00:00:00
[music playing] ANNOUNCER: Tonight on
"America's Dumbest Criminals," some sectors of society
are headed for the toilet,
00:00:09
and they're carrying
large wrenches. He's wearing just his
birthday suit and a smile,
00:00:14
but he won't get
any birthday wishes granted from this
undercover officer. And we'll whip up the
saucy saga of a lucky man
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and the grocery item
that saved his life. Pull up a chair, and enjoy
a heaping helping of stories
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sure to fortify
your worst beliefs about "America's
Dumbest Criminals." [police radio chatter]
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[music playing] Now, welcome your hosts for
"America's Dumbest Criminals," Daniel Butler and Debbie Alan.
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-Hello. -I'll get you through this. Now, I've just learned something
about my co-host, Debbie,
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that I think everyone
would like to know. -Tell me you're not
going to do this. DANIEL BUTLER:
Well, now, now, now.
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We were talking about
our closest brushes with law breaking,
and Debbie had a very interesting
story to tell.
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Go ahead, Debbie, come on. -I would like to comply with
the committee at this point,
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but I cannot recall. -Oh, no, no, no. Come on. -I don't know what
you're talking about.
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-It was something about
you and your husband Bruce, and illegal picnicking? -[laughing] I didn't--
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-All right. -Daniel Butler. -But it makes a
perfect introduction to our first story, which
involves a naked man.
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So please, please. -Daniel, you have the
floor at this point. -Maybe, maybe, maybe
later in the show.
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Are home videos available? --[gasp] Da-- do I look
like Melissa Sue Anderson? -No, no, no.
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Melissa Sue Anderson was on
"Little House On the Prairie." You mean Pamela Sue Anderson.
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Right? From "Baywatch"? -[laughing] -Yeah, you are the
only person who would confuse the little
girl on "Little House
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On the Prairie" with
a "Baywatch" woman. Yeah. -Oops. Just please get
on with this, OK?
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I'm sorry. -OK, fine. As promised, it involves
a man who was most definitely not
dressed for success.
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-Here's a revealing look at a
man who'd certainly rather not be caught on camera, like me.
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-I'm an undercover
officer for the Ocala police department
in Ocala, Florida. And on occasion I get
to work as a prostitute
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walking the streets of Ocala. On this particular
occasion, a white male drove into the parking
lot where I was at,
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and I approached the vehicle,
which is pretty normal. What's not normal, is as
I approached the vehicle,
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I noticed that the white male
was not wearing any clothes. We-- we had a conversation,
and we made a deal,
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and I directed him to
meet me at the parking lot across the street. As he drove away, I informed
the units that he was undressed.
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OCALA OFFICER: Put
your hands up, buddy! Hands up! UNDERCOVER OCALA
OFFICER: And he was
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arrested without his clothes on. DANIEL BUTLER: OK. -What was that boy doing? I don't want to know.
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-Don't ask me.
I don't want to know. I don't want to know. -Hey, you've probably
used a brick or a chair
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to prop open a door, and not
thought much about it, right? -Well, yeah. But our next burglar,
robbed of his senses,
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definitely did not
think much about what he used as a door stopper. And it quickly signaled
an end to his crime spree.
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-Here is something
to remember me by. -When he started, we had--
it wasn't that long ago,
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a computer business in
our town got broken into. And officers get there,
there's not a whole lot
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evidence as to
who did the crime. And while doing
the investigation, they found that the person
who broke into the business
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had left some
cardboard in the door to keep the door from
locking, and that's how he got in and
out of the business.
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And they're looking
at the cardboard, it turns out they're
motor vehicle summonses
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that this person
had gotten recently by an officer in our town. And they-- all's they had to
do was take the summonses,
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match them up to the summons
that was written day, the ticket, which led
to this person, who
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used to work at the business. And they went to his house,
and he said-- he was shocked.
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He said, how did you know that
I was the guy that did it? And they said, well, we have
your tickets that you just got.
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And the pieces of the ticket
that led us directly to you. And, otherwise, if it
wasn't for the fact
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that he was so dumb to leave
the tickets in the door, we never would've probably
found out who did the job.
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-Hey, you know, when nature
calls, you better pick up. But what you do when you're
ready to go potty, only
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to find out that the
potty is already gone. -Well that's what happened in
New York, when thieves began
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disassembling toilets and
stealing their shinier parts to sell as scrap metal. -Shinier parts?
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-Yeah. [laughing] -I'm guessing you didn't
take shop class, right? -I sure didn't.
