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NARRATOR: Tonight on
"America's Dumbest Criminals," a home exterminator
who'll rid your house
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of valuable possessions, a
surveillance camera catches a burglar breaking and breaking
and breaking and entering,
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and a criminal who got the shaft
long before he faced a judge. Stick around and see justice
served as we go on patrol
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for "America's
Dumbest Criminals." [police radio] [music playing] -Duh. [applause]
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ANNOUNCER: Now, welcome your
hosts for "America's Dumbest Criminals," Daniel
Butler and Debbie Alan.
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DANIEL BUTLER: We're
wearing the same clothes! -[laughs] Hey! -Debbie, I, I mean what sort
of pests bother you the most?
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Huh? -You mean besides you? -Oh! Yeah. Yeah, like-- -Just joking! -Just like bugs, right?
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-OK, I pretty much
hate all kinds of bugs. That's true. -Really? -Yeah. -See now, I, I sort of figured
you would have empathized
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with other little
creatures, you know? -Oh, I deserved that. -Like Bambi.
-Very funny.
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-Bambi, Thumper,
roaches, you know? -No. Bugs, ugh. Not bugs. -All right, so if your
house was crawling
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with, with critters, what? -I'd have the house
so full of chemicals it'd probably look
like Chernobyl.
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-Wow! OK. All right, bug-free
at any price, I guess. -Absolutely. -Well, there are some
amazing hidden costs
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when one particular
exterminator visited your home. And a hidden camera
caught it all.
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-Police have a saying that if
it wasn't for the dumb criminal, we couldn't catch anybody.
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Oh, like with this
story, uh, this guy's been doing this a long time. And I think he just got real
complacent and real laid back.
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And uh, I, I think the
dumbness overtook him. This man uh, has an
exterminating company.
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[fly buzzing] -He's a very personable guy
and he has a lot of customers. A, a lot of people would
leave a key for him
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and he would go in and
do his exterminating. One particular man had
lived on the beach side,
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but kept noting things missing. Money missing off of
his desks, some videos. And uh, he pretty well
suspected this guy,
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so he set up a hidden
video under some laundry in his bedroom. That morning, Jeff
comes in and he
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comes in the bedroom
where the camera is. And obviously, he's
looking around. And he goes over to the
dresser, as you see.
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And there's big glass
jugs full of coins. Reaches in, takes coins
out, put them in his pocket.
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And he would take the
mug and he would shake it like he was gonna
fluff up the coins
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or some way make it look
like he hadn't been there. And when I brought Jeff
in for an interview,
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uh, we asked him
if he ever looked through drawers. "Oh,
oh no, of course not." I asked him if he took anything.
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[fly buzzing] DETECTIVE CHARLES
GOSSETT (VOICEOVER): He started, I guess,
catching on a little bit.
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And, and he said, "Well, I might
have taken some lunch money. I didn't have any
lunch money that day."
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MAN (VOICEOVER):
Order in the court! Order in the court! DETECTIVE CHARLES
GOSSETT (VOICEOVER):
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And uh, he said, "OK, OK. You, you, you've got me here." And then he decided
he didn't want
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to talk about this anymore. [fly buzzing] -OK, just as that community
breathed a little easier
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with the exterminator's
crime spree eradicated, we've got the story
of a crook who
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wanted to rid his conscience
of all manner of vermin. Watch as this bad
guy rats on himself.
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-A couple of weeks ago, I
was checking on a, a stolen motorcycle case and I went
to the south side of town.
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And I was driving
through the neighborhood looking for the motorcycle. I saw these two guys
standing in front
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of a vehicle inside
of this yard. Well, I didn't think
anything about it. Matter of fact, when I
passed by, I waved at them
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and one waved back at me. As I continued through
the neighborhood, I went back around
that block again.
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The same two guys were there. And uh, when I passed
by the guys this time, they went off in
separate directions.
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And still didn't think
anything about it, because that's not
unusual around here.
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So I continued to look
through the neighborhood for this motorcycle. I came back around the
area for the third time
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and I looked in my
rear view mirror and I saw one of the guys
waving his hand, motioning.
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Well, I thought he
was flagging me down. You know, something had
happened, he needs some help.
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So I turned around in the
roadway and approached him. -Hey, tell me what's
going on, man.
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SGT. PHILIP HIGHT (VOICEOVER):
Well, this guy had a-- his face just turned just
pure shock on him.
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And he told me, he said, "I
knew you were gonna get me! I knew you were gonna get me!"
