America's Dumbest Criminals Read online

  Dumb Criminal: “May 5th.”

  Biggs: “What year?”

  Dumb Criminal: “Every year, man.”

  The two customers headed back to their pickup, oblivious to the uniformed officers and the two marked police cruisers in the driveway.

  7

  Drive Around, Please

  J. D. Roberts has a colorful past. He has served as a member of the army’s elite Delta Force and as a narcotics agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency. He has even worked security for some of Hollywood’s top action-adventure celebrities. He now uses his expertise and experience as an instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia. When we asked him if he had ever run into any dumb criminals, one incident immediately came to his mind.

  One night Roberts was involved in a raid on a drug house that was doing a brisk business in marijuana sales. He and the other agents were dressed in black “battle” fatigues with “Narcotics Agent” stenciled on them. Local uniformed officers in marked police cruisers also took part in the raid.

  Roberts and his team easily entered the house and apprehended the suspect. Several hundred pounds of marijuana were confiscated without incident. Within minutes, the officers were collecting evidence and finishing up at the scene.

  As Roberts started out the front door, he noticed a pickup truck parked behind one of the marked police cruisers in front of the house. Two long-haired individuals got out of the pickup and strolled past the police cruisers parked in the driveway, then walked up to Roberts and his partner.

  “Hey man, he still selling pot?”

  Roberts looked at his partner, then back at the guy. “Yeah, he is. Just go around and knock on the back door.”

  “Cool.” The two men nodded and walked on.

  Roberts watched in amazement as the two individuals sauntered around to the rear of the house. Roberts radioed the officers still inside the house that they had customers at the back door.

  The uniformed officers inside quickly hid while one plainclothes detective answered the door. The new customers asked where the old owner was, and the officer explained that the owner had stepped out but that he could help them.

  They requested a fifty-dollar bag of marijuana. The officer went to the next room, grabbed a handful from the four hundred pounds of pot they had just confiscated and stuffed it into a plastic bag. The two customers were ecstatic. They thanked the officer for his generosity.

  Roberts and his partner were still in the driveway, still wearing the black battle fatigues with “Narcotics Agent” stenciled on their chests, when the two customers headed back to their pickup, oblivious to the uniformed officers and the two marked police cruisers in the driveway.

  Finally, Roberts walked up to the two satisfied customers and arrested them. The agents reconfiscated the dope and impounded the pickup—just as another prospective customer pulled up.

  Roberts decided this was too easy to ignore. “We moved the two cruisers and started putting the impounded vehicles in the back. We made about fourteen more sales and arrests that night. By the time we were through, the backyard was filled with cars. It was the darnedest impromptu sting I’ve ever seen.”

  8

  The Considerate Criminal

  Working the front desk at a police station on a Saturday night is one of the most harrowing and maddening jobs imaginable. An officer can easily get behind in his duties when the phone is constantly ringing, prisoners are going in and out of the jail, paperwork is piling up, traumatized victims and witnesses are being herded through the hallways, and the miscellaneous weird people are wandering in. Bob Ferguson, an Indiana cop now retired, was working the desk on just such a night.

  “A guy comes in around two o’clock in the morning and says, ‘I’m wanted for robbery in Illinois, and I wanted to turn myself in,’” Ferguson says. “It just so happened that the desk I was working was located in Indiana. It was a crazy night, and there were a lot more pressing problems at hand than this guy. We were booking a rather violent guy on narcotics, and I had drunk teenagers throwing up in the lobby. Not to mention a prostitution sting that was processing about three hookers and five johns every ten minutes.”

  In the confusion, the officer blurted out, “That’s all well and good, but I’m kind of busy. Either go to Illinois or come back at six.” And at six o’clock on the dot, the man came back and turned himself in.

  Bob Ferguson told the man how much he appreciated his punctuality “ . . . then I politely booked him.”

  9

  Taken for a Ride

  Let’s take a minute and flash back to the good ol’ seventies.

  Working undercover narcotics back then was a little more informal than it is today. A “flower child” mentality still prevailed in certain segments of the drug scene. This allowed for spontaneous and often funny moments.

  At Purdue University, three undercover narcotics agents had been assigned to look for possible links to the drug culture. While cruising near the campus late one summer afternoon, they came upon a bearded hitchhiker with sun-bleached, shoulder-length hair. Peace signs adorned his Levi jacket and his army surplus backpack. Not having anything really pressing at the moment, the officers pulled over their Volkswagen van and offered the man a lift.

  “Far out, man,” he said, climbing in.

  Soon the three of them were chatting with their new passenger as he babbled on about Nixon, Vietnam, and how much fun it would be to get high. Before long he had pulled out a fat marijuana cigarette.

  “If you guys want to score really big,” he offered, “I know just the place.”

  This was too easy. The agents eagerly agreed to take the man wherever he wanted to go. He’d make the buy, and they’d make the bust.

  No one was home at the first house they tried. Their luck didn’t get any better until the passenger remembered a dealer in another town. Would they drive the extra fifty miles to get the drugs?