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-You're definitely
not a plumber. You majored in perkiness. I can tell, didn't you?
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-Oh, get back to toilets. We're going to find
out how they became a hot commodity in
this next story.
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Do you know where
your flushometer is? In the New York
City commode caper, a thief has been nabbing
important fixtures from urinals
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and toilets of men's rooms
in city owned buildings. -We think either he'd sell
them to a plumbing warehouse,
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to a plumber's shop,
or even just for scrap. -The price of copper
must be very high.
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DEBBIE ALAN: This
bathroom bandit has stolen about 100 handles. A lot of trouble for something
that only cost about $4.
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The crook even took the
mayor's flushometer. Is he a weirdo trying
to make a statement?
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-Typical New York. DEBBIE ALAN: Luckily, the
city has a sense of humor. -Until we get a handle
on the situation,
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we won't be able to flush
the perpetrator out. People say that
we're stepping in it,
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some people say
that this device is the hardest working
device in city government.
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ANNOUNCER: Check
out his dumb law. In Memphis, it's illegal to
drive a car while asleep.
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-Apparently, our next
guy was more than wide awake when he got
a speeding ticket.
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According to what he told
the officer who stopped him, he was terrified
that he and his car
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would end up a nervous wreck. So what does he do? Well, among other
things, he earns a spot
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as tonight's installment of
America's dumbest excuses. -Dumbest excuse I ever
heard for speeding
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was a couple years back. I was working radar on
George Washington Highway, very dangerous route in
the city of Chesapeake,
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if not in the whole state. Working the radar, a vehicle
came through, it was traveling
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80, 90, went up to 95,
went to 100 miles an hour. I turned, went after the
vehicle, a number of miles
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before I caught up to him. I caught up to him, I was going
to give him a chewing as well
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as a ticket, and
I approached him, and I said, you know
this is one of the most dangerous roads in Chesapeake?
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He said to me, I
know officer, I know. This road's so
dangerous, I don't want to spend any time
on it if I don't have to.
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He got the ticket. -Yeah. Every once in a while, you
hear about a big company on the news, getting
fined for price fixing.
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But there are little
guys who've come up with their own version
of price fixing.
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They take a price tag
off a cheaper item and place it on
something more expensive.
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Well, our surveillance footage
from a sporting goods store has the goods on
two such thieves.
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First, you'll see a couple
of teenagers conducting their own price
check on aisle three.
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Then a boy who's a
hoodlum in training. Let's go to the store for
tonight's blue light special.
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ANNOUNCER: These guys think
there's smooth operators, but they could win awards
in looking suspicious.
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They twitch, they
look side to side, they turn their backs when
someone approaches, no wonder
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security guards are
watching their every move. Look as they conduct their
own mark down on that ball.
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Heh, too bad they
aren't such good sports when they're bounced
downtown for booking.
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Now here's a rookie, trying
his hand at price switching. Stupid tag won't come off.
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He should take the hint. But instead, he keeps trying. Oh man, now I messed up. Uh-oh.
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But he eventually succeeds. And when he tries to
make his purchase, he learns that
he's facing a much
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stickier problem than
gummy price tags. -Mm-mm. I hope that boy doesn't
try that trick again.
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You know, generally, we consider
it a blessing to be unique. To stand out from a crowd.
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Well, the fellow
in our next story would probably have preferred
to blend in with everybody else.
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But his original way of
speaking and spelling became a trademark he
couldn't trade in. [chuckles]
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See what we mean. -Several years ago I got a call
to investigate some forgeries at several local convenience
stores and banks.
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Apparently some checks had
been stolen from a residence in a burglary, and the
checks were being passed.
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When I got to these
establishments, all of the checks
had been misspelled. The word hundred had
been spelled as hunnerd,
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h-u-n-n-e-r-d. I worked the case
for a couple weeks, and finally developed a suspect.
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Found the guy and picked him up. I interviewed him and also
took handwriting samples,
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and noticed that he was
also spelling hundred as hunnerd on the
hand writing samples.
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So I went ahead and arrested
him, he went to jail. A few months later,
a year later,
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I learned of an
armed robbery that had taken place at
a convenience store. While I was talking
with the investigator,
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he mentioned that the
guy that had come in had misspelled the note
that he had given the clerk.
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It said, give me all
of your hunnerds. His misspelling caused him
to go to the penitentiary.
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Can you spell penitentiary? -Coming up, people
who have a tough time controlling their
controlled substances.
00:10:09
But now, with news from a
man considered the Jim Carrey of journalism, here's
Daniel with ADC headlines.
