Hello again, Crimefighters!
This is going to be hard. We've done stupid criminals
enough times before that we have used all of the easy, obvious
introduction ideas. So now what? We've talked about the foolish
felons' seeming inability to plan ahead, lack of intelligence and
the general dopiness of a life of crime. It becomes clear after
reading a few of the stories that these folks went into a life of
crime only because they were absolutely unsuited for anything
else. Not that crime suits them either, but it is something to
keep them busy between prison terms. These are clearly folks
from the shallow, scummy end of the gene pool.
Every so often, when I get philosophical, I like to sit back
and ponder what makes something funny. Some months ago, I went
to see a show at a local comedy club. It was mid-week so the
comics weren't exactly top bananas. Besides, the weather was
typical for Wisconsin at that time of year - snow, cold and a
real slog. This meant that the audience consisted of about 5
women and two men. (Including me. As one of the men.)
The first comic was reasonably funny, and the other was
passable. But when the headliner came out, he took one look at
the audience, and knew he was in serious trouble. He launched
into his act, which, if the audience was large enough - and drunk
enough - might have passed as amusing. As it was, it contained
way too many references to male anatomy and toilet jokes. The
women in the group reacted to this in much the same way that
Queen Victoria would react to a fart. They gave the guy the same
hostile glare a group of I. R. S. accountants gives a tax cheat.
Maybe it is a little mean-spirited, but I found this pretty
funny to watch. Warped, but funny. Not his act, which was way
too dirty to be very good, but the way you could watch each
failed joke fizzle like a wet firecracker as he plowed on
desperately, trying to find something - ANYTHING - that would get
a laugh. Just from his expression, it was clear that he was
sorry he'd missed the midnight bus to Moline, Illinois. After a
while, he looked sorry he hadn't been under the wheels of the
midnight bus to Moline. It was fascinating in the same way that
makes us stop and look at traffic accidents and other disasters.
The feeling that something, somewhere, went terribly, stupidly
wrong, and knowing what happened might help us avoid the same
dangers. Maybe it makes us feel superior thinking that we
wouldn't have made the same mistakes.
That's the feeling we get from reading stupid criminals
stories.
Thank you this week - and EVERY week, for that matter - to
the friends and contributors who help keep this thing flying,
especially: Dennis & Fumiko David (and Roxy the Wiener Wonder
Dog), Beth Butler, Chuck Maray, Tom Mereen, Josie Tong, Nnamdi
Elleh, Jerry Taff, Paul Roser, Ellen Peterson, Shawn Mullen,
Kerry Miller, Brian Siegl, Jan Michalski, R. J. & Mike Tully,
Sharon Nuernberg, Yasmin & Meredith Leischer, Tim McChain,
Kathleen Beckmann, Junji Taniguchi, Bruce Gonzo, Laura Hong Li,
Joshua Brink and Keiko Amakawa. Now I'll see just how much flop
sweat I can get into while you read the (it better be!) funny
stuff.
Have A Great Week,
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"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered
minds; our planet is the mental institution of the
universe."
- Johann von Goethe
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TIMING IS EVERYTHING...
--------------------
Crime is a serious problem in Rio De Janeiro these days.
One of the latest trends is outlaws that hold up bus passengers.
But one bus bandit exhibited record bad timing last month.
After allegedly stealing over $800 from bus passengers at
gunpoint, Jose Roberto Rocha ordered the bus to stop and jumped
off.
At least he chose a good spot for it - right in front of a
square where 410 uniformed police officers were gathered for an
awards ceremony. Dozens of officers chased after Rocha,
including the commanding general, who jumped off of the awards
podium to give chase. Rocha was captured after a short foot
pursuit. (Reuters)
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UNCLEAR ON THE BASICS...
---------------------
- Ronald Dean Cherry, 52, was arrested in Biloxi, Mississippi
last January. Police say he called the Treasure Bay Casino
and threatened to start shooting their customers unless the
company gave him $100,000 within two hours. Always helpful,
Cherry gave the casino operators his home address so they
could deliver the money.