  “Sure, why not?” they said. After all, they were just out looking for a good time. Then, on a lark, they decided to pick up a friend of theirs, the crime analyst for their narcotics unit.

  Now Roger, the analyst, didn’t fit in with the rest of the group, who were all clad in leather jackets and sporting long hair and beards. Roger was clean-shaven, with a short, military-style haircut, and wore a tie and glasses. The passenger didn’t seem to notice. He continued his friendly banter as he gave directions.

  Before long the merry band of five was on its way in search of drugs, which the hitchhiker was readily able to supply. Finally, after a day of wandering from house to house, increasing their illegal stash at each stop, it was time for all good things to come to an end. Telling their newfound friend that they had some place they wanted to take him, the agents decided to wrap up the evening and drove him to the police station.

  “This will be your new home for a while,” the agents said to the passenger, who by this time was somewhat stoned and obviously flabbergasted. All he could do was shake his head as they explained they were police officers and that he was under arrest.

  DUMB CRIMINAL QUIZ NO. 53

  How well do you know the dumb criminal mind?

  A man was sentenced to ninety days in jail for disorderly conduct, a fairly minor offense that carried a fairly minor sentence. While he was in jail did he . . .

  (a) take a matchbook correspondence course in VCR repair?

  (b) whittle a replica of the White House to scale out of soap?

  (c) invent a straw that you could eat chili with?

  (d) plot and execute a difficult escape?

  Answers (a), (b), or (c) could all be rationalized as a good use of his time, but a criminal in Rhode Island chose (d). For eighty-eight laborious days he toiled over his plans, and then he finally accomplished his feat. On the next-to-last day of his ninety-day sentence, he made good his escape—for about five minutes. He was then re-arrested and sentenced to eighteen months.

  10

  Jumpin’ Jack Flasher


  Just outside Little Rock, Arkansas, a known “flasher” was at it again. Jumpin’ Jack, as he was called by the local police, would often get naked and do calisthenics at his apartment window across the street from the local bank. Not only were his exercise habits offensive to the people who worked in the bank; local merchants also complained that Jack’s jumping was bad for business.

  Now, Jack was bold and a little demented, but he wasn’t stupid. He would always hide his face in some way or pull the blinds halfway so that he could only be seen from the waist down. These precautions made it more difficult for him to be identified (especially in light of the fact that the police don’t hold naked lineups).

  After receiving a number of complaints one day, the Little Rock Police Department sent over one of its best officers to investigate. As the detective knocked on Jack’s door, he thought about how hard it was to prove cases like Jack’s. Without a positive I.D., such situations quickly degenerate to “my word against yours.” Our detective decided to take a different approach.

  “All right, Jack, who have you got hiding in there with you?”

  “I don’t have anyone hiding in here!” Jack yelled angrily from behind the door.

  “The girls over at the bank tell it differently. They say they saw someone sneaking in here a little earlier today.”

  Jack opened the door. “They’re crazy,” he said. “There hasn’t been anyone in my apartment all day long except me. See for yourself.”

  The officer did. He saw it all, from Jack’s head down to his toes. Jumpin’ Jack was finally arrested for indecent exposure.

  11

  Beats the Hell out of Me

  Marshal Larry Hawkins of Little Rock has his own story about Jumpin’ Jack Flasher.

  “I had a run-in with Jack myself once,” Hawkins told one of our America’s Dumbest Criminals writers. “One day I was patrolling the downtown area when this skinny little guy stops my car. It was Jumpin’ Jack. From the looks of him, he’d been worked over pretty good by somebody who wasn’t messin’ around. His left eye had a huge mouse under it, his lip was split open, and his face was all red, with a couple of knots on his head as well. He just looked like hell.”

  “What happened to you?” Hawkins asked.

  “I’ve been beat up,” Jack mumbled through clenched jaws.

  “I’ll say you have. Who beat you up, Jack?”

  “This woman down at the Laundromat,” he confessed in obvious pain and embarrassment.

  “A woman? A woman did this to you?”

  Hawkins thought maybe Jack had mixed it up with his girlfriend or something. So he put Jack in the back seat of the squad car and drove to the Laundromat. Through the storefront windows, the men could see several women inside cleaning clothes.

  “Jack, which one was it that beat you up?”

  “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I didn’t see her face.”

  “Wait a minute . . . let me get this straight. A woman in there beat you up, and you don’t know which one did it?”

  “I told you, I didn’t see her face.”

  “All right. You wait here while I go in and try to find out what happened.” So Hawkins walked into the place. One of the women addressed Hawkins, “Officer, we are so glad you’re here. A man came in here about ten minutes ago, pulled his shirt up over his head, and then dropped his pants.”

  “He wasn’t wearing any underwear, either!” added another woman.

  “So what happened then?” Hawkins asked, smiling.

  One of the women continued: “Then the man said, ‘Hey girls, does this remind you of anything?’ And Connie said, ‘Yeah, it does—it looks like a penis, only smaller!’ Then she reached out and grabbed him by the hair under his tee shirt and commenced to knock the hell out of him.”

  “Yeah,” the officer admitted. “That much is obvious.”

