by Karl Shaw
Least Successful Courtroom Defence
In 1985, Dennis Newton stood trial for entering a convenience store in Oklahoma City, raising a gun to the store manager’s head and demanding money. The prosecuting attorney asked the chief witness, the store manager, if she could identify the culprit. When she pointed to Newton, he stood up and shouted, “Liar . . . I should have blown your fucking head off!” After a few moments of reflection, he added, “. . . if I’d been the one that was there.”
Newton was jailed for thirty years.
Least Successful Courtroom Defence: Runner-Up
In 1998, Sidney Carlton, a painter and decorator from Bradford, was tried for the offence of bestiality after he admitted having had sexual intercourse with a Staffordshire Bull Terrier called Badger.
Carlton’s defence was that Badger had made the first move. He told the court, “I can’t help it if the dog took a liking to me.” He was sentenced to one year in prison.
“The elephant’s nature is such that if he tumbles down he cannot get up again. Hence it comes that he leans against a tree when he wants to go to sleep, for he has no joints in his knees. This is the reason why a hunter partly saws through a tree, so that the elephant, when he leans against it, may fall down at the same time as the tree.”
The Book of Beasts, twelfth century AD
Most Accommodating Assassination Target
As Oscar Wilde might have put it, losing your life to a paid assassin is unfortunate; but losing your life to an assassin when you’ve actually paid for the murder weapon yourself looks like carelessness. This was the unusual fate which befell William “the Silent”, heretic leader of the Dutch revolt against Spain.
William was one of a handful of Protestant heads of state in sixteenth-century Europe. The biggest threat to their peaceful existence at that time came in the person of the Pope’s “enforcer”, King Philip II of Spain, whose aim in life was to wipe out every last Protestant on Earth. To that end, the dark forces of Philip’s Spanish Inquisition were employed efficiently and ruthlessly, torturing and executing heretics by the thousand.
One of the biggest pockets of nonconformism targeted by Philip was the Spanish Netherlands. William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, was known as William the Silent because of his deep, taciturn nature. William was leader of the rebel Protestant Netherlands, which from 1555 had been ruled by the King of Spain through resident governors. The Dutch people resisted Spanish attempts to impose heavy taxes on them, just as they had opposed Spain’s attempts to impose their faith. In 1581, after almost twenty years of conflict with Spain, the Netherlands formally renounced allegiance to King Philip II and proclaimed William their head of state. Philip, who had long regarded assassination as a legitimate instrument of foreign policy, abandoned all pretence of diplomatic nicety and declared William the Silent an outlaw, offering a reward of 25,000 gold crowns to anyone who would silence him permanently.
William’s reputation as the quiet, cautious type was misinterpreted by the Spanish as cowardice. It was suggested that even if a willing assassin could not be found, William would almost certainly die of fright anyway. The first of many attempts on his life came six months later. In December 1582, a twenty-year-old warehouse clerk, Juan Jauréguy, was able to walk up to William and level a pistol at him at point-blank range, but the gun was over-charged with gunpowder and blew up in the assailant’s hand. The blast singed William’s hair and set fire to his ruff and the bullet hit him in the face, lodging in his palate. Jauréguy was slain on the spot by bodyguards.
William suffered agonies from the wounds but survived the attack, not least because of the remarkable attentions of his servants, who held the wound closed with their fingers, in relays, for seventeen days. His devoted wife Charlotte, who helped to nurse him back to health, died of exhaustion and fever in the process. Later that year, two more Catholics tried to poison him, closely followed by two unsuccessful attempts to blow up William at his palace.
In spite of the price on his head and several previous attempts on his life, William insisted on keeping open house with an almost total lack of security. On 10 July 1584, as he was talking to a group of friends in the hallway of his home in Delft, a cabinet-maker’s apprentice, Balthasar Gerard, approached and shot him from close range with two pistols. The bullets passed through William’s stomach into the wall beyond. The Prince of Orange died on his couch before his doctor arrived.
It was not the first time that the killer and his intended target had met, face to face. Gerard, far from being a professional assassin, didn’t own a sword, let alone a gun. He didn’t know how he was going to kill William without a weapon, so he approached his sponsor, King Philip, to ask for an advance on the reward so he could finance his assassination attempt. Philip refused – the terms were strictly cash on delivery. Gerard then presented himself at William’s court in Delft, posing as a poor Protestant who had recently escaped persecution from the Spanish. William was so moved by Gerard’s story that he gave him some money – enough for him to buy a couple of pistols – from one of William’s own guards.
It was one of the most audacious assassination attempts in history; his escape plan, however, was heroically stupid. Balthasar Gerard was seized within a few minutes of the attack while trying to escape over a garden wall. He was searched and found to be carrying only a pair of deflated water wings. The assassin, a non-swimmer, hoped to escape across a nearby canal. In accordance with the law, he was mutilated, disembowelled and quartered, but King Philip honoured his promise of a reward by paying out to Gerard’s family – the money, however, was taken from William of Orange’s eldest son, whom Philip held hostage in Spain.
