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NARRATOR: Tonight
on America's Dumbest Criminals, better
safe than sorry? He'll be sorry he tackled this
safe before the night is over.
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A macho man has some real
explaining to do, and discover a new reason why it's a good
idea to check your bags.
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There's no shortage of
malcontents lining up to vie for the title of
America's Dumbest Criminals.
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[theme music] NARRATOR: Now, welcome
your hosts for ADC, Daniel Butler and Debbie Allen.
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-Again? Hi, there. We've got a truly strange
assortment of stories tonight. We've got skimpy details on
exotic lingerie that you're
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going to love, keys to doors
that provide keys to crimes, and a self arrest that's
almost too good to be true.
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-And something really
unique-- a police officer who solves a crime
with the use of ESPN.
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-There's no N. -You're right, Debbie,
there's no end to the crazy things that we're going to see--
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-No, there's no N N in
what the officer used. It's just ESP. You should have stopped
when you got to P.
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-Oh, I always do. Yeah, in fact, I
took care of business before we began the show.
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But if you're trying
to tell me you need to visit the little
girl's room, go ahead.
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I'll cover for you. -Daniel, this is about
being able to read another person's mind.
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-I know. I got you. You, me. Simpatico, OK? Now go on, powder your nose. I'll cover.
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It's OK. -Just introduce our
first story, please? -OK. Sure. On numerous occasions,
a guy had been
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helping himself to
beer at a store. Well, the clerk wasn't
amused, so he decided
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to turn the beer blast
into a beer bust. See what happens when
it all comes to a head.
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Here's Caught On Camera. -It was a 24 hour
convenience store, and this guy on a
repeated basis would
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go in and walk out
with a 12 back of beer. And it happened about five
times in a period of six months.
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And the clerk recognized him
from stealing beer before, and locked him in the store.
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-Caught your [bleep]
today, buddy. Yeah! -The clerk was mad because he
lost a week's pay, because he
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allowed the guy to
steal beer before. -You gonna get locked up. That's what gonna happen.
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-Ironically, a police
car pulled in to get gas, and the clerk got
on the loudspeaker.
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-Hey, can you come
here for a second? I got this man that's
stealing this beer. In the bathroom.
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You fixin' to get knocked up
with that [bleep] right now! There he is, in the bathroom.
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Same man that got me suspended. -I guess this was his revenge,
to lock the guy in the store.
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-Hey, he did it twice on me. He did-- the time I got
suspended, it was him. And he did it one other time.
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I took a pay cut
from you, though. Hey, you ain't got nothing
to say to me, though.
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-There are three key
components of a good memory. I forgot what they
are right now,
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but neither can the crook
you're about to meet. -He makes it usually
convenient to get picked up
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after he robs a
convenience store. He speeds the culmination of
this quick sack with Something
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To Remember Me By. -I had answered a call one time
to a convenience store robbery.
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-Yeah, I want to buy this. -When I rolled up on
it, I saw the clerk, and she seemed very calm.
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And she says, I don't
know why he robbed me. I know who he is. And she was telling me
how he approached and set
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a beer on the counter
to pay for it. And I look down, there's a
set of keys on the counter.
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And when I looked at the keys,
it had his name and address on it, which was the same
address that she was pointing
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to cross the street
from the store. We went across the street
to this residence that
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was on the key chain, and
sure enough, there he was. And when I asked him
to release his keys,
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he said, OK, I know you got me. -Mormon cousins described
Richard Nixon's motto as if two wrongs don't
make a right, try three.
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It's a philosophy
clearly embraced by a thief in
Buckingham, Pennsylvania. -Discover with us
the back breaking
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burden of stealing
a 700 pound safe. People with hernias may
want to avert their eyes.
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-Several years ago we
received for a burglary. We responded, and
the victim advised us
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that the subjects had
taken a very large safe. They loaded into the
back of a Chevy Camaro.
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The safe weighed
approximately 700 pounds, plus the weight of
the three people in the car.