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-His crime in progress
was jaywalking. But this suspect was
already wanted by the FBI
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for a number of serious charges. It just so happened that the
agents had a wanted poster
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with his picture on it
on the seat of their car, when he walked right
in front of them.
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In no time, they'd taken
this jaywalking menace off the streets and
to the penitentiary.
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They must've thought that they
were hot shot bandits, because upon leaving the store
in Santa Ana, California,
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this trio took time to fire a
few rounds from their pistols into the air. But moments later, with
the police car approaching,
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they opted for discretion. While trying to quickly tuck
his gun into his waistband, one
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of the men fired a shot that it,
well, it changed his life, OK? Phew. Two teenagers, on the run from
police in Larkspur, California,
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scaled a chain link fence
in an attempt to get away. But it proved a poor choice.
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The fence was actually
part of the outer perimeter of San Quentin Prison. Ah, I hate when that happens.
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And in no time, they
were given a warm welcome by prison guards. And that closes the
file on ADC headlines,
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news ripped from
somewhere near the back of your local newspaper. Debbie? -I like shoes as
much as any woman.
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But I don't know
of any woman who loves women's shoes as
much as this next man. Maybe he was a tortured soul,
or maybe just a regular heel.
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At any rate, he's
going to be walking the straight and narrow,
thanks to a little friendly
00:11:53
encouragement from
police officers. Try on this story for size. -I think it's absurd.
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It's crazy. DEBBIE ALAN: She's
talking about this man, known as the shoe bandit.
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He would knock women
off their feet, and I don't mean
with charm, to grab their shoes to fuel
his footwear fetish.
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-Originally, he would
go to shoe stores and actually purchase
women's shoes. At some point, he would then
approach women on the street,
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offer them money,
from $1 to $300 to buy the shoes
right off their feet. -Very bizarre.
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That's one of the strangest
things I've heard. DEBBIE ALAN: To catch him,
police set up a sting, here.
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Using two undercover officers
posing as shoppers when they thought he might be
tiptoeing around.
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Sure enough, he took the
bait and followed one. -She walked to various places
to see what he would do.
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He did follow her. Then she decided that she would
walk to her car, which is where
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all the previous
assaults had taken place. When she did, he followed her. As she approached her car,
he gets closer and closer.
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Just before we believe he
was going to attack her, a media van pulled in, he
saw it, and he ran away.
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DEBBIE ALAN: Police tracked him
down and found several pairs of stolen shoes
in his possession.
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Mm-hm. That ought to let the
air out of his pumps. -I think it's absurd. It's crazy.
00:13:13
-Heck, yes. Maybe you've heard of
the Cannes Film Festival. It's a trendy industry event
held every year in France.
00:13:21
Well, tonight we bring your
the canned film festival. A showcase of people
who got canned
00:13:26
for the same fumble
finger mishap. You've heard the
expression, dropping acid? Well, all of these folks
dropped their drug of choice
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in a most inappropriate place. Roll 'em. -I had made a traffic stop one
day, a guy that was speeding.
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And when I stopped him, after
I told him why I'd stopped him, I'd asked him for his driver's
license and insurance.
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So he had reached into his
pocket to pull out his wallet, and inadvertently he also
pulled out a bag of marijuana.
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And I guess he realized
this at the same time I did, and tried
to kind of hide it
00:14:06
under his wallet in his
hand, and still trying to dig out his driver's license. I asked him, what have
you got in your hand?
00:14:12
And he said, well, my license. I said, no, your other hand. He said, my wallet. So I guess he'd realized
about that point,
00:14:23
that his magic act had failed,
and the bag of marijuana hadn't disappeared, so we got
the pot, and he went to jail.
00:14:33
-My name's John
Dryden, I'm a captain with the Anniston,
Alabama police department.
00:14:37
One evening, one of
our patrol Sergeants had stopped at one of the
local convenience stores
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to purchase something. He walked up to the counter, and
there was already one subject
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standing at the counter,
making a purchase. And as he pulled out
money from his pocket,
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a semi large bag of crack
cocaine fell out of his pocket. At this time, the Sergeant
inquired to him, uh,
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did you drop something? And from there, he was taken
into custody, charged on felony
00:15:07
charge of possession
of crack cocaine. -I was working in a
marked police cruiser,
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and I had a partner with me,
and we see these two guys in an alley at 3
o'clock in the morning.
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And we ended up stopping
them for various reasons. and my partner grabs
a hold of the guy,
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and he's going to pat
him down for weapons, but he doesn't have
a good hold on him.
