00:00:07
-Hi. I'm Daniel Butler. Welcome to another edition of
"America's Dumbest Criminals."
00:00:13
[music playing] ANNOUNCER: On this episode of
"America's Dumbest Criminals"-- MAN: Whoa.
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Whoa. Whoa. Check this out. Look at that sign. ANNOUNCER: A creeping crook
in "Crate Escape," a couple
00:00:50
of bungling boys in
"Bad News Boobs." [explosion] Gotta be the shoes. MAN: Hey, I didn't
steal these shoes.
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ANNOUNCER: A couple of
perps make a pit stop. All this and more, coming up on
"America's Dumbest Criminals."
00:01:06
Here's your host, Daniel Butler. -When entering a
room, it's always wise to be aware
of the exits, just
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in case you need to
get out for any reason. But as this
surveillance tape shows,
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dumb criminals don't always
think that far ahead. A man entered this
convenience store one evening
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through an air
conditioning vent. He immediately began
picking up items as he crept from aisle to aisle.
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Soon, he had bagged enough,
and with the alarm blaring all around him, decided
to make his escape.
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However, the
simpleton didn't plan a way to get out of the store. So he quickly assembled
a stack of crates,
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stepped up on a shelf,
and made his assent. Unfortunately, that
plan didn't hold up.
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Neither did the
crates, as you can see by his graceful landing. Then, in a desperate
move, he tried
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to kick the locked door
open, with no results. Frustrated and
sweating from the hat,
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he pulled his mask
off for all to see and quickly climbed a
nearby shelving unit
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and managed to crawl back up
into the air conditioning unit just as the cops entered the
store, which is right where
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they found him a
few minutes later. He had turned himself
around in such a way that he was unable to
get out of the vent.
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They arrested him and
put him in a cell that had only one entrance
and no exits.
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[music playing] Maybe criminals
wouldn't break the law if they understood the legal
terminology a little better.
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A deputy was transporting
some prisoners to court when they questioned the charges
being brought against them.
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-Receiving stolen property? -Yeah. You know that property you
got last week was stolen.
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That's why we're going
to see the judge. -Um, I don't understand though. I mean, we stole--
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-Oh, you stole the stuff? WOMAN: Yeah. -Oh, that's even better. Be sure to tell the judge
that when you talk to him.
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-After confirming
their guilt so quickly, they got to take the
express lane to jail.
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You know, the one for people
with 10 brain cells or less? [music playing] Most dumb criminals
are guilty of setting
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their goals way too high. But this next pair actually
overshot their mark in this story from
Captain Don McWilliams.
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-The bad guys drive up
to the teller window. And they pull up too far. They pull past the teller
drawer so they can't reach.
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He reaches, the
driver reaches out his window to try to
stick the note in. And he's pulled up too far.
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So he throws his car
in reverse and backs into the car in back of him. Then he gets out and he gets
in a cuss fight with the guy
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behind him,
whereupon the man who was behind him backs his car up. He backs up where he can
reach the teller drawer,
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sticks the note in. And the teller
who's working there is training a brand new girl.
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And she takes the note
out of the drawer. And she goes, oh my god. This is a holdup.
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Get down. So bloop, bloop. Their little heads go
down behind the counter. And the bad guys sit there
for a few seconds thinking,
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well, they're going to
stand up in a minute and give us our money. We just know this is gonna
turn out good for us.
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When it becomes obvious
they're not coming back up, they think, maybe
we should leave now.
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So the driver throws the
car in gear and guns it. And the car goes, barrump,
barrump, and dies.
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So they bail out of the car
and actually leave on foot. They run across the parking
lot and just leave on foot.
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Well, they have not
had sense enough to steal a car to rob this bank. It's their car.
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[laughter] So when the city cops
show up and they tow it, they just run the registration
and go to the guy's house
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and arrest him. [music playing] -You know, sometimes when
you gotta go, you gotta go.
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To jail, that is. These two guys should have
taken care of business before they left.
00:04:58
Two officers were standing
on the sidewalk in front of their station
when they noticed
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a car pull into the parking lot. It circled for a
few moments, then decided to make its
final stop a few feet
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away from the officers. The obviously intoxicated
driver got out of the car and went into the nearby bushes
for a, heh, little break.
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One of the officers approached
the tipsy trespasser, who immediately panicked
and ran back to his car.
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However, he jumped
into the back seat, and started screaming
to the officers that he wasn't driving.
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His friend while. The officer noticed the
passed-out passenger in the front, still securely
fastened by his seat belt.