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And I had no earthly idea what
this guy was talking about. Then he told me, he said,
he asked me, he said,
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"How did you know? How'd you know I did it?" And I still had no idea
what he was talking about.
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But I told him,
I said, you know, "We're paid to
know these things. That's what we do for a living."
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So after that, he
broke down and started confessing of how he broken
into this lady's house,
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pushed her down,
took her pocketbook, run out the front door, and
jumped in a car and took off.
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Well, I was, I was shocked. I could not believe that
this guy was confessing a crime that I
had no idea about.
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Nothing had been reported to
any of our uh, agents about it. And um, I told him,
I said, "Well look."
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I said, "Tell me where
the pocketbook's at. I know if you're lying or
not, so don't lie to me."
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Well, this guy said,
"Well, you know it's in the floorboard
of that car!" He said, "You know it is!"
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So I take him back to the
car where he was standing at, and I looked through
the window of the car
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and sure enough, there's a
pocketbook on the floorboard. And I was thinking, man, I
can not believe this guy.
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This guy, he, he is stupid. Pure stupid. And not only was this guy
charged with several felonies
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and arrested, but
he also flagged me down just to carry him to jail. [sirens] [applause]
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-I'm Lieutenant Barry Shrum of
the Ocala Police Department. As department spokesman
here in Ocala, Florida,
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it's my duty to report the news. Sometimes it's good news,
sometimes it's bad news.
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And every now and then,
it's very unusual news. And a few months ago,
the Denny's restaurant
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here in Ocala was
robbed by a robber that uh, chose a
different style of uh, uh,
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let's say undercover
attire to do this robbery. And then it was my job to
report this to the news.
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-Every morning I call Lieutenant
Shrum doing beat checks and ask him what's going on in the news?
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What happened overnight? Barry said no money was
taken and no one was injured, so I passed up the story and
said I wasn't that interested.
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He pulled me back
and said, "I, I think this is one
you're probably gonna be interested in.
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This suspect, Anne,
went into the store only wearing underwear." -This robber chose to put
boxer shorts on his head.
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-So of course, that
caught my interest. -One of the first questions
the reporters asked me was
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could witnesses identify it? And that was quite unusual. I had no answer
for that question.
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The second question was
how large was his weapon? -That was just too
good to pass up.
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I went to cover this
story over at Denny's. And um, it was fun walking into
the restaurant. 'Cause a lot
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of times, when you approach a
crime scene, it's really shaky. A lot of people
don't want to talk.
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They still didn't
want to talk, but they all had smirks on their faces. The suspect walked
into the store
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and carrying not
a typical weapon, he was armed with a wine bottle. It was a full wine bottle.
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So he went up to
the cash register and held it up and
said, "I want the money from the cash register!"
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And everyone was freaked out
by what he wasn't wearing, so they ran to the back and
he broke the wine bottle
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to try to threaten
them and splashed wine all over the ceiling. And then he tried to bust
open the cash register,
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but was unable to get
any money whatsoever. -Once again, the suspect
uh, he had a blue shirt on.
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That was usual. The suspect uh, wore
his boxer shorts on his head instead
of his bottom.
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And that uh, at this
point is the bare facts of the infamous robbery at
Denny's in Ocala, Florida.
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[applause] -You remember how Otis on
"The Andy Griffith Show" used to periodically
stagger over to the jail
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and lock himself up? Well, we found a driver who
added a contemporary twist to that form of self arrest.
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See for yourself. -Several years ago
when our department uh, built its new building,
uh, we had a new concept
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that was built into it, that
of a drive-through service window for people to come up.
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This uh, featured
two pneumatic tubes and of course, an
intercom system. Allowed people to come up
and uh, conduct business
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within the police department
without having to get out of their car, much
like a bank service.
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We'd only been in this
building about 30 days when myself and another officer
were standing in our parking
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lot, saw a car pull up under
the canopy, individual sitting there. And he pulled back and forth
several times under the canopy
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as, uh, as if he was having
some type of difficulty. I told the officer I was out
there with to check the man,
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see if he was having
some problems, something we could
help him with. Officer stepped over
there and I stepped
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back inside the building. About a minute
later, the officer called me and
stated he was gonna
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need a breathalyzer operator. Turned out this man-- at
10 o'clock in the morning--
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thought he was at
a bank, uh, and was arrested by our
officers and charged with driving while impaired.
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Detected 0.18 on
the breathalyzer. He told us during the
course of the arrest that he was simply trying to
get his payroll check cashed
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and couldn't make anyone on
the other end of the intercom understand what he wanted.
