After only one shoe was stolen from a store in the Belgian town of Maldegem in 2009, police quickly deduced that the thief was likely to be an amputee. Acting on a witness description, officers quickly arrested a one-legged Russian asylum seeker. The shoe was also recovered.

  CAR THIEF CALLS POLICE TO ESCAPE IRATE OWNER

  With an angry owner in hot pursuit, a Norwegian car thief decided that he would be safer in jail, and called the police from the stolen vehicle so that they could arrest him. The owner of the stolen Opel Kadett had spotted his car while driving through Porsgrunn in 1997 and, after an unsuccessful attempt to reclaim it at traffic lights, had chased the vehicle for 15 miles before the thief surrendered to police. “I guess I looked pretty furious,” said the owner, “but I didn’t want to lose the car.”

  GUNMAN PAYS FOR OUT-OF-DATE INFORMATION

  A gunman burst into a district water office in Nicholasville, Kentucky, in 2009 and demanded money. When an employee replied that the office didn’t have money, the gunman snapped: “I know you have money. It’s a bank!” The employee then pointed out that it was no longer a bank (the building had previously been a branch of Farmers Bank), at which the disappointed robber put away his gun and walked out with nothing.

  FRAUDSTERS LET DOWN BY CAR WITH NO ENGINE

  Intent on claiming on their car insurance, two men towed their damaged vehicle to the middle of a street in Puzhany, Russia, in 2003 before calling the police to report that it had been involved in an accident. The fraudsters hoped the police would simply accept their version of events but the plan was wrecked when officers opened the hood of the car and “found an empty space instead of an engine”.

  BLUNDERING BURGLAR HAS NIGHT TO FORGET

  A burglar who broke into a wood sales company in Bremen, Germany, one night in 2003 experienced a catalogue of misfortune, largely of his own creation. First he smashed open a coffee vending machine in the hope of snatching the coins inside, to discover that the machine only accepted tokens – a fact that was written in large letters on the front of the machine. Then he stole a cell phone, which only worked in the grounds of the company, and a cordless screwdriver – but he forgot the batteries and the charger. Finally the intruder drank a can of Coca-Cola that had been standing in one of the offices and was 12 months past its sell-by date. Speculating that the culprit should be easy to find, a police spokesman said: “He’s the one who is stranded with a load of useless junk, looks tired, is sick to his stomach, and is probably the laughing stock of all his mates.”

  ROBBER TRICKED BY AGE QUERY

  Holding up a Colorado Springs corner store, an armed robber ordered the clerk to fill a bag with cash. He then spotted a bottle of whiskey on a shelf and told him to put that in the bag too, but the clerk refused because he didn’t think the robber was 21. To prove that he was, the robber obligingly showed the clerk his driving licence – bearing his full name and address. He was arrested two hours later.

  THIEF BURIED IN AVALANCHE OF PEAS

  A teenage thief who forced open the doors of an industrial container in Ashburton, New Zealand, was immediately buried up to his waist in an avalanche of peas. Police and ambulance men were called to the scene and had to use a forklift truck to free him.

  WOMAN HANDCUFFED FOR OVERDUE LIBRARY BOOKS

  An American woman was arrested and handcuffed in 2008 for having two library books overdue. Heidi Dalibor, from Grafton, Wisconsin, was frogmarched from her home and taken to the local police station where she was fingerprinted and photographed. The incident cost her $30 for the overdue paperbacks – and it cost her mother $170 bail money to free her.

  FOILED ROBBERS END UP IN TEARS

  A pair of bank robbers in Wroclaw, Poland, ended up crying and choking after they tried to use pepper spray on a cashier in front of an air conditioning unit blowing out war
m air. The unit blew the spray back over the robbers who, coughing and spluttering, staggered out of the bank empty-handed.

  ROBBERS CALLS GUILTY ACCOMPLICE AS CHARACTER WITNESS

  Acting as his own lawyer in an Austin, Texas, federal court in 2004, robbery suspect Adam Martin inexplicably called his brother Michael as a character witness – even though Michael had already pleaded guilty to being Adam’s partner on four robberies. So when Adam asked his brother if he had ever committed any crimes, Michael replied instantly: “Yeah. You were with me on four different bank robberies, Adam. You know that.” Adam was sentenced to life imprisonment.