The regicidal Balthasar was hailed a heroic martyr by Dutch Catholics who preserved his head as a holy relic. William, meanwhile, earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first political leader ever to be assassinated by a handgun.
“Atomic energy might be as good as our presentday explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.”
Winston Churchill, British prime minister, 1939
Least Successful Invocation of God’s Word to Avoid a Motoring Fine
In 2001, during a routine vehicle check near Neath, South Wales, Peter David, a lay preacher, informed police that he did not need an MOT, road tax or motor insurance certificate because God was his passenger and he had divine protection. In court later, David admitted the offences but refused to enter a guilty plea, telling magistrates, “I do not recognize the authority of the court or the Parliament in England. God’s word is the only law I recognize.” The Crown solicitor commented later, “We get all sorts in here but we don’t expect to see God in the witness box.” David was ordered to pay £800 in fines, costs and back duty to the DVLA.
David was stopped again by police a few days later and found using false number plates on his Ford Sierra – DEUT 818, referring to the Bible’s book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, Verse 18, which warns that God is the only source of power. PC Richard Coulthard, upon finding that the registration was invalid, was informed by sixty-six-year-old David, “The Lord told me I could put verses for His praise and glory.”
PC Coulthard begged to differ, telling Neath magistrates, “I conducted a check on the chassis and I established that the correct vehicle index should have been A903 BUX.” David said he had sold his Ford Sierra and replaced it with a Vauxhall Cavalier with the number plate JOHN 316, a reference to John 3:16. He was banned from driving for two years.
“Bees are generated from decomposed veal.”
St Isidore of Seville, seventh century AD
Least Perceptive Prison Guards
In July 1978, the “escape-proof” high-security Alcoentre penitentiary near Lisbon lost 124 inmates – half the prison population – in one evening. The guards had failed to notice that 220 knives and hundreds of yards of electric cable had also gone missing prior to the mass breakout, along with several spades, chisels and electric drills. Nor did they realize the signif
icance of dozens of posters that had appeared in recent weeks hiding gaping holes in cell walls.
The guards only discovered the escape bid when one of the few remaining prisoners told them about it. Some of this may sound familiar; one of the films on the Alcoentre prison cinema schedule that week was The Great Escape.
“When [the beaver] is pursued, knowing this to be on account of the virtue of its testicles for medicinal uses, not being able to flee any farther it stops and in order to be at peace with its pursuers bites off its testicles with its sharp teeth and leaves them to its enemies.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Least Successful Prison Breakout
On 18 April 1976, seventy-five inmates of the Saltillo Prison in northern Mexico made their bid for freedom after spending six months digging a tunnel, only to find that it emerged into the nearby courtroom where most of them had been sentenced.
The surprised judges promptly returned all seventy-five to their cells.
“The so-called theories of Einstein are merely the ravings of a mind polluted with liberal, democratic nonsense which is utterly unacceptable to German men of science.”
Dr Walter Gross, 1940
Most Failed Attempts to Kill a Political Leader
The Cuban president Fidel Castro, according to the people who had the job of keeping him alive, survived more than six hundred attempts to assassinate him.1 The bids to kill Castro began after the 1959 revolution that brought him to power when a CIA agent sent from Paris failed to snuff him out with a cunningly disguised pen-syringe.
There were several attempts to kill Castro using explosives. On one occasion, a barrage of shells aimed at the Cuban leader missed him by forty minutes but melted all of the traffic lights in downtown Havana. On another, three would-be assassins were apprehended while carrying a bazooka across a university campus in broad daylight. When Castro was on a visit to Panama, the CIA tried to smuggle 200 lbs of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. Castro’s personal security team intervened and the plot was aborted.
Some of the attempts to kill him were more fanciful. The CIA recruited one of Castro’s former lovers to track him down and finish him off; she was given poisoned pills, which she hid in a jar of cold cream, but the pills dissolved. She toyed with the idea of slipping cold cream into Castro’s mouth while he was snoozing, but lost her nerve. On another occasion, a poisoned chocolate milkshake was accidentally placed in a freezer; by the time it was offered to Castro, it was frozen solid and had lost its potency. There were other attempts to prepare bacterial poisons to be placed in Castro’s handkerchief or in his tea and coffee, but none got off the drawing board.
In 1960, the CIA tried to dose some of his cigars with a virulent toxin, slipped into his private stash during a trip to the United Nations. They aborted similar plans to load his cigars with explosives, or with a hallucinogenic drug to give him a wild acid trip to embarrass him during a public appearance.2
In the most bizarre plot of all, the CIA hoped to undermine Castro’s popularity by planting thallium salts – a powerful hair remover – in his shoes during a trip overseas so that his famous beard would fall out. When the CIA found out that Castro enjoyed scuba diving, they bought a diving suit and contaminated the regulator with fungus spores, hoping to give him a rare skin disease. Unfortunately, the diplomat assigned to hand over the “dirty” suit gave him a clean one instead.
Undaunted, the CIA explored the possibility of placing an exploding conch at Castro’s favourite diving spot. The plan was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, and then paint it in bright colours to attract Castro’s attention when he was underwater.