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When they were fleeing the
scene, the car broke down, the clutch burned out. The subjects at that
point took a hammer,
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broke the back out, took the
jewelry and the stolen goods out of it, then called a
tow truck to pick up the car
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and take it back home. They split up at that point. When we get on scene
the car was still there,
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because the one subject that
owned the car couldn't lift the safe out of
the car by himself,
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so he left it sitting in
his driveway with the safe still in plain view. The Camaro just isn't engineered
to carry a 700 pound safe,
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and because of
that, it broke down and we found the vehicle
in the guy's front yard.
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NARRATOR: In Connecticut,
you may not educate dogs. -I'm sure even Connecticut's
most uneducated mongrel has
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more on the ball
than a shoplifter in Dumfries, Virginia. As you'll see,
this guy even tries
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to pin his problems on his cat. Here's a twisted tale
from the hall of fame we call America's
Dumbest Excuses.
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-Had a case where a local Harley
Davidson shop got broke into, and I was the first
unit on the scene.
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Caught a gentleman
coming out of the side window of the business. Had him at gunpoint, and he
was telling me, don't shoot,
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don't shoot. I'm just looking for my cat. And I said, your cat? Cat's in the side
of the building?
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He says, no, man, the
window was already open. So we detained him, located
some items in the building,
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Harley Davidson products
that were all laid up on this blanket, like somebody's
just gonna grab the blanket
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and steal these items. Leather vests, and
things of that nature. Also, he had a pair of
pink panties in his loot.
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When we told him about the
pink panties, what was he going to do with them, he
turned red and said,
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hey, man, don't tell
anybody about that. Just-- I did it. I don't have any
idea what he was
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going to use the panties for. -As you'll see, the score
at the end of this story
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will be feisty old guy one, and
no good young whippersnapper zero. It's time to raise Cain
with our Blue Light Special.
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NARRATOR: Meet
the senior citizen equivalent of Bat Masterson. This 74-year-old Albuquerque
man was loading groceries
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into his car when he was
approached by young thug. -Can you give me
a quarter, $0.50?
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And I said, I don't have $0.50. NARRATOR: Then the young
guy grabbed two $5.00 bills
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from the older
man's shirt pocket. -He went, and here
I go after him. NARRATOR: The robber dove
to the floorboard of his car
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while the old fellow whacked,
poked, and pestered the thief with his trusty cane
until help arrived.
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-I was gonna say,
that money was mine. NARRATOR: For his
actions, his mailman thinks he deserves
letters of recommendation.
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-I thought that was fantastic. Maybe it'll make a lot more
would be robbers think twice
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before they pick on the elderly. NARRATOR: Though police
don't recommend fighting back
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in such situations, they
were impressed enough with his handywork
to make him an offer.
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-They say, hey, you
want to be a policeman? NARRATOR: Hey, would you want
to tell him that he can't be?
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-His business was so
good, this drug dealer wasn't likely to go
bust anytime soon,
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so the police department
in Saint Tammany Parish, Louisiana, stepped
in to help matters.
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And when they did, their arrest
rate picked up considerably. -About two years ago, some of
our undercover narcotics agents
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acquired some information
that there was some heavy duty marijuana dealing
going on outside
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of a trailer near this
down of Medicineville. Because we believed there
were weapons in the home,
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our SWAT team was
mobilized and helped them to affect a search warrant. While we were there
executing the search warrant
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and recovering drugs from
various hiding places in the home, the
customers continued
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to arrived at the house. So our undercover
narcotics agents were able to continue
making marijuana sales
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to the bad guys, who wound
up actually arresting eight people that day on a
search warrant that
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was intended to net only two. -And now with news is a
man who is to journalism what Austin Powers
is to dentistry.
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Here's Dan with ADC Headlines. -A Wisconsin man
thought his wife wanted to kiss and make up
after an argument.
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Instead, she clinched
her teeth to perform a bit of oral surgery. That's right, she
took her revenge right
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off the tip of his
tongue, leaving her stunned husband
mad enough to spit. If you think someone plans to
drive drunk, you take the keys.
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But what do you do if
the vehicle is a horse? Someone should've warned the
cowboy in Pierre, South Dakota
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to whoa before he
climbed into the saddle, as he would later learn. Under South Dakota law,
operating a horse while
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under the influence of alcohol
carries the same penalty as operating a car while drunk.