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The driver was escorted
into the station and relieved of
his driving duties. ANNOUNCER: And now,
"Crimes of the Weak,"
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with Daniel Butler
and Beaumont Bacon. -Hi. I'm Daniel Butler and this is
the sugar-cured Beaumont Bacon.
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Beaumont? Is something wrong? -Oh. I'm sorry.
It's my first story. And it made me
think of something.
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And now I have drawn
a complete blank. -OK. -I'm telling you, it's team,
my ATM number and I cannot
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remember it for the life of me. -Well, I'm sure
it'll come to you. Why don't you just
tell the story and--
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-4429! That's what-- 2944. -OK. -No, that's my Social
Security number. -A guy managed to get a
hold of a friend's ATM card
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and tried to use it
to get quick cash at a nearby teller machine. However, he had forgotten to
get the friend's PIN number.
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-That would help. That's the-- 4422! That's it. All right. I'm happy. -OK. Well, he marched into
the bank and demanded
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to know why his
card wasn't working. The teller told him
that she would check and discovered that the card
had been reported stolen.
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-Ha ha. -She notified the
security guard, who kept our
card-carrying klepto company until the cops arrived.
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-Oh, people can be so helpful. -Serve and protect. -Serve and pro-- S&P. That's
what that is, right there.
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Like this woman who helped the
police nab a ninny who she saw rob her bank, then flee
across the street to the hotel
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where he was staying in while
he planned the entire heist. -That was handy. -That was handy.
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No getaway car, no mad
dash through back alleys and rooftops, just a quick
dash through the hotel lobby,
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around the gift shop there. Picked up a pack of gum. And then right there
at the ice machine
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is where the police
picked him up. And that's where they
put him, back on ice. Which brings us to the
Vidiot of the Week.
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A Texas police
officer was in line in uniform at a local gun
shop when the clerk pulled him
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aside and showed him
something very interesting. On the mandatory federal
questionnaire that gun buyers
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must fill out, the customer had
answered honestly, correctly, and dumbly, that,
yes, there were
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outstanding arrest
warrants in his name. When the officer asked the man
why he had answered truthfully,
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he had a dumb smart answer. -The form says it's a federal
crime to lie on a form.
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And I'm only wanted by Texas. I didn't want the federal-- -Makes sense in a way.
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But the truthful,
truant crook was too honest for his own good. He filled in the blank.
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And now he'll be
filling in a jail cell. [music playing] -They say it's good to focus
completely on your work.
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But in case of a
certain dumb criminal, that kind of tunnel vision is
likely to have you seeing bars.
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In Reynoldsburg, Ohio, this
sergeant and his partner nearly ran over a peeping
Tom in a hotel parking lot.
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SERGEANT: Check this guy out. What's he doing? PARTNER: Man, I don't know. Let's check him out.
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DANIEL BUTLER: Oblivious to
the rest of the world, the man was still unaware that
he was being watched too.
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SERGEANT: This guy has
no clue we're even here. PARTNER: He doesn't, does he? SERGEANT: That's great.
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-And that was the end
of the peeping Tom who couldn't hear a peep. [music playing]
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Back in the old days, when
lie detectors were first coming into use, only the big
police departments had them.
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However, the smaller
departments were known to use many different
tricks of their own
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to fool dumb criminals into
admitting their crimes. The trick you're
about to see may
00:08:53
be one of the most
outrageous ever used. The officers, however,
were convinced that this particular
genius was just about
00:09:00
bright enough to go
with the program. The metal hat on his head
is actually a colander,
00:09:05
which has bogus wires running
to the back of the photocopier. CRIMINAL: I was at my
girlfriend's house,
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just hanging out. [copier starts] POLICE OFFICER: Whoa. PARTNER: What the hell is that?
00:09:16
POLICE OFFICER: I've never
seen it act that way before. I think it's telling
me that you're lying.
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DANIEL BUTLER: Every time
he answers a question with what the cops
believe to be a lie,
00:09:23
they push the copier button,
and out comes a copy saying, "he's lying." PARTNER: I want to know,
is that you coming out
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of the back of the liquor store.
CRIMINAL: Yes. It's me. It's me. OK? Is that what you want to hear?
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It's me. That's me. POLICE OFFICER: Looks like he's
telling the truth this time.
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-After confessing to
the crime, the copycat was able to take
off his metal cap and replace it with the
county-issued dunce version.
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[music playing] Sometimes when it
comes to evidence, it's gotta be the shoes. Plus, the really dumb
criminal who's wearing them.