The most visionary scheme to kill the Cuban leader came from General Edward Lansdale, who contemplated invoking Jesus Christ himself in the covert war against Castro. The general hoped to spark a counter-revolution by spreading the word to Cuban Catholics that Castro was the anti-Christ. At the imminent Second Coming, Christ was going to surface off the shores of Cuba on board a US submarine. Devout Cubans, Lansdale explained, would rise up and overthrow their evil leader.
In his autobiography Shadow Warrior, retired CIA operative Felix Rodriguez confessed to three trips to Cuba to assassinate Castro. In 1987, the Iran-Contra committee wanted to know if Rodriguez took part in the CIA’s infamous attempt to poison Castro’s cigars. “No sir, I did not,” he replied. “But I did volunteer to kill that son of a bitch in 1961 with a telescopic rifle.”
Unofficially, the CIA abandoned attempts to kill Castro in the 1980s, but the Cuban leader wasn’t taking any chances. He moved address twenty times and gave up smoking in 1985. Jokes about Castro’s apparent indestructibility were commonplace in Cuba. One told of him being presented with a Galapagos turtle; Castro declined the gift after learning that it was likely to live only 100 years. “That’s the problem with pets,” he grumbled, “you get attached to them and then they die on you.” At the time of writing, since the Cuban revolution Castro has survived ten US presidents.
Most Clueless Burglar
In November 1978, a burglar broke into a home in Baltimore and assaulted the lady occupant before demanding cash. When she explained that there was little money in the house, he said he would take a cheque – “Make it out to Charles A. Meriweather . . .”
He left with the cheque, warning her that if it bounced, he would be back. He was arrested a few hours later.
“We need not hesitate to admit that the Sun is richly stored with inhabitants.”
Sir William Herschel
Most Badly Planned Robbery
In 1978, police in Essex were on the look-out for three would-be Post Office raiders who had burst into a high street premises, only to discover that it had ceased to be a Post Office twelve years earlier – it was now a general store with just £6 in the till. They raided the till and left.
The seventy-six-year-old manageress commented, “I think it was a bit of a disappointment to them.”
“You’ve got to call yourself ‘Rock’ or ‘Jack’ or something . . . anything as long as it’s not ‘Elvis Presley’.”
Rockabilly musician Ronnie Hawkins to Elvis Presley, date unknown.
Most Badly Planned Robbery: Runner-Up
In July 1997, three armed robbers planned to raid a South Shields travel agents but miscalculated and broke into the optician’s next door, brandishing a knife and a replica sawn-off shotgun. Realizing their error, they beat a hasty retreat. After finally locating the travel agents, they demanded to know where the safe was but then lost their nerve. Instead of stealing £30,000 in travellers’ cheques, they made off with just one large charity bottle full of unwanted foreign coins.
Their getaway car then ran out of petrol and they were forced to abandon it, leaving tell-tale clues which led to their subsequent arrest. At their trial, the judge described it as “not a very efficient robbery”.
“These Google guys, they want to be billionaires and rock stars and go to conferences and all that. Let’s see if they still want to run the business in two or three years.”
Bill Gates, on Google magnates Sergey Bring and Larry Page, 2003
Least Profitable Till Raid
In 1977, a thief from Southampton came up with an ingenious plan to steal cash from the till of a local supermarket. On the way out, he would hand the checkout girl £10 to pay for his groceries, then when she opened the till, he would grab the contents and make a run for it.
All went according to plan until she opened the till and found that it held only £4.37. He took the cash and fled the supermarket, having lost £5.63 in the raid.
“The basic questions of design, material and shielding, in combining a nuclear reactor with a home boiler and cooling unit, no longer are problems . . . The system would heat and cool a home, provide unlimited household hot water, and melt the snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a single charge of fissionable material costing about $300.”
Robert Ferry, executive of the US Institute of Boiler and Radiator Manufacturers, 1955
Least Successful Counterfeit Operation
In December 2011, thirty-three-year-old Michael Anthony Fuller went into his local Wal-Mart supermarket in North Carolina and tried to pass a $1 million note in exchange for a microwave, vacuum cleaner and other goods totalling $476.
Insisting that his homemade note was the real deal, Fuller demanded $999,524 in change. A suspicious checkout girl alerted the police and Fuller was arrested and charged with attempting to obtain goods by deception and “uttering a forged instrument”.
Having failed to do his homework Fuller was unaware that the largest note currently in circulation in the United States is $100.
“Sincerity is the quality that comes through on television.”
The Washington Star, on Richard Nixon, 1955
Least Successful Unfair Dismissal Claim
In 2006, Emilee Bauer, from Iowa, USA, sought compensation for unfair dismissal after being fired by the Sheraton hotel company. Bauer, aged twenty-five, had written a 300-page journal during office hours, describing in detail her efforts to avoid work. Among her entries were: “This typing thing seems to be doing the trick. It just looks like I am hard at work on something . . .” and “Once lunch is over, I will come right back to writing to piddle away the rest of the afternoon . . .” and “Accomplishment is overrated, anyway . . .”