Sunday, June 21, 2015

Most Stupid Criminals


As crime writers we work really hard to make our baddies (I was recently taken to task for gender-biased generalization by referring to the antagonists in my books as “bad guys”) realistic. Generally speaking, they are not maniacal geniuses with a penchant for hollowed-out-volcano living, classic G-Plan furniture and fluffy white cats.



However, neither are they in the running for the Darwin Awards for gross stupidity. Of course, the Darwin Awards are primarily given to people who have removed themselves permanently from the gene pool in the most idiotic and spectacular way. What I’m interested in here are those individuals with no talent for crime, yet who insist on committing it. The very ones, in fact, we would struggle to put into a book for fear of the inevitable cry: “Surely that would never happen!”

Much like the people who stripped off on a sacred mountain in Malaysia recently, American couple Alex Rust and Vanessa Palm may not have realised what they did was a crime. But then they posted pictures on Facebook of them eating Iguana in the Bahamas. When they did so they quickly discovered such a practice is illegal there, and ended up in jail.



Fugitive Maxi Sopo was found after Friending someone from the Department of Justice, that he thought was also into the Cancun Club scene. Then he told him where he lived. Whoopsie!


In May, Paul Robert Benson, a 24-year-old from Lurgan, stole groceries from his local supermarket. He might have got away without being identified, if he hadn’t decided to wear a Manchester United top with 'Benson 22' written on the back. The judge sentencing him to 12 months’ probation said that he might as well have had a neon sign on his back.



In March 1989 in South Carolina, Michael Anderson Godwin was a lucky murderer whose death sentence had been commuted to life in prison. Ironically, he was sitting on the metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix the TV set when he bit down on a live wire and electrocuted himself.



Always a good idea, if you’re going to carry out a successful robbery is to line up a good getaway vehicle. A gang of thieves from Colombia dismissed a car or a motorcycle in favour of Xavi, a 10-year-old donkey. They stole Xavi from his owner. This happened 12 hours before the main robbery, so they had plenty of time to look for a car (or really anything but a donkey), but they decided to stick to the donkey plan.  The three criminals successfully robbed a convenience store, stealing food and rum. Then they loaded their goods onto the donkey and prepared to make their escape, but Xavi decided not to cooperate. Up until this point, police were not even aware that a robbery had taken place, but Xavi started making so much noise that he attracted the attention of some nearby officers. The robbers fled on foot, leaving behind Xavi—along with, of course, all of the stolen goods loaded onto him.



One of the keys to a successful burglary is to find the right target. A really perfect house would be full of valuables with no people inside. The next best thing would probably be a home where the residents are sleeping. Now, on the opposite side of the spectrum, try to imagine what would make the worst target. How about a house full of police officers? That’s what Darren Kimpton of Abington, Northampton chose. The home he selected had already been burgled earlier that night. The owner had called the police, and officers were on the scene investigating the previous burglary when Kimpton broke in. He tried to make a run for it but was captured after a brief struggle. That wasn’t Kimpton’s first unsuccessful burglary attempt of the day. He’d previously tried to break into a nearby house but failed to do so. He did, however, manage to break some glass, cut himself, and leave blood at the scene, so cops easily linked the crime to him.

In October 2013, a man from Perth tried to rob a corner shop, and was foiled by his trousers. He took the till, and tried to run away with it, but his trousers were so loose they kept falling down. In the end he was forced to drop the till so he could hang onto his trousers. In the confusion he also dropped his knife and a pair of gloves, and the police used a sniffer dog to track him down. He was jailed for three and a half years.



Any spectacularly stupid and unsuccessful crimes that you’ve come across recently?


This week’s Word of the Week is hamartia, which refers to a protagonist’s fundamental flaw or error which leads to a reversal of fortune from good to bad.

15 comments:

  1. My hamartia is my unending willingness to return to this blog day after day, suffering slander, innuendo, and insult from international criminal masterminds...

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    1. And mine is to fall for pitiful behavior and remind you of I what I once told you. MIE would not be quite as much fun without you. No Nixonesque whining about not being pushed around any more please.

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    2. I agree with Annamaria, EvKa. Although I would point out that slander has to be spoken. When written down I believe it might be libellous ... :)

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    3. In defense of the accused, I will merely state that when I read these posts, I feel like the author is actually SPEAKING to me...

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  2. Lovely Zoe, regarding that sex bias: please notice that only one of the above are called anything like Annamaria, Zoe, Cara, Caro, Lisa, or Susan, and her crime was ignorance, not stupidity. Nor, to my knowledge, has any woman ever been nominated, much less won the Darwin award. The defense rests!

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    1. Ah, sorry to disappoint you, Annamaria, but there have been women Darwin Award winners. Not many, it has to be said, but here's one such example:

      '(30 May 2009, Louisiana) Back seat drivers beware! Annoyed at how slowly her boyfriend was driving, Tamera B, 22, encouraged him to pick up the pace so she could get to work on time. Joking that it would be faster to walk to work, she opened the door of the pickup truck and stuck her foot out before falling to her death.

      'But wait! Was her complaint valid? Nope. Deputies of the jurisdictional Sheriff's Office stated that the truck was traveling at highway speed on I-12 at the time of the incident. Her death was ruled accidental.'

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  3. In answer to your question, Zoë, and not rising to AA's bait, a certain election in a Mediterranean country I'm particularly fond of.

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  4. In Chicago in the 1970s a guy walked into a bar, pulled a gun and yelled that this was a robbery. The bar was called The Slammer. It was across the street from a police station. It was a cop bar that was, as usual, full of off-duty but well-armed cops. The guy was lucky. He lived and went to jail. FROM LENNY KLEINFELD via me, thanks to the vagaries of the Google Blogger software. It doesn't let me comment from my phone. It has shut Lenny out completely. Arrrghh! But
    I love the story!

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    1. I did read of something similar about a guy who decided to rob a convenience store and actually had to walk past two cop cars to enter the place as the officers were in the store at the time. His survival rate is not recorded.

      And I did go into a gun store in Florida years ago where, just over the till, was a sign with a picture of a smoking gun and the words: "We don't call 9-1-1"

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  5. I awoke one night in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s and realised that I had an intruder in my bedroom. Since I am a firm believer that one pays insurance premiums to replace goods stolen and that insurance is worthless for life stolen, I kept very quiet. Indeed I may have even increased my snoring decibels. When said intruder left the room, I quietly dialled 911 and reported the incident.

    Two minutes later, the intruder was apprehended driving my car out of the garage.

    He had tried to break into a house a couple of doors away. The owners had called the police, so when I called they were a mere 50 metres away.

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    1. I love it, Stan, and although part of me would want to react to being burgled, I can totally see the sense in your plan.

      I met a guy a while back whose motorcycles had been stolen from his garage during the night. When he woke up the next morning he found a brick next to his bed. The cops told him that while members of the gang were stealing the bikes, another had been posted to stand over him with the brick, just in case he *did* wake up...

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  6. I love the donkey getaway in Columbia!

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  7. Me too, Cara! The sad thing is, though, that when I was looking for a suitable picture I came across plenty of terrible ones of donkeys buckling under the weight of the loads they were being asked to carry. Not for nothing are they called beasts of burden.

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