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NARRATOR: Tonight on America's
Dumbest Criminals, when this guy broke
into a van, he got
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a lot more than
he bargained for. If this is a robber's
disguise, do you think his weapons should have
been a pail and a shovel?
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And just one whiff
was all it took to know this guy was trouble. Pee-ew! Hold your nose and
hold your position.
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You won't believe how
many ways that people can run afoul with the law on
America's Dumbest Criminals.
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[theme music] NARRATOR: Now, welcome your
hosts for America's Dumbest Criminals, Daniel
Butler and Debbie Allen.
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-Hi, everybody. -All right. OK, OK. Debbie, I'm going to
guess something about you.
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-Oh, no. Not another joke
about my height. -No, no, no. Nothing like that.
It's just a question, all right?
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-OK, then go ahead. -Well, I'll bet you
startle easily, don't you? -Are you getting ready to
play some kind of trick on me?
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-No. No trick. It's just a question. Do you startle easily? -If I see something scary, yeah.
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-Ha! OK, you're funny. Now, well, that makes
us a perfect match. -You're easily startled, too?
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-No. I just like startling people. You know, it's kind of a hobby. Jumping out, going whoo!
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You know, then jumping back. -You're bad.
You're bad. -I know. But wait. Well, we'll meet a crook later
who was startled in a big way,
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except he didn't hear boo. He heard bam. -Oh, OK. I'd like to avoid both
tonight, just so you know.
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But let's start our
show with a bang. -Well, we're about to
see a released thief who
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just can't wait to
get back to work. -In fact he doesn't even want
to leave the police station.
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-No. -Let's steal a peak with this
surveillance camera footage. -The video tape that y'all
received from the Bel Air
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Police Department, Corporal Lee
is releasing three prisoners. Corporal Lee was walking
ahead of the three prisoners.
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The last one waits, reaches in
to an unlocked property box, removed money out of
different personal property,
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and leaves with it. The following day we
end up filing theft on that same guy for
taking the money.
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-Yep, well, you know,
it's the little details that bring down criminal
time after time.
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Or in this case, one particular
criminal time after time. -In a two part miniseries of
Something To Remember Me By,
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we meet up with a crook who,
just like our first criminal, definitely has not
learned from his mistakes.
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Here's part one. -Well, here in
Sweetwater we do have our share of stupid criminals.
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Our detectives went
out one day, worked a burglary at a liquor store. It was pretty hard to solve.
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The guy had been inside,
working all night. Industrious fella. I guess he was
working pretty hard,
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because he got pretty hot. Took his jacket off and
left it at the crime scene. Whenever we got there,
we found his jacket.
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Looked in the pockets,
found his check stub. Full name, address,
and where he worked.
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Not too hard to find
him in a town of 12,000. -He made it easy. -Well, hey, you know.
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I mean, the truth is I leave
my jacket behind all the time, but never at the liquor
store I've robbed.
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That didn't come out right. But I guess that's
why my consequences aren't so great, either.
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Truth or consequences. -Oh, man. Well, now on to part two. OK, I get it. A year has passed, and our
crook has served his time,
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but has the robber seen
the error of his ways? I think you already know
the answer to that question.
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Let's confirm your suspicions as
we return to Sweetwater, Texas. -We were running a search
warrant at a housing project
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here in Sweetwater. I went outside to my
police car to get a camera, and heard a car squealing into
the entrance of the project.
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I flagged this car
down, guy got out, and we're just
standing there talking. And it was very obvious
that he was drunk.
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I asked this guy for
some identification, he reached into
his shirt pocket, pulled out a packet of papers.
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And instead of just
handing them to me, he threw them at-- he threw
them at me-- he threw them at me
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and swung at me, and
took off running. He won the foot chase. I didn't catch him then.
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However, I went back and
picked up all the papers, and one of the papers was his
release from the Texas prison
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system, from the Texas Board of
Pardons and Parole in his name. So we knew who our guy was.
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About 10 minutes
later he came back, claimed to be his
brother, and anyway, me and several other
officers arrested
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that individual at that time. This guy was really good at
doing the same dumb thing twice
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in a row, just four years apart. -It's unbelievable. -What's worse than
running from police?
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Well, running into police. This criminal did both. And oh, did I mention
that he was driving drunk?
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-OK. Witness as this guy
is forced to surrender after his bender turns
into a fender bender.