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Hey. Especially those
four door models. If you've ever stressed out over
filling out your tax return,
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you'll empathize with a poor
man in Paris, Tennessee. He freaked out when his tax
preparation software glitched.
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Fearing that he wouldn't be
able to file on time, certain that this spelled
trouble with the IRS,
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he called 911 to complain
that he had been defrauded. The officer who responded
to the man's home
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explained in no uncertain terms
that such inappropriate calls could bring stiff penalties.
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Here's wishing the guy
many happy returns. And that closes the
file on ADC Headlines,
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news ripped from somewhere near
the back of your local paper. Debbie? -Here's a 911 call with a less
familiar ring than Daniel's
00:11:24
last story-- at least
I hope that's the case. When the 911 operator
took the call,
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there was fear and apprehension
in the caller's voice. But as this story
unfolds, things
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change from apprehension
to self-apprehension. Here's tonight's
special delivery.
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-One night about 2:00 in
the morning I was working general control, when I
got a call of a citizen who
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apparently, he had come home,
had a little too much to drink. For whatever reason,
grabbed his handcuffs
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and started playing with them. Ended up slapping a
cuff on each wrist. It wasn't until after
he'd locked them
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down good and tight on himself
that he realized that he didn't have a key, or any way of
getting out of his handcuffs.
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So I guess knowing that most
police officers carry handcuff keys, he gave our department
a call and said, please help.
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Come get me out of these things. So they sent me to it. He gave his name and date
of birth, and everything.
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So on my way there we did
a warrant check on the guy, and sure enough he came back
with an arrest warrant out
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of another local
jurisdiction here. So on the way there, I
have this information now.
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I'm going there expecting to
arrest this guy when he calls back and says, well, wait,
I slipped one hand out,
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so you don't need
to send the officer. So knowing this
guy had a warrant, I told him I'll advise him
that I have a spare handcuff
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key with me, and I'll just
swing by and give it to him. That way we won't have
this problem again.
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So he said, OK,
that'll work for him. So I pull up in
front of the house, and here's this young
man standing out front.
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Got a cordless
phone in one hand, and got a set of handcuffs
hanging off one wrist.
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Apparently he was
talking to his friend, and as he approaches me,
I can hear him telling
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his friend that, oh,
that cops are here. They're gonna get me
out of these handcuffs.
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I took the dangling handcuff
and put it in my hand, just like I was
looking at it, making
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sure I had the right key
for it, or something. Told him that the
light was kind of bad,
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so I needed to move
around behind him so I could use the streetlight. So I got his hand
behind his back.
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Once I had his hand
behind his back, I went ahead and
took my handcuffs out and handcuffed him
with my handcuffs.
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Told him he was under arrest
for an outstanding warrant, and then told him that I'd
let him keep his hadcuffs.
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We'd just use mine for
the rest of the evening. -Police officers find
crooks hiding out
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in all sorts of strange places. But if you watch
closely, in this story you'll see that
one stands alone.
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Take a look. -My partner and I were working
the violent felony warrant program, and we got a tip
that this wanted person
00:13:46
was in an apartment
up in Harlem. We arrived at the apartment,
knocked on the door,
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and another man answered,
who wasn't wanted. So we started questioning
him about the whereabouts
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of this particular person
we were looking for, and of course he had no idea
what we were talking about.
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There was, like, a loft right
above this one room apartment. It was like, people put
suitcases, I guess, or storage.
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And there was about
10 suitcases up there, and there was one large
one at the beginning
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of the row of suitcases. I was hearing
noise, and I didn't know where it was coming from.
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I thought it was rats. All of a sudden, he must
have moved in the suitcase, because they all started
falling, like a domino effect.
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And sure enough, that last
suitcase was our [inaudible]. I was very shocked
to see him in there.
00:14:38
NARRATOR: Now, let's look back
at one of ADC's Greatest Hits. The man you're watching
is under surveillance
00:14:45
by undercover officers in the
underwear division of the New Sewickley, Pennsylvania
police department.
00:14:50
And yes, he is
conducting a panty raid. -He even confronted our
victim the very first time.
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They looked each
other in the face, and had this amazing
shock upon his face, but he still came back.
