America's Dumbest Criminals (11 page)
“Private,” he barked, “we are here to get you out of enemy territory. But we must hurry; the enemy isn't far behind.”
The elderly “private” snapped to attention again, gathered his duffel bag, and marched out the door.
All the way down the hallway, the sergeant called cadence, and the little group marched out the front door as if they were going to war. Five or six elderly ladies cheered. One elderly gentleman simply muttered, “Nut.”
The elderly “private” snapped to attention again, gathered his duffel bag, and marched out the door.
Things went well until the officers and their charge emerged from the door of the rest home. There the good “private” stopped dead in his tracks. He had spotted the fire department ambulance that stood waiting to transfer him. An attendant opened the side door and offered him a hand, but he wasn't having any part of it.
“It's okay, private,” the sergeant assured him. “That's a tank I ordered to get you safely across enemy lines. I'll stay behind and guard our flank.”
Like a shot, the good old soldier was up and in the ambulance. Meathrell closed the door and waved good-bye.
As the ambulance drove away, the rookie turned to the sergeant with a slack jaw. “A tank?” he asked in disbelief.
“Don't gripe,” the sergeant said. “He's on his way, isn't he?”
T
o some people, image is everything. There are those who would not dream of leaving the house (even someone else's house) without making sure their appearance was in order. And different people have different priorities when it comes to appearance. Some people can't relax unless their hair is neatly combed. Others want to be sure their clothes are in style. For Cecil Warren, shiny shoes were everything.
Cecil was well known on the streets of Roanoke, Virginia, as a small-time thief and occasional burglar. He was just as well known for constantly shining his shoes. It wasn't uncommon for him to put on the spit and polish several times a day. In the end, his particular form of vanity proved to be his downfall.
Cecil had decided to burglarize a house, and he had no trouble getting in. He simply climbed up and over the back porch. Unfortunately, this feat also required him to scramble onto the roof. And roof climbing, as one prosecutor later put it, creates “a great probability of shoe damage.” Our vain criminal couldn't get on with the job until he made some repairs.
Cecil escaped from the home with some five thousand dollars' worth of jewelry, but he left behind his can of shoe polish and, more importantly, his
monogrammed
shoeshine rag.
“The can of polish and that rag with the initials C. W. on it were as good as a set of fingerprints,” one detective noted.
The vain Mr. Warren was found guilty of breaking and entering and grand larceny. He is now cooling his heelsâ and probably shining his shoesâin jail.
L
ike any safety-conscious motorist, West Texan Dwight Ketchum put on his seat belt before driving off. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that the car he was driving away wasn't his. When the police spotted him, Dwight took flight. The police gave chase.
After a few minutes of weaving through traffic at high speeds and still not being able to shake the police, Ketchum decided to bail out from the stolen vehicle. Pulling over, he flung open the car door and attempted to get out and run. But try as he might, he couldn't free himself from the seat belt.
The police were closing in on him fast. Too fast. Our car thief was apprehended while he was still struggling to get out of the stubborn seat belt.
W
hen police officers in a Louisiana city arrived at a vehicle accident call involving property damage, the driver was still on the scene, but not exactly “with it.”
In a state of heavy inebriation, Montel Stenson told police that he had simply lost control of his European luxury car. During this momentary lapse, it seemed, he had wiped out an entire fence and slammed into a pole.
Officers on the scene were proceeding through their usual drunk-driver routines when Stenson suddenly went berserk. Running back to his automobile, he started it and began ramming one of the squad cars. Backing up and then hurtling forward, he continued to bash the police vehicle. He succeeded in pushing it up against a nearby garage before police were able to extract him.
What was the reason for this bizarre attack? Stenson told police that his European-made automobile had told him to kill the American-made car.
“I was just following orders,” was Montel's truly dumb defense.
W
ith all the justified focus on violence against women today, inevitably, there had to be a twist, and
America's Dumbest Criminals
found one in Milwaukee. Hardworking thirty-four-year-old Bjorn Svenson had a tough day on the job. His back hurt, his head hurt, and his exhausted legs felt like wet spaghetti. So he expected sympathy when he told his wife that he was just too tired to attend a rally with her later that evening. Being the long-suffering male martyr that he was, he insisted she go on by herself. “Just don't worry about me.”
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 assaultâa 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?”
A
lthough 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 commonâ”
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”!
O
ne 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.
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 âaccidentally,'” 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.”
C
aptain 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 goâI'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 goâbut 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.