  THIEVES SNATCH REPLICA BISON TESTICLES

  To add a little colour to the 2001 World Athletics Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, statues of brightly painted ornamental bison were erected at key locations around the city. However in a bizarre five-day crime spree, at least 20 of the fibreglass bison had their testicles severed. Two men were later found in possession of one pair of imitation genital glands, but the other thefts were thought to have been copycat crimes. A police spokesman admitted that he was at a loss to explain why anyone would want to steal the testicles of a replica bison.

  SUSPECT FINGERED BY DETACHED DIGIT

  After losing his middle finger, Victor Arreola headed for the Scripps Hospital in Chula Vista, California. When police arrived at the hospital they brought with them a finger and asked Arreola to identify it. “Yeah, that’s my finger,” he said, whereupon an officer told him he was under arrest for carjacking, the finger having been severed when the driver of a van slammed the door on the would-be robber’s hand. Arreola thought about this for a minute, asked to take another look and decided that, no, it didn’t look like his finger after all!

  "LONELY MAN BUGGED PHONE OPERATORS"

  Takahiro Fujinuma, 37, from Tokyo was charged in 2008 with making at least 2,600 calls – and maybe as many as 10,0000 – to Directory Inquiries. Police said he made 200 calls a night, during which he would whisper “darling” to the female operators and beg them not to hang up on him, but the real thrill was when they became annoyed with him. He told detectives: “I would go into ecstasy when a lady scolded me.” He was said to be lonely.

  ROBBER BEMUSED BY McDONALD'S MENU

  A man entered a McDonald’s restaurant in Sydney at 8.50 one morning in 2000, produced a gun and demanded money. However the cashier said she couldn’t open the till without a food order. So the robber ordered a Big Mac, but was told by the cashier that they weren’t available until 10.30 because only the breakfast menu was on offer at that time. Frustrated, the gunman gave up and walked out.

  MARTIAN SUES OVER DEATH PLOT

  Renee Joly, 34, sued the Canadian Defence Minister, Citibank and various drug store chains, claiming that the defendants were trying to murder him because he was a Martian. The judge ruled that the plaintiff, not being human, had no status in court and ordered that he be detained in a mental hospital.

  JUDGE GIVES CHASE IN VAIN

  When he saw Douglas Murphy running out of a Richland County, Ohio, courthouse in 1994, Municipal Judge Donald Hoover immediately threw off his robe and gave chase. A number of police officers joined in and 20 minutes later they found Murphy cowering behind a bush. It was then that they learned that Murphy wasn’t a fugitive at all – he had been freed from court on bond and had simply wanted to make a quick exit.

  GANG MURDERED PEOPLE TO SELL THEIR BODY FAT

  Three men arrested in a remote jungle area of Peru in 2009 confessed to killing people and extracting their body fat to sell to international cosmetic companies for anti-wrinkle treatments. Colonel Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru’s anti-kidnapping police, said the men had admitted to the murders of five people – and to draining the corpses afterwards. Describing the grisly method of fat extraction, Col. Mejia said the gang would cut off victims’ heads and limbs, take out the organs and then hang the torsos above candles to heat the flesh, allowing the fat to drip into tubs below. It was then apparently sold on to intermediaries in Lima before heading to cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies in Europe. At the scene of the arrest, officers found human remains and two bottles of fat. The captured men revealed that one litre of human fat could sell for $15,000.

  INCRIMINATING PHOTOS LEAD TO GANG'S DOWNFALL

  After he and five others burgled a Tesco store in Greater Manchester, Roland Tough took photos of the raid to show their friends in jail how well they were doing. His mistake was to drop the roll of film off at the very same Tesco two weeks later, where employees recognized some of the stolen items. When Tough returned to collect his prints, police were waiting to arrest him. He was sentenced to six years, giving him ample time to tell his friends in person how he was doing.

