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NARRATOR: Tonight on
America's Dumbest Criminals, do you think there's any chance
you'd mistake this criminal
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for Jackie Chan or
John Claude van Damme? Just what does
this guy think he's doing in the women's restroom?
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And is breaking
into someone's car really a good way to meet girls? The answers to these and
other mind numbing questions
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are in tonight's
line-up, right here on America's Dumbest Criminals. [theme music]
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-When are they gonna come
out with a CD of that music? I love that music. -You mean the soundtrack album?
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-That really dates you. -Well, I dunno. 8 tracks. I mean, come on. Good evening, and
welcome to the show.
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-Tonight we've got a little
bit of everything for you. -And we're starting things
off with a tribute to one
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of America's favorite movies,
"Singing in the Rain." -No we're not. -Yes we are.
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Well, you've seen
the surveillance footage we're about to show. -Yeah. -Didn't that remind you
of "Singing in the Rain?"
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-No. It doesn't. -No? -Sure it does. -No. "Singing in the Rain" had
Gene Kelly dancing up a storm,
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and Donald O'Connor
dancing up a wall. -Yeah, yeah, sure. And this clip looks just like
that Donald O'Connor scene,
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except that the crook
is dancing up a door. -I don't think so. -Well, all right.
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If not "Singing in
the Rain," let's see if you'll buy a
fairy tale instead. Check this out.
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NARRATOR: Just as the big bad
wolf huffed and puffed till he blew the pig's house down,
this would be criminal kicks,
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and he kicks, and
he kicks some more to try to kick his way out
of a Tampa department store.
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Hey, that was a
halfhearted effort. But does the door open? Not by the hair of this
robber's chinny chin chin.
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Maybe it's time for this
not so big and not so bad wolf to give it a rest. -See?
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-Not so big, and not so bad. OK. OK. -It was choreographed. -Yeah. -I mean, maybe he wasn't
like Donald O'Connor,
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but he did make
them laugh, right? -Oh, sing more. -No.
-Make 'em laugh. No. -OK, it did make them laugh,
but that is all I give you.
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-OK. -All right, now we
turn things around. -OK.
-Turn around. -What? All right.
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-From a break out
in Tampa, Florida, to a break in in
Annapolis, Maryland. This guy was no state
of the art criminal,
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but he did find himself on the
cutting edge of this crime. -I was investigating a
burglary one Monday morning,
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and the inside of this
three story office complex in downtown Annapolis
was covered in blood.
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We really expected to find
a body in this building, but we didn't, thank goodness.
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We learned that the burglar had
climbed over a appointed rod iron fence and broke
a glass window,
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and cut himself pretty bad,
and started passing out inside the building,
and gave up looking
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for whatever it is he wanted. And when he left, he hoisted
himself over the iron fence,
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and crashed right
into the ground. As we were doing
our investigation, one of our records clerks
came across a report
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of an injured person that
happened the weekends that we believed the burglary happened.
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We had a name, and we found
the other person had done previous burglaries
in North Carolina.
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The person was also
at our local hospital, so he was pretty easy to find. Inside the burglary, one
of our crime lab techs
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told me that he had found
a bloody thumbprint. Well, we matched that
thumbprint up to the person that
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had been injured
at the hospital. When he was released from the
hospital, I interviewed him.
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Sitting at the table, he
pretty much clammed up. I asked him about the burglary.
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He said he knew
nothing about it, and wouldn't tell me anything. Didn't even want to talk to me.
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I noticed that he
did have a scar, a pretty fresh scar on his arm. But next to that fresh
scar was an older score.
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-Boy, that's a nasty scar. How did you get that? -Oh. I got this scar down
in North Carolina
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at a burglary I did down there. It bled real bad down here,
but did you see all the blood
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I left up here? -Mm-hm. -So I just began writing,
and got my confession. Now, that's a dumb criminal.
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-Some criminals make it
easy for the cops sometimes. -They do. Well, never show
your scars, you know?
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Now, the ideal
job for many of us would be one where you're
paid for not working, right?
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-Which is what you have! -Hey, I'm breaking
a sweat here, OK? Look. -Unless you--
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-[inaudible]. -Unless you enter
politics, I don't think that kind of
position exists.