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Watch. NARRATOR: The police
officer following this car senses something
isn't quite right.
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The guy behind the wheel
is a little too tentative in his driving, a
little too meandering
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in his maneuvering, a little
too free form in his turns. Sort of like my
Great Aunt Sophie.
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Except Sophie's pushing
90, and this guy's just pushing the
accelerator, possibly
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under the influence
of some tonic that Sophie would never touch. So the officer follows him,
just to confirm his suspicions,
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and see if he makes
any wrong moves. Yow! He just ran into the squad
car of another officer who
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has stopped yet
another person for DUI. Yep. I'd say that was a wrong move. Glad to know that wasn't
my Great Aunt Sophie.
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At least not this time. NARRATOR: Here's
another dumb law. In Fairbanks, Alaska, it
is illegal to give any form
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of alcoholic
beverage to a moose. -OK, yeah. There's nothing worse than
a moose on the loose who
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can't hold his juice, you know? Liquor. You know what I mean. Well, our next story involves a
crook on the loose in a liquor
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store, but he doesn't
see it that way. In fact, he tells
officers that he was just minding
his own business.
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Take a look. NARRATOR: Rolled up to the
scene at this convenience store, and the first thing I
observer is the front glass
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door smashed right out of it. Called for backup, and I
grabbed my trusty shotgun.
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I walked up to the door, and
as I come around the door, I see a gentleman
without his shirt
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on, with three cases
of beer in his hands. And I crank that shotgun,
and he goes, whoa.
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He says, uh, hey, I work here. There must be some mistake. And I says, you know,
set the beer down
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and stick your hands in the air. So he tries to comply, and
he's got this stupid look
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on his face, like he can't
believe I don't believe him. You know, he thinks I'm
some idiot, I guess.
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So nevertheless, he
puts the beer down, and I get him
where he's secured, and I start questioning
him about this.
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I went for my backup and he
says, oh, yeah, I work here. And I says, well,
explain why you
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knocked the whole
front door out. You know, the whole
building here. He says, well, I
left my keys home,
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and I had this graveyard
shift, and my assignment was to come and sort
all the beer out.
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So I was going to move
it all outside here, and then rearrange
it into storage. Subsequently we did arrest
the gentleman that night,
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and he did admit to
burglarizing seven other businesses in the area. So it was a great bust.
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That's probably about
the dumbest excuse I've ever heard as
a police officer. -Yeah.
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Oh, yeah. I'm just sorting out the beer
in the refrigerator, honey. Maybe that bogus
liquor store owner
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should have taken
the fifth, huh? What do you think, Debbie? Get it? -Oh, I get it.
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-Fifth. -That was a good one. Every once in a while, Daniel. Here on America's
Dumbest Criminals,
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we see all kinds of crooks
using all kinds of methods to conceal their identities,
but it takes extra creativity
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to come up with a disguise
the really surprises us. This one is almost as much fun
as, well, a day at the beach.
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NARRATOR: Does this look
like a disguise to you? This beach ball with eyeholes
the size of sand dollars
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was the get up a
robber used to deflate the till at a Florida bank. And on his second
strike, he even
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added the unusual
handwear shown here. Amazingly, he pulled
this stunt twice. -We kind of thought, this
is early for Halloween,
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or is this a gag, or a joke? When he did his
second robbery again, he came in with
the hands covered,
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and this time he
used a garbage bag. NARRATOR: Police, unwilling to
bury their heads in the sand,
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dug up enough evidence to
capture this beach ball bandit soon after
his second robbery.
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-OK. Police in Henderson,
North Carolina were having a hard
time catching up a woman who had a wealth
of warrants out there.
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Then they came up
with a bright idea. If they couldn't get
to her, maybe they could convince her
to come to them.
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All they needed was
the right incentive, so they devised a plan
that was music to her ears.
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-One of our jobs were to serve
high risk warrants, or warrants that no one else
was able to serve
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on the people around here. So I was looking
through the drawer, and I found a stack of warrants
that were unserved, and was
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on a female. And I told the
guys, I said, well, before we go out to this house
to start searching for her,
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I said, let me just
call this number. This is her home address. So I called the number, and
a female answered the phone.
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And I gave her the
name on the warrant, I said, does such and
such still stay here?