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An officer was
following up on a tip of a pair of shoplifted
basketball shoes. He went to a nearby pickup game
and approached the suspect.
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But before he could
say anything-- POLICE OFFICER: Mind if I
talk to you for a second?
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-Hey, I didn't
steal these shoes. POLICE OFFICER: I
didn't say you did. Why don't you come
here a second?
00:10:10
-What's up? POLICE OFFICER: Why don't
you put the ball down? -Huh? POLICE OFFICER:
Turn around for me.
00:10:15
Put your hands behind your back. DANIEL BUTLER: The
officer shoots and scores. The crowd goes wild.
00:10:19
And the heel goes to jail. From bad to worse,
from stupid to stupor, that could describe
this encounter
00:10:28
behind a keen-eyed beat cop
and a mindless motorist. He had forgotten to
fasten his seat belt.
00:10:34
So how did this turn
into a felony arrest? The Harlem, New
York, officer had intended on issuing a warning.
00:10:41
But the driver had no license. And a check of motor
vehicle records showed six license
suspensions and a slew
00:10:48
of other infractions. Fearing another stiff
fine from a traffic court, the driver went for his gun.
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A gift, he said, if the officer
would forget the whole thing. It's a clever crook indeed
who can turn a routine traffic
00:11:01
citation into a
trip to the slammer. He's now serving time for
bribery, illegal possession
00:11:06
of a firearm, driving without
a license, unpaid parking tickets, and violation of
the New York seal belt law.
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[music playing] Look in the Yellow
Pages and you're not going to find any listing
for smart criminals.
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However, there's a good chance
you'll see something under D, because, as an officer
in Baltimore told us,
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the dumb criminals are
starting to advertise. A police officer and
his partner we're
00:11:31
working in a plainclothes unit. His partner began
to laugh a lot. PARTNER: Whoa.
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Whoa. Whoa. Check this out. Look at this guy. Look at that sign. DANIEL BUTLER: Not only was
some sap publicly admitting
00:11:44
he sold narcotics, but he
also had a problem spelling the plural form of the
so-called marijuana dime bag.
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[laughter] POLICE OFFICER: What are
you selling here, man? [laughter] Are you selling girls?
00:11:58
Where are the chicks? -The officers quickly confirm
the dopey dope dealer's identity and made the
arrest, fouling up
00:12:04
this fool's notion of a
not-so-free enterprise. [music playing] The key to pulling
off a successful crime
00:12:14
is preparation and foresight. What do I need? What could go wrong? OK. I've cased the joint.
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I have a car. I have gas. I have a weapon. Great. I've got the money. Now I've got to get out of here.
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The keys. The key--- where are my keys? I know I had them a minute ago. Maybe if I kick the
car it'll start up.
00:12:35
Uh-oh. Thanks to a
quick-thinking citizen, another dumb criminal's career
has just been switched off.
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[music playing] In a sound marriage,
couples share the good times as
well as the bad.
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However, this man will probably
have a couple of discussions with his wife after he includes
her in one of his bad times.
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While working a
sobriety checkpoint, an officer pulled
over a vehicle driven by a man who was obviously
very intoxicated.
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After confirming
that he was impaired, the officer arrested him. And he was about to put him
in the backseat of his cruiser
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when the man said-- MAN: If you think
I'm drunk, you should check that lady out
back there in that car.
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It's my wife. She's twice as hammered as me. DANIEL BUTLER: Sure enough,
the wife's vehicle showed up.
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And they gave her the same test. And the husband was right. She was worse than he was.
00:13:29
They were both arrested. When the officer
asked the man why he told them about his
wife, the guy said--
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-I wasn't gonna
listen to her nag, so I figured she might
as well get caught too.
00:13:43
-The Surgeon General
claims smoking is linked to a high
incidence of cancer, heart disease, and
lung degeneration.
00:13:50
As evidenced in
our next story, it also sucks the brains
out of criminals. Escapee George Shelton
was half-way home
00:13:57
after scaling the fence
of North Carolina's [inaudible] Correctional Center. He had only to wait until
dark, then steal a parked car
00:14:04
from the diner
across the highway. But George was a heavy smoker. And in his hasty
flight, he forgot
00:14:09
to pack a book of matches. Now, addiction to any substance
destroys the reasoning process.
00:14:15
It rearranges priorities
and leaves the addict in the hopeless haze
of a mental mush.
00:14:20
And when the addictive
substance is legal, temptation lurks
at every corner. Like a dog at the
sound of a dinner bell,
00:14:27
George relinquishes
motor control, drawn to the scent of smoke. What's the price of a puff?