  STORE ROBBED BY MEN IN THONGS

  Two men who held up a convenience store in Arvada, Colorado, in 2008 wore women’s thongs as masks. One wore a green thong while the other opted for blue – but the skimpy panties left most of their faces visible, and the robbers were duly sentenced to 12 and 4 years respectively.

  OFFICERS MISHEARS RADIO INSTRUCTION

  A female police officer on her way to investigate a burglary in Scarborough, Yorkshire, misheard a radio briefing about a missing fax and arrested a passer-by carrying a saxophone.

  ROBBER GETS HIS TIMING WRONG

  Aaron Bell, 19, robbed a KFC outlet in Philadelphia in 2002 – the same store where he had worked for the previous two years. Despite this, he opted against wearing a mask or any other form of disguise with the result that the employees on duty recognized him immediately. He was also forced to leave empty-handed because his inside knowledge had evidently not extended to remembering that the store’s safe was time-locked at 9 p.m. – 15 minutes before his raid. Nevertheless he hid from the police for two days before, on the third day, bizarrely reporting for work at KFC and acting as if nothing had happened. The manager quickly called the police.

  MIGRANT SNEAKS INTO UK IN BUS FULL OF BORDER AGENTS

  An illegal immigrant crept into the UK in 2009 by smuggling himself aboard a bus containing at least 20 British Border Agency staff, whose job it is to keep illegal immigrants out. The man hid in a small space between the bus’s chassis and fuel tank as it crossed the English Channel from France. When the bus arrived in England, he jumped from his hiding place and ran off.

  BURGLAR SUES OVER MOCH VALENTINE'S CARD

  In 2002, Sussex police sent out ten lipstick-marked Valentine’s cards to known criminals. The poem inside, which was meant to act as a warning, read:

  “Will you be my Valentine?

  I’m hoping we can meet.

  We have a cosy cell,

  Prepared here at John Street.

  Just continue with your lawbreaking

  And we can guarantee

  A ride in a police car

  And a lack of liberty.”

  But serial burglar Gary Williams decided to sue the force after his girlfriend, thinking the card was from another woman, hurled an ashtray at him. Williams claimed the card was malicious and had caused him distress.

  ROBBER ASKS FOR DIRECTIONS TO BANK

  A Boston, Massachusetts, bank robber went into a copy shop by mistake in 2004 and passed his holdup note across the counter. Told that he was in a copy shop, not a bank, he asked where the nearest bank was and headed there after being given directions.

  DRIVER CLAIMS DOGS WERE IN CONTROL OF CAR

  Arrested after his car lurched forward, nearly hitting the police officer who had pulled him over for speeding, an Adelaide man claimed unsuccessfully in court in Australia in 2002 that it was actually his two dogs who were driving the car at the time of the near-miss. He said one dog was pressing the gas pedal while the other dog simultaneously pushed the vehicle into gear.

  DRUG SQUAD RAIDS OWN OFFICES

  Anti-drug authorities in Mexico raided their own offices and found 1,000 pounds of marijuana. Nine staff were arrested.

  PRISONER FREED BECAUSE KOSHER MEALS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE


  Although he had been sentenced to 11 months in prison for writing a bad cheque, Neil H. Lederman was released after just three weeks in 1998 because Fairfax County, Virginia, prison officials couldn’t afford his kosher meals. The 43-year-old Orthodox Jew was placed on home detention instead to save the extra $70 a day that his special meals were costing.

  KIDNAPPER DEMANDED RANSOM FOR FALSE TEETH

  Debra Letourneau claimed that Gary Lee McMurray, of Keokee, Virginia, phoned her in 2003 to tell her that if she ever wanted to see her upper plate of false teeth in one piece again, she would have to pay a ransom of $20. He allegedly said that if she did not pay up, he would stamp on the dentures. Instead she called the police and McMurray was arrested but she later decided against pressing charges. She was just happy to have got her teeth back.

  GANG RECRUITS GETAWAY DRIVER WITH NO ARMS

  A gang that pulled off a $250,000 jewellery raid in Essex escaped in a car driven by a teenager with no arms. As police gave chase, the thieves’ getaway was hindered by the fact that the other gang members had to help the driver change gear. Even so, he managed to drive for 30 miles at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour before crashing.