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She said no, she moved. She used to stay
here, but she moved. I said, well, that's
a shame, I said,
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because she-- a
good friend of hers just entered her into
a contest, and she's won a beautiful
stereo system from one
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of the local radio stations. Now we're gonna have to
return the radio, the stereo,
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because we don't have
anyone to give it to. Oh, oh, oh, that's me.
That's me. I'm just playing with you.
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That's me. So I said, I tell you what. I said, I need your
identification. I said, we got a
little paperwork to do.
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I said, we'll bring the stereo
right over if you could just give us that address you're at.
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So she gave me the address,
I got one of the guys to rent a marked cruiser. We go around the block,
take my shirt off,
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pull a regular pullover shirt
off, got my gun and equipment under the clothes, and I
walk up to this lady's house.
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Now, the cruiser's
about 30 to 40 feet away from this lady on the corner. I mean, anyone
could see-- I mean,
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people were slowing up
to see what we're doing. So while I'm walking
up to this house,
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this woman almost tackled me. She's running up,
is that my stereo? Is that my stereo?
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And I said, no, 'am. I said, but you're under arrest,
and I put the handcuffs on her.
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Put it in front of her. I was walking her
back to the car. Now, she has a
stack of warrants.
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Her bond is going to be
unbelievably high, especially failure to appear,
a lot of them.
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And the only thing she's telling
me and my partner on the way back is hey, that's still
my stereo, isn't it?
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That's my stereo. That's still mine, isn't it? That's still mine. So we served the
warrants, and the arrest
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was made without complications. And we were surprised it
worked, but we tried it,
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and everything worked out well. -OK, get your dictionary
ready, because later on, we're
00:11:24
gonna tell the onerous
and odoriferous tale of a guy whose MO
spells trouble. Or should it be his
BO smells trouble?
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But now with news that's does
for mankind with the iceberg did to the Titanic, oh, great.
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Here's Daniel with
ADC Headlines. -Sure, we all enjoy a
hot meal, but get this. A Massachusetts police
officer pulled over a man
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for driving his car
at 120 miles an hour. His defense? He'd just bought a
roast beef sandwich,
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and he had to get home to
eat it before it got cold. OK. A woman tried to
pass a one million
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dollar bill in New York
City at a department store, but she ran into problems. One, federal agents were not
amused when the woman claimed
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that making money was
her hobby, and two, the US Treasury Department does
not make one million dollar
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bills, so it's a dead giveaway. Finally, two men were caught
red handed and red faced as they
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tried to smuggle snakes
from Mexico into Texas by tying the critters
into pantyhose
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and stuffing them
into their trousers. Whoa-kay! Customs inspectors noticed
the unsightly bulges wiggling,
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and ordered the men
to drop their pants. Their total menagerie
was 14 snakes, including a boa constrictor.
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Wow. It was an exciting
trip for them. A crafty inspector commented
that the men were first
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suspected of packing
narcotics, but, quote, drugs don't move
around like that. Well, that closes the
file on ADC headline news,
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ripped from somewhere near the
back of your local newspaper. Debbie? There was definitely
trouble in the air
00:13:24
when our next
criminal came along. In fact, his personal
hygiene, or lack thereof
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earned him the title
of the Stinky Bandit. Take a look. NARRATOR: For a brief
time, this man's picture
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was flooding the airways
in south Florida, just as his presence
tightened the air passages.
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The Stinky Bandit, a man
whose reputation and body odor preceded him. Lost in a funk of
crack addiction,
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he stuck up and stunk
up 12 banks and stores before hitting the
showers when police
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closed in on him
and his girlfriend. -He has a very bad
crack cocaine habit. In fact, when he
was arrested today,
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we had crack cocaine
on his person, and he readily
admits that he has a very bad crack cocaine habit.
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-To the best of our
knowledge, all the money, with the exception
of about $200 that
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was recovered as a result
of the arrest today is gone. NARRATOR: Well, if
success smells sweet,
00:14:19
imagine this odor of being one
of America's dumbest criminals. -Oh. Gee, whiz. Let's let the air clear
for a minute, there.
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You know, usually
it's the crook who catches the victim
off guard, right? But not in this story.
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When this car burglar
makes his moves, things go off with a bang, and
then get even more complicated.
00:14:43
It's yet another
surprising chapter in the feature we
call I'm Where? You're Who?
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-This guy tried to
break into a van, but little did he know it
was occupied by the owner.