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But our next crook thought
he found the secret, but he was wrong. Very wrong. See what I mean.
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NARRATOR: You wouldn't think
it unusual for a custodian to provide a little routine
maintenance on the time clock
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at the school where he worked. But this wasn't little,
routine, or maintenance. He regularly manipulated
the clock to make time fly,
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and in the process, punched
up his take home pay for hundreds of
hours he didn't work.
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-Some, not all, but some
custodian and custodian helpers are feeding at the
trough because no one
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is watching them. -Once we caught Mr. Damon and
confronted him with that video, he admitted that he was stealing
between $5,000 and $6,000
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a year that way. They feel that they can cheat
the system when they want, or how they want.
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NARRATOR: Oh, but they are being
watched, by millions of people, right here on America's
Dumbest Criminals.
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America's Dumbest Laws. A Texas law states that when
two trains meet at a crossing,
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each shall come to a
full stop, and neither shall proceed until
the other has gone.
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-That's a law. I think I've sat
in my car at one of those railroad crossings. Well, in just a minute
we'll be heading
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to our blue light special
involving a video voyeur who completely embarrasses
themselves.
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But first, here's
this week's edition of America's Dumbest Excuses. Now, this story involves
a woman in Abilene, Texas
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who was caught speeding. She claimed that she had
to go to the bathroom-- and believe me, she was fully
prepared to provide evidence.
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Bear with us, here. -I radared a lady doing 80
miles an hour in a 40 zone, and when I went up to contact
her after stopping her,
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she immediately
started cussing at me, and swearing, and said the
reason she was going so fast
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is she was in a hurry to get
home and use the restroom, and continued swearing. So I went back to the car
to write her a citation,
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and got back up there, and the
lady had pulled her dress up around her waist,
and was urinating
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in an empty bread sack. I had to step back for a minute,
but I went ahead and handed her
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the ticket and let her signed
it, then, uh, I took the book, but I told her she
could keep the pen.
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And that just appeared
to make her even madder, and she began
swearing at me again.
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But I wished her a good day,
and let her leave at that time. -Gosh. What our fine police
officers have to put up with.
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I think I would have
just paid the fine and kept my big mouth shut. Daniel, will you please
change subjects for us?
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-Yeah. An empty bread sack? I just-- aw. Well, I can change the
subject, but only marginally,
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because we have to go to the
bathroom for our next story. But it's an entirely
different crime scene, OK?
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Watch as this voyeur gets
caught in his own trap. Here's tonight's
blue light special.
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NARRATOR: This man is not just
an electronic peeping tom. He's a perfectionist. Look how he fusses with
the camera he's hidden
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in the stall of a
women's restroom. Turn it this way,
now turn it that way. More up.
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More down. Now switch sides
and start all over. His camera was disguised
in this beat up box.
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Obviously the guy
wasn't exactly James Bond when it came to taping. Heck, he wasn't even Richard
Nixon with Linda Tripp.
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But he was definitely deep
into his deviant scheme. Notice how he daintily drapes
toilet paper across the box.
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But his plot boomeranged on him. Instead of catching
unsuspecting women, he caught himself with plenty
of videotaped evidence,
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which is anything
but flattering. -Well, this guy obviously
has a serious kink, and I think it involves
bathrooms, to say the least.
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He takes a great deal
of pride, of pleasure in getting into bathrooms and
placing video cameras in such
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a position to catch
women when they're in their most
private of moments. In fact, we believe that
on one or two occasions,
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he was actually in the
stall adjacent to the women using the bathroom, and zooming
in on them at just the right,
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or wrong moment, depending
on your point of view. He has a problem, and I'm
glad we finally caught him.
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He says he's done this
more than one time. Now, right now the new law
makes this a misdemeanor,
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being caught one time. However, if he's caught
again, it becomes a felony. It's voyeurism.
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NARRATOR: If he tries
this stunt again, the law will put him
somewhere it'll be a long time
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before he finds any
bathroom privacy. -OK, that went by kind
of quick, all right,
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so you may not have spotted
that tiny inconspicuous camera that the man was using.