- A man walked into a Burger King just after opening early one
morning, pulled a gun and demanded cash. The clerk said she
didn't know how to open the cash register drawer without a
food purchase, so the crook ordered onion rings. When the
clerk informed him that they weren't available for breakfast
he turned and walked out the door.
- Amy Brasher of San Antonio, Texas was arrested after a
mechanic informed police that there were 18 packages of
marijuana in the engine compartment of her car. Apparently,
it had never occurred to Ms. Brasher that the mechanic would
open the hood when she took the car in for an oil change.
[ Brasher's stash of hash under the dash? ]
- And police in Des Moines, Iowa arrested one Ronald Keith
Graham on the charge of stealing a TV set. Or maybe,
kidnapping a TV set would be more accurate. Rather than try
to sell the hot set to anyone else, he invited the TV set's
owners to his apartment where he offered to sell it back to
them for $150. He even offered them an easy payment plan.
They weren't interested, but the police were.
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THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE...
--------------------
Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be too helpful. When the
robber holding up the World Savings Bank in Plantation, Florida
was told that there were no envelopes for the cash, he simply
reached in his pocket and provided one of his own. Police
arrested suspect Alfred Fiser for the crime a short time later.
It seems the helpful holdup man had dropped a business card and
blank check when pulling out the envelope. (AP)
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OK, LET 'EM HAVE IT!
-------------------
When Jo Ann Walker of Des Moines, Iowa went out to walk her
dog one night, the last thing on her mind was that she would
become a crime victim.
Walker and her Cairn terrier Tippy were just getting back in
their car after a walk in a local park. She put her purse down
on the trunk for just a moment when three teenage males ran out
of the darkness and grabbed it. Surprisingly, she wasn't that
upset.
The 'purse' contained only dog droppings.
"I just wish I could have seen their faces when they opened
it up," Walker said. (AP)
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THE CRIMINAL CODE...
-----------------
Authorities in Holyoke, Massachusetts arrested Hipolito Vega
on a warrant for driving without a license. Like all other
prisoners, he was given one phone call to his friends and family.
According to police, he called his business partner, explaining
that he had been picked up and giving his pal detailed directions
on how to find the stash of crack cocaine hidden in an alley
nearby.
No, he wasn't quite as stupid as that. He spoke in Spanish
to fool the police. Smart, eh?
It probably would have been even smarter for Vega to notice
that the booking officer standing next to him during the entire
phone call was Officer Manuel Rivera, who had no difficulty
understanding Spanish.
Officers got to the alley first and Vega had the drug charge
added to his troubles. (Slidell Sentry-News)
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PRIDE GOETH BEFORE AN ARREST?
----------------------------
It is probably good to be proud of your accomplishments.
And it is a great boost to the ego to see your name in print.
But sometimes, it isn't very smart.
Kenneth "Fudd" Tucker, 20, had been wanted on robbery
charges for more than seven months when police caught up with
him. He was caught because one of his new friends saw a wanted
poster with his picture on it. For some reason, Tucker was
carrying the poster around in his knapsack. (AP)
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DROP THE CHALUPA!
----------------
Taco Bell advertises that they are open late, but they don't
make any claims in their ads about being 100% accurate. Dion
Rayford apparently didn't get what he wanted at the Taco Bell
drive-thru in Lawrence, Kansas. That made him pretty angry. So
angry that the University of Kansas football player went after
the employee who'd left out his extra chalupa. There were a
couple of things wrong with this:
1). The drive-thru window he tried to force his way through
was one of those teeny ones with the little doors.
2). Rayford is no midget.
On the bright side, police didn't have to look far to find
the grouchy gourmet; the 6' 3", 270-pound (190cm/123kg) defensive
end hadn't gotten very far. In fact, he hadn't even gotten
through the window before it broke. He was stuck hanging halfway
into the restaurant building. Or, halfway out, depending on how
you look at it.
"When you take a big guy and put him through a small space,
something's got to give," said police Sgt. George Wheeler.
Rayford entered a plea of innocent to charges of disorderly
conduct, having an open container of alcohol and misdemeanor
damage to property. He was suspended by his college team, too.
(AP)
[ Bad football player! No chalupa. ]
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"Obviously crime pays, or there'd be no crime."