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-Here at "America's
Dumbest Criminals" we hear unbelievable
stories about the odd things
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that people steal. Snakes, underwear, dog biscuits,
commodes, even cockatoo eggs.
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But frankly, we think
this object of desire pretty much scrapes the
bottom of the barrel.
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-There are people who will steal
anything, and I think this, this goes to that. DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER) : And
what was the loot of choice?
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Used grease. The unhealthy stuff used in
healthy amounts by restaurants. -Our investigators followed
them to over 30 places
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where they attempted to
uh, actually get grease. We know that they actually got
grease at about 20 locations.
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DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER) : This
man was charged with siphoning off 7,400 pounds of used grease,
which is sold to used grease
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dealers for $0.14 a pound
to be used in lotions, soaps, and cosmetics. Although he was
clearly the fat daddy,
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he had help in his oily deeds. -I didn't know I was
stealing used grease. I was offered a job, you know,
to make some extra money.
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And come to find
out, it was illegal. I didn't, I had no clue. DEBBIE ALAN
(VOICEOVER) : You know,
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the song says that
grease is the word. Well, here in this
slippery state, grease grabbing is a felony.
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-It's one of the slickest
operations I have ever seen. -Yuck! Well, now we go from a
pretty slippery subject
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to a criminal who
wished he could move like greased lightning. Daniel? -Yeah. Yeah.
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Well, this crook's
particular pratfalls required the response
of a veritable army
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of civil servants. Let's report in at
command central. NARRATOR: It's not all that
unusual for police officers
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to respond to a stick up
at a convenience store. But here in San
Antonio, they found
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a crook stuck up an exhaust fan. Perhaps he thought that if
Santa Claus could slide down
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a chimney, that he'd have
no trouble dropping in to pick a few items after hours.
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But he was wrong. Real wrong. NARRATOR: It took hours of
plotting, planning, prying,
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pawing, pushing, pulling,
and standing around before firefighters
were able to disassemble
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the exhaust and free the
exhausted man so they could immediately put him in
handcuffs and haul him away.
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And so ends the caper of
this fry-by-night operator. [door slams] -In my 10 years of buying uh,
drugs on the street and uh,
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making cocaine arrests,
on one particular occasion we took a undercover
police officer.
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We had a hard time getting
him in this location, so we wanted to uh,
boost it up a little bit.
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Instead of buying a $10 amount
or a $20 amount of crack cocaine, we decided to send
this undercover officer out
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with a new $50 bill. Crisp, pretty, ready
to go buy some cocaine. When the undercover officer got
out there and presented the $50
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bill for a $50
amount of cocaine, they did not want to
accept this as US currency.
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-Let me see the b-the
bill, the dollar. You wouldn't game me
like that, would you?
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-[inaudible]. I need $50 to go down to
[inaudible] with the homie. -They felt that the
$50 bill was not real.
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They wasn't familiar. They hadn't seen one
of the new 50s yet. So all my drug dealers got
together on a street corner
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and had a roundtable discussion,
holding it up, looking for the strip in it,
looking for serial numbers,
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debating back and forth
to the undercover officer. And finally he convinced them
that it was a real $50 bill.
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The sale-- the trade
actually-- for the $50 and the, and the
cocaine took place.
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And uh, they were
eventually arrested for sale of crack cocaine within
1,000 feet of a public school.
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[applause] -And now for the news that
collects lint in the belly button of the world, here's
Daniel with ADC Headlines.
00:13:01
[music and applause] -All of us have
days when we'd do almost anything
to avoid working.
00:13:10
But how far would you take it? A man in Buffalo Grove, Illinois
called in three bomb threats
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to Highland Park School
gyms, causing the buildings to be evacuated and searched.
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When police tracked
down the culprit, he admitted to the hoaxes,
saying that he could no longer
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handle the pressures of
coaching junior high basketball. It's like the NBA. Try to follow me on
this one now, OK?
00:13:33
A perpetrator of a series of
daring Dunkin' Donut robberies met the demise of
his dastardly deeds
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when doubling back
to do the deed again at the first Dunkin'
Donuts he'd robbed.
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His name? Douglas Duncan. But he claimed he
didn't act alone. His accomplice's name?
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Howard Johnson. Obviously, the all you can eat
clam thing didn't work out. A woman was trying
on a bathing suit
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in the dressing room of a
Southern California department store when she saw
something horrifying.
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No, it wasn't cellulite
or mismatched tan lines. It was a man's leg, which came
crashing through the ceiling.