00:14:33
Well, for this guy, it was a
return trip to the cell block. [music playing] I enjoy parlor games,
charades, Monopoly,
00:14:43
Pictionary, 20 Questions. It doesn't matter. It's always fun to win,
unless of course the prize
00:14:49
is a free trip to the big house. Am I male? Yes. Am I over 18? Yes. Is that my joint.
00:14:57
Sure. Do I admit possession
of that joint in the presence of
a uniformed officer?
00:15:02
Mm-hmm. Have I just incriminated
myself for possession of a controlled substance?
00:15:07
Yes. Am I one of America's
dumbest criminals? Yes! [music playing] Spring training
started off with a bang
00:15:18
as juvenile detention centers
in Harris County, Texas, began recruiting for inmates.
00:15:25
[explosion] DANIEL BUTLER: Strike one,
one year of probation. Strike two, do the crime,
we'll guarantee the time.
00:15:33
Uh-oh. Traded to the Texas Youth
Commission for one year. Strike three, transferred
to the majors,
00:15:40
as this ambitious arsonist
is over the age of 18. He signed up for
five years for felony
00:15:47
theft and damaged property. And with this woman's
discovery, they are outta there!
00:15:55
A less than stellar season
for the Bad News Boobs. But an impressive lineup for the
Texas Incarceration Facilities.
00:16:02
Yay. Go Boobs. [music playing] A smart crime is hard to find. But there's no shortage
of dumb criminals.
00:16:12
See you next week on
"America's Dumbest Criminals." ANNOUNCER: On the next
episode of "America's Dumbest
00:16:18
Criminals"-- MAN: He took my
marijuana plants. POLICE OFFICER: Your
marijuana plants?
00:16:22
MAN: Yes. ANNOUNCER: A goofy
guard caught off-guard, a silly squirrel nut speeder.
00:16:28
-You sped up to avoid
hitting a squirrel. WOMAN: I didn't want to hit it. ANNOUNCER: A confused crook
in "Not Out of the Woods,"
00:16:34
a running robber in
"One Moment, Please." MAN: I suppose you're gonna make
some kind of federal case out
00:16:41
of this or something. ANNOUNCER: All this and
more on the next episode of "America's
Dumbest Criminals."
00:16:45
-On a particular day,
I'm working at the store. And there are two of us working.
00:16:49
There's one guy who works
down in the parking lot and in the store, just
walking, being visible.
00:16:56
And there's a guy who
sits up in an office watching this bank of monitors. There are 41 cameras up there.
00:17:03
Well, this guy comes in,
starts loading up a basket. My partner's watching this
guy loading this basket up.
00:17:10
And he's loading it
with beer and meat, which are expensive items. A basket full of them can run
in several hundred dollars.
00:17:19
And he's in radio
contact with me. He's telling me to basically be
ready outside the front door.
00:17:25
Well, this guy
loads the basket up, rolls it by the checkout
stand up front, and runs.
00:17:31
And he's literally
skating with the basket. He's got one foot up on
the crossbar on the bottom.
00:17:37
And he's, he's pushing
off with the other foot. And he's building up
some speed doing this.
00:17:42
And he's headed for a
car in the parking lot. Well, my buddy and I converge on
him from different directions.
00:17:48
And we snatch him off
the back of the basket. Well, just as we grab him,
his buddy, his getaway driver,
00:17:55
is five, six feet away from us. And he literally makes
eye contact with us, whereupon he guns it.
00:18:02
He burns rubber out
of the parking lot and just leaves
his friend standing there with us, which made his
buddy a little, a little angry,
00:18:11
let's say. But it got worse. We take him upstairs
to the security office. And we sit him down in a chair.
00:18:19
And he turns around
and looks behind him at the 41 TV cameras. And he says, oh, man.
00:18:24
He told me y'all didn't
have cameras in this store. [laughter] Well, about an hour and a half
later, his buddy comes back.
00:18:33
This guy's got a basket. He makes a beeline for
the meat department at the back of the store,
starts loading it up steaks,
00:18:40
comes up the beer aisle, loads
it up, and does the same thing, rolls up past the registers.
00:18:48
And we snatch him up standing
right outside the door when he tries to make
his break for it.
00:18:53
We get him upstairs and we ask
him, you know, what's the deal? And he explains that they
were going to this party
00:18:59
and these guys evidently were
on the refreshment committee. [laughter] [music playing]
00:19:16
[music playing]