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Let's roll back so
you're sure to see that. Yep, there it is. Yeah. That tiny camera in that
box the size of a microwave.
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Now, ladies, if you
walk into a stall and you see a box like
that next to the toilet,
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just go to the next stall, OK? All right? Remember that tip. -He could fit the camera and
the cameraman in that box.
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-Mm-hm. -I'll never go to a
public restroom again. Thank you, Daniel. Well, they say that a
dog is man's best friend,
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but I think this dog
in our next story should consider expanding
his circle of acquaintances.
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Or maybe the two are just
bad influences on each other. Let's watch. -A dog got picked
up running at large,
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and was placed in the
animal control shelter. -Day or two later, the owner of
the dog came into the shelter,
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except he came through the
window when we weren't here. I guess he felt he didn't
want to pay the fines.
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-But we didn't have
any way to prove it. A few weeks later, the
dog was picked up again.
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-We figured if he was foolish
enough to come in once, well, we set up an alarm
inside the building.
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When he did come in
the second time, well, he set off the alarm. -That morning we got a call
that the alarm we had set up
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had gone off. -As he left the building going
out through the back door, why, an officer was
there to greet him.
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I can't believe someone was
so dumb that he wouldn't pay the few dollars' bail to get
his dog out, and then end up
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in jail and paying
a considerably larger fine to get out of jail. -Coming up is our latest
blue light special,
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but right now with news
that'll make great small talk at your next job interview,
if you're going after a really
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dumb job, here's Daniel
with ADC Headlines. -A man broke into a Niagara
Falls clothing store
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and made off with a
load of designer jeans. The next day, on the
other side of town,
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he had the misfortune
of approaching the owner of the shop and her
son on the street
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about buying his duffel
bag of dungarees. Upon examining them, her son
recognized that they were
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an absolute steal, and he held
the would be street vendor while his mother
called the police.
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A bank robber in Philadelphia
entered a laundromat hoping to use the change
machine to trade
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his red dye stained greenbacks
for something a little less conspicuous, but
the machine refused
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to comply with his
money laundering scheme, repeatedly rejecting
his red hot bills.
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A laundromat employee alerted
police, who arrested the man so he could be hung out
to dry by the courts.
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Police in Lewisburg, Tennessee
spied a 10 gallon tub of marijuana plants, but they
didn't have the staff on hand
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to support a stake out
and capture its owner. So instead, they confiscated
the not so secret garden
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and convinced the local
newspaper to print a picture with the caption "Have you
lost a tub of marijuana?
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If so, you may claim it at
the Lewisburg police station." To their amazement,
the owner appeared
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to claim his prodigal pot. This is a true story. And that closes the file on
ADC Headline News, ripped
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from somewhere near the back
of your local newspaper. Debbie? -Thanks, Daniel. We like it when criminals make
it easy for the cops, huh?
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OK, you can predict
things will go downhill when you hear where
our story starts.
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A man tried to rob
a drug rehab center and barely gets 12 steps out
the door before trouble ensues.
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Police are called and
follow in hot pursuit. Actually, it was more
like lukewarm pursuit,
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given the snail's pace at
which the man was traveling. Watch this police
surveillance footage,
00:14:14
and we think you'll
see what we mean. NARRATOR: He took off in a
pickup truck, leading officers
00:14:20
on one of the slowest
chases in history-- at a staggering 8 miles an hour. The chase was so slow, in fact,
that police had time to build
00:14:32
this apartment complex
to block his path. And what a fine job it did. He took off on foot, and
the building took a hit.
00:14:41
But soon the crook was
taken down by a police dog. -You know, what do
you do if you have
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outstanding fines and
no money to pay them? Well, this woman
in Winslow, Arizona
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thought she'd come up with
an outstanding solution. But she was wrong. See how her outstanding
solution brought
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about her incarceration. -A couple of years
ago I was dispatched to the local courthouse to take
a report of two forged checks.
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It turns out that a woman
had owed a big fine, and she had paid on
her fine with two
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stolen cashier's checks. It didn't take long
for us to catch her, because she had paid at
the local courthouse,
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and she later confessed
to the whole thing. -Real smart, huh? She used stolen forged checks to
pay her fine at the courthouse.
