America's Dumbest Criminals Read online




  America’s

  DUMBEST

  CRIMINALS

  America’s

  DUMBEST

  CRIMINALS

  BASED ON TRUE STORIES FROM LAW ENFORCEMENT

  OFFICIALS ACROSS THE COUNTRY

  DANIEL R. BUTLER

  LELAND GREGORY

  ALAN RAY

  Illustrations by Mike Harris

  Copyright © 1995 The Entheos Group, L.L.C.

  All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

  The authors have taken great caution to protect the true identity of persons depicted in this book. While the crimes depicted are true, the names, gender, and races of the criminals depicted, and the details of the crimes portrayed, may have been changed to safeguard those identities.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Rutledge Hill Press, Inc., 211 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37219 Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company, Ltd., 1090 Lorimar Drive, Mississauga, Ontario L5S 1R7.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Butler, Daniel R., 1951–

  America’s dumbest criminals : based on true stories from law enforcement officials across the country / Daniel R. Butler, Leland Gregory, Alan Ray.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1–55853–372–9

  1. Crime—United States—Case studies. 2. Criminals—United States—Case studies. 3. Crime—United States—Humor. I. Gregory, Leland. II. Ray, Alan. III. Title.

  HV6783.B87 1995

  364.1'092'273—dc20

  [B]

  95–30052

  CIP

  Printed in the United States of America.

  99 98 97 96 95 3 4 5

  To

  the men and women whose portraits and photographs hang in the lobby of every police station we visited— officers who were killed in the line of duty. Under all the portraits and photos, the same quote was displayed:

  “Greater love hath no man than this . . .”

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 Never Mind

  2 The World’s Shortest Trial

  3 Look Out! He’s Got a What Is That?

  4 Positive I.D.

  5 Riches to Rags

  6 D.O.B.

  7 Drive Aaround, Please

  8 The Considerate Criminal

  9 Taken for a Ride

  10 Jumpin’ Jack Flasher

  11 Beats the Hell out of Me

  12 Insulated from Good Sense

  13 Going out with a Bang

  14 A Large Naked Anchovy and Pepperoni

  15 “Not by the Hair of My Chinny-Chin-Chin!”

  16 Junior Meets the Sandman

  17 Write On!

  18 Go Directly to Jail

  19 It’s the Law

  20 He Can Hide, but He Can’t Run

  21 Lovin’ in Fifteen Minutes

  22 Look Out! He’s Got a Turtle and He Knows How to Use It!

  23 Luck of the Draw

  24 Pulling the Rug Out

  25 Don’t Try It Again, Sam

  26 Bound for the Cooler

  27 Two-Bit Thief

  28 A Really Big Bust

  29 Bare Truth

  30 Love Thy Neighbor

  31 Five Will Get You Ten or Twenty-Five

  32 Big Mac Attackers

  33 In the Mood

  34 There’s One Born Every Minute

  35 The Sad Saga of Bad Luck Brown

  36 Another Run of Bad Luck Brown

  37 A Dam Dumb Idea

  38 Arrest Record

  39 It’s the Law

  40 The Light at the End of the Tennie

  41 Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law

  42 All Thumbs

  43 What’s the Number for 911?

  44 Backseat Driver

  45 Door-to-Door Crime Buster

  46 Drag Race

  47 Bad Bribes

  48 Type Ohhhhhhh!

  49 Sticky Situation

  50 Big Brother Is Watching You

  51 Going My Way?

  52 Asleep at the Wheel

  53 I Can’t Believe It

  54 Hop in Back

  55 Good Thinking

  56 Read My List

  57 If You Can’t Beat ’Em ...

  58 Camera Hog

  59 Another Crime of Passion

  60 Once Bitten, Twice Bitten

  61 All Aboard!

  62 Life Is Like a Pair of Brown Shoes

  63 The Clothes Make the Man Dumb!

  64 Potted Plants

  65 Once a Soldier

  66 A Shining Example

  67 Always Wear Your Seat Belt

  68 Auto Suggestion

  69 You’ve Come a Short Way, Baby

  70 Don’t Pull That One on Me

  71 Left Holding the Bag

  72 The Wrong Guy

  73 When You Gotta Go

  74 Go Figure ...

  75 Stop That Thief and Step on It!

  76 The Twenty-Eight Daze of February

  77 Name-Brand Robbery

  78 Gone Fishin’

  79 The Robber with a Lemon

  80 A Con a Sewer

  81 The Case of the Beer-Box Bandit

  82 Skid Row

  83 Back Door Man

  84 Step by Step

  85 Dressed for Arrest

  86 Four-Wheel Suspicion

  87 Quick Comeback

  88 As the Crow Pries

  89 Stealing Home!

  90 The Fall Guy

  91 Wrong Side of the Tracks

  92 My Name’s Steve, and I’ll Be Your Dealer Today

  93 Hooked on Crime

  94 A Red-Hot Robbery

  95 The Five-Year Cab Ride

  96 Winner Loses

  97 The Civic-Minded Cocaine Cooker

  98 Cold Cash

  99 Bloodhound Blues

  100 All’s Well That Ends

  Introduction

  The plans were all in place. The phone calls had all been made, the faxes sent, the interviews arranged and confirmed. Now the crew was on location, ready to set up and videotape our hilarious yet revealing interviews with police officers who had encountered America’s dumbest criminals.