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Realizing that he'd really
put his foot in it this time, the man-- a security guard
for the store-- confessed
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on the spot and was
arrested on a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct that
specifically pertains to quote,
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"someone looking through a hole
or opening into a bathroom, dressing room, tanning
booth, or other area
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where a person has a reasonable
expectation of privacy." No word on whether the
woman thought the swimsuit
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made her look slimmer. That's all for this
edition of ADC Headlines. Over to you, Debbie.
00:14:48
-Hey Dan, there's probably
a federal guide somewhere that spells out safe
handling practices
00:14:52
for handling a 500 pound safe. We're pretty sure what
you're about to see violates these guidelines.
00:14:59
NARRATOR: When you
think of safe cracking, you normally think of some
nimble-fingered crook listening
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intently for tumblers to fall. Well, these guys get
the fall part right, but don't do so well
with the cracking.
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At least not until they
push this convenience store safe over a wall. To get their haul
of cash, they're
00:15:18
forced to haul off
the safe, which is recovered when
the men are captured. [laughs]
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But there were telltale
signs of trouble early on. OK, right here. Keep an eye on that guy's pants.
00:15:31
Oops! I mean, if a man can't
keep his pants up, how's he ever gonna
make it in this world?
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-OK, two wrongs
don't make a right. But five or six bad calls can
land you in a local judge's
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yard with police
hot on your tail. That's the clumsy
conclusion to this story. But let's go back
to the beginning
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to catch this criminal in
all his befuddled glory. -I've been here 23 years. Out of that 23
years, I think this
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is the funniest thing
that's ever happened. On December 5, 1997, I
was at that red light
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right there coming this way when
the alarm sounded in this bank. [alarm ringing]
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CHIEF FRANK OSBORNE
(VOICEOVER): We've never had a bank
robbery in Jasper. I wasn't expecting it
to be a bank robbery.
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Looked inside, I knew
everybody in there except for a woman that was
dressed in a funny green suit.
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And as I pulled up
and parked, the lady come walking out the front,
looked at me, was real nervous.
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I pointed at her,
tried to stop her. She broke and ran. Ran across the road over
into the judge's yard.
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When we busted through
the hedge, I tackled her. Two things happened. One, money went
flying everywhere.
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Number two, when
she lost her hat, I realized I had tackled
a man, not a woman. During the scuffle, he
broke loose from me and ran.
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I decided to stay with the
money instead of giving chase, because I knew there was
plenty of backup around me.
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This man was having
a really bad day. I tackled him across
the street from the bank
00:17:05
in Circuit Judge
John Peach's yard. He almost got ran over
by the police cars, threw his clothes
down right here,
00:17:13
and the bloodhounds tracked
him right to this apartment. When they entered
and arrested him,
00:17:19
he was under the
covers trying to hide, making out like he
belonged in the apartment,
00:17:23
that he was just sleeping. When they come dragging him out,
that was one sad looking boy.
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He had had a bad day
and got caught with it. [applause] -They say that
ignorance is bliss.
00:17:41
In the case we're about
to examine though, ignorance was a blast! -This week's edition of
We're Not Making This Up
00:17:47
finds a low watt thief
trying a high caliber approach to auto repair. Only the crook is firing
blanks in this story.
00:17:56
-We received a call
from a local hospital that a subject had suffered
from a, a minor gunshot wound.
00:18:03
A subject who was having
trouble with his vehicle had replaced a, a fuse with
a 22 caliber bullet thinking
00:18:10
that would make continuity
between the circuits and make the truck work. [gunshot]
00:18:15
CAPTAIN JOHN DRYDEN (VOICEOVER):
It overheated and the round went off and struck
him in the lower leg.
00:18:18
And uh, he learned a
very, very valuable lesson about electronics at that
time, I would suppose.
00:18:24
-[laughs] -I wouldn't have known that. -See? -I wouldn't have
known that either.
00:18:28
-Well, it would
happen to you too. Well, I think we'll go out with
our criminal's blaze of glory.
00:18:32
But next week, we'll fire up a
whole new batch of stories here on "ADC." -If you've got a lead
on a story or just can't
00:18:38
wait till next week for more
state of the art stupidity, visit our website at
www.dumbcrimes.com.
00:18:45
-We want to thank
you for joining us and extend our gratitude
to the law enforcement
00:18:48
officers who make
this show possible. Every day they lay
their lives on the line
00:18:52
to keep us safe
from the stupidity of would-be criminals. -As always, we hope we've all
learned from others' mistakes.
00:18:59
-Hey, but if you
haven't, we just might see you next week on
"America's Dumbest Criminals."
00:19:03
-Goodbye, youse guys. [music and applause] [sirens] [music playing]