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He woke up to the owner
of the van sleeping inside, who happened
to have a gun. The owner came out, said to the
bad guy, stop, or I'll shoot.
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Well, the guy ran
away, scared to death, and ran straight
to a gas station, yelling, call the police!
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Call the police! So the attendant there did,
and we arrived, and put that call together
with the burglary.
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Got the owner of
the van over there to make the identification,
and took that burglar to jail.
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You know, Debbie, we
don't make this stuff up. In this case, the
dumb crook ended up
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being the reporting party. Called the police on himself. -We love it when they help out.
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While the beach ball bandit you
saw earlier showed originality in the get up for his
hold up, this next guy
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went something very
basic-- a bed sheet. Watch as this New
Orleans Police officer
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becomes a real Ghostbuster. -We're here in New
Orleans, Louisiana, at the world famous
Brennan's Restaurant.
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We're world famous for
breakfast at Brennan's, and we do a wonderful dinner, also.
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My grandfather started the
restaurant in 1946, and even at a restaurant of this
caliber, things can go wrong.
00:16:07
-Hi. My name is David
Sledd, and I've been associated with
Brennan's for 22 years.
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And this is a wonderful story
that happened many years ago. It was in the fall
of our year, and we
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had been very, very busy. And one of our
busboys that night decided that he was going
to rob the restaurant.
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While everyone had
punched out, the maitre d' was the only one he thought
that was still in the house.
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And he had counted the money
while the busboy had slipped back into the area, where the
maitre d' had to pass through
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to take the money to the safe. That was also the area
where we can kept our linen.
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Well, Earl decided to take a
sheet and pull it over himself, and play a ghost to scare the
money out of the maitre d'.
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Well, when the maitre d'
passed through the area, Earl jumped up and said, boo! Give me your money,
or I'll kill you.
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Well, of course the maitre
d' recognized Earl's voice, and questioned Earl. He said, Earl, why are
you behind that sheet?
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Well, it scared Earl so bad
that Earl dropped the sheet, ran back through the restaurant,
bolted out the front doors,
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and Earl was gone
from the restaurant. Boo! -The details on this edition
of We're Not Making This Up
00:17:34
were absolutely unspeakable. So I'll let Daniel
give them to you. -Oh, thanks a lot.
00:17:39
Yeah. OK. All right. Well, it's a known
fact that people do dumb things when
they're drunk, right?
00:17:45
And when they're really drunk,
they do really dumb things. And this guy may break all
existing world records, kids.
00:17:52
Watch the screen,
and prepare to wince. -One story that comes to mind
is one night, Scott Thurber
00:18:01
and myself were on a
eight to midnight shift. -Look what we got here. -A guy was in the parking
lot across from the police
00:18:09
department, and
we look, and he's defecated in the parking lot. So we pulled up, and we told
him that that wasn't quite
00:18:17
the thing to do there, and that
he could get arrested for that. -Oh, man, don't take
me to jail, man.
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I can clean it up. -He reaches down
and scoops it up, and he put it back
in his pickup.
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At this point, we
didn't want anything to do with him, so
we told him that he'd been drinking too
much, and not to drive.
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He said no, officer,
I'll stay right here. Went by later on
that night, and he was sleeping in the
back of his pick up.
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I went by again to check
on him, and he saw us, and he looked out of
the bed of his pick
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up, and wiped his face, rolled
over, and went back to sleep. -Oh! -Oh, that's disgusting!
00:18:53
That is disgusting! -We're not making this up, kids. We wouldn't dare! Well, we're going to go
away and just try and scrub
00:19:04
this whole incident
from our minds. But we'll be back next week
with more stories of incredibly
00:19:11
dumb, gross criminals doing
incredibly dumb, gross things. -If you've got a lead on a
story better than that one,
00:19:17
or you just can't wait till next
week for more state of the art stupidity, visit our website
at www.dumbcrimes.com.
00:19:25
-Yeah. And even though our stories
are about dumb crimes, they're really a
reminder of the debt
00:19:30
that we owe to the men and
women of law enforcement. They're on the line
every day to keep
00:19:34
us safe from the stupidity
of would be criminals. We owe them our thanks for
making this show possible,
00:19:39
and we thank you for
joining us tonight. -As always, we
hope that we've all learned from others' mistakes.
00:19:45
-But if you haven't, you
might look like that last guy, and we might see you next week
on America's Dumbest Criminals.
00:19:51
-Bye, bye.