  Time was money. With every moment, hundreds of expense dollars were clicking away. And here was the assistant chief of police, the man who had welcomed us so cordially the day before, giving us the kind of stern look that goes with “You’re under arrest.”

  “You need to speak to the chief,” he said.

  We were ushered into a large office. Before us was a huge desk, and behind that desk was a very big man. To us, he looked like more than just an “authority figure”—he was the authority.

  The chief did not smile. In that office no one smiled. And no one spoke but the chief.

  “Explain to me,” he said, “what it is you boys want to do.”

  Something in his tone made me think of every lie I had ever told. I swallowed. Then I launched into a nervous, chattering “pitch” for the home video series and book project we were trying to produce.

  I explained that we had come to collect stories from the officers in his department about dumb criminals they had known. I told of my phone conversations and faxes to his assistant chief. I talked a little about our plans for a book and for television pilots.

  As I spoke, I noticed a small plaque on the bookcase behind the chief’s chair: “Treat the media as you would any other watchdog. Feed it, water it, pat it on the head, but never turn your back on it.”

  I finished my explanation. No one smiled. The silence seemed to last, oh, five to ten years. Finally,
the chief spoke:

  “Son, you need to understand something. You see, I was the interrogator on the Ted Bundy case. I went through that whole trial with the media. Then Hollywood sent me scripts for their movies-of-the-week and they asked me to circle whatever I thought was inaccurate. I circled a bunch of stuff and they went ahead and shot it just the way it was. Plus, in the last six months I’ve had two abortion-clinic shootings and I’ve had the media climbing all over my back every minute of every day.

  “So tell me again,” he said, “why I should let your cameras in here.”

  I saw our whole project teetering on a toothpick. I swallowed hard, opened my mouth, and miraculously, words came out.

  “Chief, I’ve got two sons, seven and fifteen years old, and they love to watch television shows like COPS, Rescue 911, and America’s Most Wanted. They think those programs are accurate, that they show the way it is for cops and for criminals most of the time. They think the crime scene looks exciting, even glamorous.

  “I don’t think that’s true. I think that even the term ‘Most Wanted’ glorifies the criminals—sort of like a rookie-of-the-year baseball card. And from the few interviews we’ve done already, I’m convinced there’s not much glorious about crime.

  “In fact, I’m convinced that you police officers spend 90 percent of your time dealing with idiots—or with people just like me who have been caught doing the dumbest thing they’ve ever done. That’s what I want to show in our videos and in our book.”

  This time the silence seemed to last ten to twenty years—without parole.

  No one smiled. No one spoke. Except, finally, the chief.

  “Son,” he said, his face relaxing into something like a smile, “if you’ll show criminals for the coldhearted dumbasses they are, and if you’ll show our police force as being professional at all times . . . well, then, we’ll help you any way we can.”

  Over the next six months, this scene was repeated over and over. The stories were not all funny ones. With each officer that we interviewed, we felt the weight each one carries daily—the weight of pain and sadness and even fear. But police work, like any other stressful profession, is full of moments when situations take a turn for the absurd and when laughter seems as appropriate as tears. The most rewarding moments of this entire project came when the officers’ very serious faces broke into broad grins and we all laughed so hard that tears came to our eyes. We hope this book shares a little bit of that laughter.

  We want to make it clear, however, that in laughing at “dumb criminals” we are not making fun of the mentally challenged. We use the term dumb in the same way that great American philosopher Forrest Gumpused the word stupid: “Stupid is as stupid does, sir!” We say, “Dumb criminals are as dumb criminals do, sir!”

  Dumb criminals, in other words, are criminals who act dumb—people who opt for selfishness, ignorance, greed, or just plain meanness instead of using the good sense God gave them. We take great satisfaction in showing the real and often hilarious consequences of such dumb choices.

  None of the dumb crimes depicted in this book are still under adjudication. None of the criminals or victims described in this book are identified by their real names. All the stories really happened, but many details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved. The cops named in these pages, on the other hand, are very real. Their names and their stories are repeated with permission—and with deep gratitude. We wish them all the best as they continue to cope with the seemingly endless stream of America’s dumbest criminals.

  America’s

  DUMBEST

  CRIMINALS

  WARNING:

  THE CRIMES YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ ARE TRUE. THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED … TO PROTECT THE IGNORANT

  1

  Never Mind

  When Detectives Ted McDonald and Adam Watson of the Brunswick (Georgia) Police Department answered this particular home burglary call, they expected a routine report—missing TVs and VCRs, an empty jewelry box, perhaps a hijacked coin collection. But they were in for a big surprise.

  As the two detectives drove to the address the victim had given them over the phone, they came upon a nice house in a middle-class neighborhood not far from their own homes. It was about five-thirty in the afternoon, and the victim had obviously just gotten home from work.