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And the guy takes off running,
and he drops his fanny pack. And I chased him a short
ways, but I didn't even
00:15:30
know what we-- what
he was running for. So I went back to my partner,
and we talked to the other guy,
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and picked up our-- the guy
that ran away's fanny pack. And we open it up, and there's
a bindle of methamphetamine
00:15:42
in the fanny pack,
and it's attached to the guys driver's license. And along with a pawn slip
that's got his phone number.
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So the guy that stayed
behind told us, he says, well that's not where the
guy lives, but he lives
00:15:53
in the general area of this
one apartment building. So the next night, I was
with a different partner,
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and we went over to
the apartment building. We had no idea
where the guy lived. The phone number was
an unlisted number.
00:16:06
And we called the phone number,
and some gal answers the phone. And we ask her to step outside,
we want to talk to her.
00:16:12
So she steps out,
and allowing us to identify which
apartment it is. And then we ask her, is he here?
00:16:18
And she says, no. And I-- would you
mind if we look? And she says, no. So we come inside, and we
find him hiding under the bed.
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OK, put your hands up
where I can see them. So we hook him up, and we
take him into the jail.
00:16:29
And I call my partner
from the night before, and I get his answering machine. And I tell him, hey Pat, we've
got that guy that ran away
00:16:36
from us last night,
he's got something he wants to say to you. And I hold the phone out, and
I said, apologize to my partner
00:16:41
for running from him. And the guy goes, oh,
I'm sorry, Officer Such. I didn't mean to.
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I'm sorry, and I want to
wish you a merry Christmas. And it was Christmas Eve,
so we'd not-- not only
00:16:51
was he dumb enough-- he
leaves us his phone number. And he leaves us his
picture, his identification,
00:16:55
and his methamphetamine. But his girlfriend's also dumb
enough to walk out and show us
00:16:59
exactly where he
is, and allow us permission to come
in and get him. -They call the
product "Tuna Helper."
00:17:17
But in tonight's final
story, it's a real lifesaver. -As you'll see, these noodles
provide oodles of protection
00:17:24
at just the right moment. And that savory
sauce, well, I suppose that's an added bonus, eh?
00:17:28
-Well, right off your grocery
shelf, here's an easy to make, easy to serve entree of
we're not making this up.
00:17:35
Super Jim's super noodles
slow down a speeding bullet and help save an
employee's life.
00:17:41
The hero was a box
of Tuna Helper. -Apparently the bullet went
through the corner of the box,
00:17:48
and straight through
the box, and then it hit him directly in the chest. DEBBIE ALAN: Forget
what the health gurus
00:17:54
say, processed food
can save your life. -Maybe the stuff, when
it's dried like this, maybe
00:17:59
it's just strong. I don't know. -Hm, OK. -That's wild. Saved a life. -Wow. But you know, you can throw
it up on the ceiling after you
00:18:09
boil it, and it's--
no, well anyway. Tuna Helper can do
anything, you know. But what-- imagine what
Beefaroni could do, huh?
00:18:16
-[laughing] -Could stop an Uzi. -Do you want to do this again? -No, he won't stop.
00:18:21
-Why don't you work on
that and get back to us? -I will, I'll do that. -That Beefaroni part, OK?
00:18:25
-And I'll also be
back next week. -What a coincidence. Hopefully, I will too. -Hopefully.
00:18:30
-And when we return,
you can count on us to have a number of people with
numerous counts against them.
00:18:35
Hopefully, one day,
they'll wise up. -It's probably the
most important thing we do on this show, is
take a moment to honor
00:18:40
the people who work
in law enforcement. We like to have
fun on this show, but we know crime fighting
is serious business.
00:18:46
-We thank you for all you
do, and especially thank the officers who took time to
tell us their stories tonight.
00:18:50
-Especially the guy with
the moustache in front of the boats. I liked him.
-[laughing] You like him.
00:18:54
-Well, all right. We also want to say thank you
to everyone watching at home, and remind you to
be back next week.
00:18:59
-If you've got a
lead on a story, or you just can't wait 'til next
week for more state of the art
00:19:02
stupidity, visit our website. -The address is
www.dumbcrimes.com. -As always, we
hope that we've all
00:19:09
learned from others' mistakes. -But if you haven't yet, we
just might see you next week
00:19:14
on "America's
Dumbest Criminals." Everybody over to Debbie's
house for Tuna Helper!
00:19:19
Come on! -Oh, please! [music playing] [music playing]