  “His arms were up over his head in that shirt,” the informant went on, “and he couldn’t do nothin’. It was over in about thirty seconds.” Then she added with some satisfaction, “You don’t mess with Connie!”

  She was right about that, too, Hawkins thought as he looked at a substantial woman in the corner nonchalantly folding some sheets. I certainly wouldn’t mess with Connie!

  Hawkins got back in the squad car and told Jack he was under arrest for exposing his privates in public.

  “Well, what about that woman in there? Aren’t you gonna do anything about her beatin’ me up like this?”

  “I thought you told me that you didn’t see who did it,” the officer said. “But if you want to go back in there and see if you can figure out who it was, I’ll just wait here for you, Jack.”

  “Uhhh . . . no . . . that’s okay. Let’s just get out of here,” Jack said. He kept staring through the window at Connie, who was still folding clothes.

  “Fine with me, Jack,” Hawkins said. “Let’s go.”

  12

  Insulated from Good Sense

  Anarcotics team had a house in Indiana surrounded. With warrants in hand, they entered the house and searched the premises. The man who was making most of the drug sales was nowhere to be found, but they knew he was in there somewhere. The house had been under surveillance for some time.

  Finally, the search took the officers to the attic. The place looked deserted, just like the rest of the house. One officer then noticed the right cheek of a pair of blue jeans sticking out of a roll of fiberglass insulation. At this point, an officer armed with a shotgun loaded another round into the chamber of his gun, even though his gun was already loaded. He was counting on the ominous sound of a pump shotgun being loaded to bring the suspect out of hiding.

  Suddenly, the fiberglass roll started shaking and moving around, and the suspect was hollering, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’m coming out . . . I’m coming out!”

  But it wasn’t the loading of the shotgun that had prompted our friend to acknowledge his presence. Before the police knew it, their suspect was out of the roll and scratching himself all over. Every square inch of exposed skin was painfully red and inflamed from exposure to the fiberglass, and the suspect was so caught up in his scratching that he barely glanced at the cops. “I was ready to give up anyway,” he mumbled.

  That was one time a suspect was caught red-handed and red-faced . . . just itching to give himself up!

  Suddenly, the fiberglass roll started shaking and moving around, and the suspect was hollering, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’m coming out . . . I’m coming out!”

  13

  Going out with a Bang

  Kerry and David weren’t very nice people. Their idea of a good time was to get drunk and drive some thirty miles outside their southwestern city and wreak havoc on whatever innocent desert creatures happened across their paths. Mainly coyotes.

  From their new four-by-four Blazer, they would either run them down or shoot them, or both, leaving their mangled carcasses lying in the desert. Sometimes they even set traps for the unsuspecting creatures, ensuring themselves sufficient victims for a day of demented sport.

  Yes, the whole thing was sickening and deplorable. But there finally came a day when one small coyote managed to get in a little payback.

  Our two sickos had removed a coyote from their trap and taped two sticks of dynamite to its body. Then they lit the fuses and turned the coyote loose.

  Scared, confused, and panicked, the hapless creature ran . . . for about ten feet. Then it turned and ran straight back toward its tormentors, the lit dynamite still hissing at its side. Kerry and David ran. The coyote followed. It would rush one way, zig and zag, then chase after the other guy. Finally, the coyote ran for the nearest cover, which was a five-by-eleven-foot shaded area—right under the new Blazer.

  The situation had quickly turned from bad to worse. The terrible two were now the ones scared, confused, and panicked. And they, like their little victim, were helpless. They couldn’t chase him off. They couldn’t drag him out. They couldn’t even get near him. In f
act, they had to run even faster now . . .

  Kaboom! Bye-bye, Blazer.

  Dumbfounded, the two ghoulies were suffering the consequences of their evil. They were thirty miles from home and stranded in the middle of the desert. No guns, no beer, no water, no whatever else they had brought with them— not to mention the loss of a twenty-thousand-dollar vehicle.

  When the two were finally rescued and the investigation completed, the two faced charges of animal cruelty and other violations against nature. And once the truth was out, the insurance company refused to cover the Blazer.

  It wasn’t enough. But that little coyote, although doomed, had at least managed to give them a small taste of what they deserved.

  14

  A Large Naked Anchovy and Pepperoni

  Police in Indiana arrested a man after an odd crime spree. It seems he dreamed of being a pizza delivery boy, so he decided he’d audition for the part. Police got the call when he went through an entire apartment complex knocking on doors—without a pizza, and wearing only a baseball cap.

  Police arriving on the scene gave chase, and the would-be delivery man fled, only to injure himself as he attempted to jump over a fence. He was, shall we say, arrested and booked in thirty minutes . . . or less.

  15

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

  Charlie Hackett, chief of police in Kokomo, Indiana, tells this story about dumb criminals determined to live high on the hog:

  “Someone called in a complaint about some rustling going on out in the country. My partner and I were working organized crime at the time, but we were the only ones on duty, so we had to go. We found that this farmer had been losing big time—twenty-five or thirty hogs in all—but not all at once. Those hogs had been disappearing one at a time, one a night. And each time the rustlers had managed to take the whole pig. The farmer had found blood, but no carcasses.”