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Let's say it together-- two
wrongs don't make one right. All right girls, admit
it-- sometimes we
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make it hard for guys
to get to know us. We play hard to get, or put
all the pressure on them
00:15:49
to make the first move, huh? Well, the guys
you're about to meet thought they were
being clever, but they
00:15:54
were being criminally dumb. See how their quest for dates
dropped them into the pits.
00:16:02
-We responded to a
vehicle theft in progress in front of one of
our local stores.
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As I arrived, I see the
car in the parking lot, all the doors are
open, and it's sitting
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out in the middle of nowhere. Find the victim and several
of her friends, teenage girls,
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there. As I came out, there were
three guys in the car that they didn't know. When they tried to approach
the car and talked to the guys,
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they all bailed out of her
car, jumped in their own car, and left. The guys had kind
of trashed the car,
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threw some stuff
around, and the driver pulls her day planner out. The first thing she
noticed was there
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was writing on the
cover that wasn't hers. She said, hey, this
is a guy's name, and I don't know
this phone number.
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I don't know whose it is. So we get a cell phone
and call the number, and we put the girls on,
and they talk to him.
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The girl finally asks him,
well, what's your address? Maybe we can come over to
your house and party some.
00:16:46
So the guy gives them
their address, me and several other officers
climb into an unmarked car.
00:16:50
We follow the girls
up to this address, and we let them get ahead on us. They get out and start
talking to the guys.
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We pull up and come
bailing out of the car, and they're all looking at us,
like uh-oh, what's happened?
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We arrested the three
guys that were there. We're like, hey, man, what's up? Why are you breaking
into these girls' car?
00:17:05
Well, you know,
we wanted a date. Since they couldn't get
a date on their own, we kind of gave them
a date with a judge.
00:17:20
NARRATOR: What happens when
a man users livestock to make a laughingstock
of his girlfriend?
00:17:25
The answer when America's
Dumbest Criminals returns. -We all know that
breaking up is hard to do,
00:17:47
and this edition of We're Not
Making This Up is living proof. -Or in this case,
not so living proof.
00:17:54
-See what happens when this
guy messes with the bull and gets the horns. -Well, this goof
decided that he wanted
00:18:02
to get back at
his ex-girlfriend. So he got a cow's head
from a local meat market
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where a buddy of
his worked, and he placed it on the
hood of her car. So in investigating it, we
went back and tracked him down,
00:18:14
and it appears that he
has a new girlfriend now, and used her car. Then when I talked to the
new girlfriend and found her,
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she had no idea her car was
being used to transport a cow's head, and had no idea what
her new boyfriend was up to.
00:18:27
We were going to arrest
him for stalking, but we didn't have
enough to charge him on.
00:18:31
So we charged him with
littering for one thing, moving the cow's head out there.
00:18:34
It's been the dumbest
littering violation I've ever seen in my eight years
of law enforcement.
00:18:41
-OK. Well, now, obviously
no cows were harmed in the filming
of this dumb crime.
00:18:49
-But that guy used
a real cow's head. -Yeah, he did. -Sick. Did he kill the cow?
00:18:54
-No, actually, it died
of natural causes. Yeah. -That reminds me of
"Fatal Attraction."
00:18:58
-Yes, sort of. But it's time for
us to head on out. -Aw, that is terrible. -Well, what?
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Should I have said move along? -No. -All right. -You should have just
said that it's time to go.
00:19:09
-All right. Come back next week, when
we'll have a whole herd of new criminal
dumbness on display.
00:19:14
-Stop with the bovine humor. -I can't stop. -And if you've got
a lead on a story,
00:19:18
or you just can't wait for
more state of the art stupidity and dumb puns, visit our
website at www.dumbcrimes.com.
00:19:28
-Want to thank you
for joining us, and extend our gratitude
to the law enforcement
00:19:31
officers who make
this show possible. Every day they lay
their lives on the line
00:19:35
to keep us safe from
the stupidity of would be criminals. -As always, we hope we've all
learned from others' mistakes.
00:19:41
-But if you haven't,
again, we just might see you next week on
America's Dumbest Criminals.
00:19:47
-Goodbye.