- Watergate co-conspirator G. Gordon
Liddy, now a successful radio talk
show host. Ironic, isn't it?
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JUST DESSERTS?
-------------
True justice is always difficult to achieve, but sometime
things work out better than anyone could plan.
Jair Coelho, a 68-year-old multi-millionaire from Rio de
Janeiro is known throughout Brazil as "The King of The Lunch
Box." Critics say he made much of his cash by catering
poorly-made meals to Brazilian government institutions - over
20,000 per day in Rio de Janeiro state alone. Investigators
recently caught wind of some of his shadier dealings, which
landed the food magnate behind bars pending formal charges of
fraud and racketeering.
Any guess who supplies the food for the prison where Coelho
is being held? Yup, the king of slimy salami himself.
Not only that, but prison officials had to put him in a
special isolation cell because his celebrity status as supplier
of the prison's food made him very popular with the other
inmates. Very appropriately, they'd like to make cold cuts out
of him after having endured years of his chintzy cuisine.
"This precaution was taken because there was a risk of
retaliation from prisoners who eat the food supplied by his
company," said Alvaro Lins, director at the Rio de Janeiro port
prison. (Reuters)
[ Coelho claims the charges are baloney - and
he ought to know... ]
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WHEN TWO PAIR BEAT TWO PAIR...
---------------------------
A pair of fake policemen working the back streets of Paris
figured they had the perfect victims for their identity check
scam. They approached a pair of Chinese tourists and claimed to
be checking papers, then said that they'd have to take the
tourist into custody because their visas were not in order. Of
course, the phoney police said, they would forget the whole thing
for a few hundred francs.
There was only one problem with the plan. The tourists were
actually two Chinese policemen on holiday in France.
With the help of the precise descriptions provided by their
observant Chinese colleagues, the real French cops had no trouble
rounding up the bogus ones. (Reuters)
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RED-HANDED...
----------
When Chesterton, Indiana police received a call about a
suspicious man in a gas station bathroom, they couldn't help but
notice the strong smell of glue. They confronted the suspect and
asked if he'd been sniffing glue in the bathroom. The police say
that 34-year-old Brett Kolarik denied that he'd been doing
anything but smoking a cigarette. The police had no choice but
to accept his answer, right up until the point where he tried to
flick away the burned-down butt.
And couldn't.
Kolarik has been charged with public intoxication and glue
sniffing. (The Times of Northwest Indiana)
[ Yup... He's stuck! ]
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FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN!
---------------------------
A Russian criminal, described by the cops as a "dangerous
fugitive," tried to flee the country at a border post between the
Ukraine and Slovakia. Of course, he was well-known to the cops
and had to adopt a disguise. As part of said disguise, he had a
crooked doctor apply artificial ear lobes, to change the way he
looked.
So far, so good. But police became slightly suspicious at
the border post when they were interviewing him as he tried to
enter the country. You might become suspicious, too, if you were
in conversation with someone and their ear fell off. This led to
more pointed questions and the fleeing felon was soon back behind
bars.
According to a local Ukrainian newspaper, the dubious doctor
had saved a couple of dollars by using a cheap, Russian-made
medical glue instead of a high-quality Western one. (Reuters)
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HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW...
-------------------------
In a related story, United Micro System, a New Jersey-based
hair replacement company agreed to pay $300,000 to settle claims
that it had cheated customers.
In Internet and magazine ads, the company had touted a "hair
replacement system" claiming that its "Dermal Retention System"
was "the secret of the rich and famous." They also claimed that
the system was virtually permanent, had a 98.1 percent success
rate and would create an "undetectable hairline." The company
said that hair was to be attached to the scalp using "an
FDA-approved, medical grade interfusion system."
That's an incredibly fancy way to say they slapped some glue
on your head and stuck on some fake hair.
More than 200 dissatisfied customers complained to the New
Jersey Attorney General that their glued-on toupees fell off
after a few days -- and "looked far from natural," department
spokeswoman Genene Morris said. The company was stuck paying
restitution and costs. (Reuters)
[ You could even say that the ads were bald-
faced lies... ]
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© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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