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NARRATOR: The trap was set after
the owner filed a complaint that this guy returned
on a weekly basis.
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-You can see him
grabbing the panties. And that's when you see two
men, of course they're dressed
00:15:09
in plain clothes, we barged
out the door, yelled, police! Freeze! Stop! NARRATOR: The police
clotheslined him
00:15:14
and hauled him in. At first, he claimed that the
lingerie made good slingshots, but eventually
confessed to the theft
00:15:22
and was placed in the
Beaver county jail. NARRATOR: In Monroe,
Utah, daylight must be visible between
partners on a dance floor.
00:15:35
-Two of our smarter criminals
chose one of our small gas stations to get away
with a lot of money.
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So they chose the store, they
staked it out a little bit. They went in the store and
lifted the entire ATM machine,
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and ran off with it. Unfortunately, this particular
machine had no money in it. What the machine actually was
was an ATM that simply prints
00:15:56
out the amount of money you want
after you enter your numbers in there, and then
you take that receipt
00:16:01
to the cashier, who
gives you the money. Our question now is whether
these guys have decided
00:16:06
that the next plan would have
to involve a machine that actually contained US currency.
00:16:16
-Being a police officer
with ESP might not help with the kind of criminals
profiled on this show.
00:16:21
-Yeah. If you're reading
their minds, chances are you're drawing a blank. -But in Hudson,
Massachusetts, there's
00:16:26
an officer who duped
a crook into believing his mind was an open book. -For quick cover
to cover coverage,
00:16:32
here's We're Not Making This Up. -I was working as
a special agent, railroad police detective
at a railway express agency.
00:16:43
And we would get a
tremendous amount of losses. Jerry was a career thief. He had been stealing
from the railway
00:16:50
express for about 10 years. I was at the disadvantage, but
I had to turn things around.
00:16:55
I had to use the
ESP to program them, or to program myself to
be able to catch them
00:17:01
at the right time
at the right place. -ESP, extrasensory
perception, is using your feelings, your
imagination to get hunches,
00:17:10
get feelings about people. So I'm sitting here
doing this report, my boss is in having a
coffee, and all of a sudden,
00:17:16
it was like a light bulb
went off in my head. Bingo. This is it. So I went in and told
my boss, Joe, I said,
00:17:22
Joe, I'm going to get him now. This is it. He said, go get him, tiger. I'm just following
after, I'll just
00:17:28
follow where my feet take
me, where I should go. All I knew is this is it. And I went up an alleyway
between these two buildings,
00:17:36
and I looked up,
and who's coming down the alleyway but Jerry? And he's carrying a burlap
bag over his shoulder,
00:17:42
like Santa Claus. And he's looking down. He doesn't even see me. I get about 20 feet
away, and I go, ahem.
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He looks at me, he opens
his eyes, drops the bag, and he runs out of the
alley like a scalded cat.
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Oh, beautiful. Just what I wanted him to do. Not only did I have all
this stolen merchandise,
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but in the bottom of the bag
was his electric light bill and phone bill, with his
name and address on it.
00:18:07
And when he was arrested
by the FBI and handcuffed, all he kept saying
over and over again
00:18:12
is why did I drop the bag? Why did I drop the bag? He couldn't figure it out. He probably knows now.
00:18:24
-Thank you, Officer Kruskin. -Well, it's time
again for us to go. -I knew you were going
to say that, you know,
00:18:30
before you said that. You think I've got-- -No. I think you were reading
the teleprompter.
00:18:35
-OK. All right. Yeah. Well, then I guess you
probably discerned what I was about to say, that
we'll be right back next week
00:18:41
with more stories
that'll help you feel smarter than
you really are. -We'd like to thank the officers
who helped us out tonight,
00:18:47
and take a moment to express our
appreciation to everyone in law enforcement for
putting yourselves
00:18:51
in harm's way for
the good people of this country every day. -If you've got a
lead on a story,
00:18:56
or you just can't wait until
next week for more state of the art stupidity, visit our
website at www.dumbcrimes.com.
00:19:03
-As always, we
hope that we've all learned from others' mistakes. -But if you haven't, we
just might see you next week
00:19:10
on America's Dumbest Criminals. -Bye, bye.