  “The man whose house had been robbed was very upset,” Watson remembers.

  They could see where his sliding glass door had been pried open. It looked like an open-and-shut case of house burglary, one of several the officers had been tracking. But this victim introduced a new wrinkle in the crime spree.

  “When we asked him if any belongings were missing from his home, he replied very quickly and indignantly that, yes, somebody had stolen his stash of marijuana. I looked at my partner in disbelief. We couldn’t believe our own ears, so we asked him again just to be sure.

  “Could you repeat that, sir?”

  The victim’s eyes got bigger as the cold, hard realization hit him. He had just admitted to a police officer that he possessed an illegal drug. He stammered for a moment in search of an out. There was none.

  “Are you admitting to possessing marijuana?” the detectives asked. The man appeared to be frozen in time. He couldn’t take the words back, and he couldn’t think of any more to say.

  “Sir? Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “I . . . uh . . . well, no . . . not really,” the man stammered.

  “Well, then, what are you saying?”

  “Well . . . nothing, uh . . . I . . . oh, never mind,” the man said. “Just forget it.”

  The officers turned and left as the man quietly closed the door, no doubt to sink into a chair and utter some expletives.

  “We just left,” Watson says. “Without the dope, we really had no case against the man. But we had a good laugh on the guy. And believe it or not, we’ve had several calls like that one.”

  2

  The World’s Shortest Trial

  Officer David Hunter, retired from the Knox County (Tennessee) Sheriff’s Department, told us this story of what might be the shortest trial in the history of jurisprudence:

  At his criminal arraignment, the defendant stood before the judge.

  “You are charged with the theft of an automobile,” the judge said. “How do you plead?”

  He expected to hear a simple “guilty” or “not guilty.” Instead, the defendant tried to explain his whole defense as succinctly as possible.

  “Before we go any further, judge,” the accused man blurted out, “let me explain why I stole the car.”

  The judge’s decision was made in record time!

  3

  Look Out! He’s Got a . . . What Is That?

  Our research has shown not only that some criminals are dumb but also that some use fairly weird weapons. Some of the oddest weapons used: an index finger, an egg, a bowling ball, a wedge of cheese, an artificial leg, a twenty-one-pound turkey, a hot-fudge sundae, a banana, a frozen sausage, a lit cigarette, a one-and-a-half-pound Chihuahua, an insect, a snake, and a toilet seat.

  We can just imagine a dumb criminal attempting an armed robbery with a wedge of Limburger.

  “Give me your money, or I’ll cut the cheese!”

  4

  Positive I.D.

  Detective Chris Stewart of the Brunswick (Georgia) Police Department told one of our America’s Dumbest Criminals field reporters about a robbery suspect he transported back to the scene of the crime for a positive identification:

  “We had gotten a call informing us that a woman had had her purse stolen from a shopping complex,” Stewart says. “A short time later, we saw a man who fit the description given to us by the victim. So we picked him up and took him back to the scene of the crime.”

  Stewart explained to the suspect that they were going to take him back to the scene and that when they arrived he was to exit the vehicle and face the victim for a positive I.D. The man in custody heard this when the
detective radioed ahead to the officer with the victim. Stewart said he had a man in custody who fit her description of the robber and they would be arriving shortly.

  When they arrived at the scene, the suspect did exactly as he had been told. He stepped from the car and looked up at the victim. And before anyone could say anything, he blurted out, “Yeah, that’s her . . . that’s the woman I robbed.”

  He has been given a new photo I.D. for his cooperation . . . and this one included a prison number.

  5

  Riches to Rags

  Officer Brian Hatfield of Brunswick, Georgia, tells a sad story with a comical twist. He stopped a disheveled man behind the wheel of a fairly nice van that had sustained quite a bit of body damage. The driver had been weaving and was obviously a bit inebriated.

  When Hatfield ran a check on the individual, he found several traffic warrants outstanding. So he brought the guy in for booking. The criminal didn’t even have a dime for his phone call, much less the hundred dollars for bail. He called an attorney collect and then told Hatfield his sad tale.

  “I won the Ohio lottery in April. Three million dollars.”

  “You won the lottery five months ago and you don’t have a dime for a phone call?” Hatfield asked.

  “I got the first installment, which was ninety-four thousand dollars. I went to Atlantic City and lost thirty thousand. Then I bought the van for thirty thousand, but I got drunk on some really good French wine and rolled the van.”

  According to Hatfield’s calculations, the man had frittered away most of his first installment, but not all. “What did you do with the rest of the money?”

  “Oh,” he said, “I spent the other twenty-four thousand foolishly.”

  6

  D.O.B.

  Officer Glen Biggs of the Knoxville (Tennessee) Police Department had a close encounter of the dumb criminal kind when he was booking a suspect on a narcotics violation. A simple transcript of the interrogation tells it all:

  Biggs: “What is your D.O.B.?”

  Dumb Criminal: “What’s a D.O.B., man?”

  Biggs: “When’s your birthday?”