Robber Who Shot Himself in the Face...: ...and 201 More Stupid but True Stories of the World's Dumbest Criminals

by Scott, Gini Graham

• ISBN13: 9781402248818
• ISBN10: 1402248814
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc

Summary

The 201 criminals ridicules in The Robber Who Shot Himselfin the Face might be stupid, bat at least they make the police's job easier. The thieves who stole over a dozen GPS devices from a store, which led police right to their hideout The drunk driver who managed to run over himself with his own car The drug dealer who described what he looks like to the police so they could easily find him And, and of course, the gun-toting robber who tried to hold up a store but managed to shoot himself instead

Excerpts

<p><em>Excerpt from </em>Chapter 1: Unbelievable Explanations</p><p>Stupid criminals often get tripped up when they try to give unbelievable explanations for whatever it is they're doing. The following stories illustrate the wide range of such inane and insane explanations. Who would believe them? Judge for yourself.</p><p><strong>A </strong>drunk was stopped for driving erratically. As the officer approached, suspecting another drunk driver, the man moved over into the passenger seat, and when the officer asked for his license and registration, he claimed he wasn't driving. It was the man in the back. But since the only "man in the back" was a big teddy bear, the officer quickly took the real driver in.</p><p><strong>The</strong>driver of a GMC Yukon in Houston led the police on a twenty-five-mile, forty-minute chase, causing at least three wrecks along the way. He only stopped after jumping several curbs and flattening his front tire. He took off running and was tackled by a police officer. Why the long chase? The driver's excuse was that his parking brake got stuck and he couldn't stop. But the skeptical police soon discovered the real reason. The GMC Yukon was stolen, and the driver was on parole.</p><p><strong>A</strong>police officer in Appleton, Wisconsin, stopped two men early one morning in the winter when he saw them walking out from behind a local restaurant that had been burglarized the night before. When he stopped them for questioning, he discovered they had a collection of likely burglary tools with them, including Channellock pliers, a screwdriver, and a flashlight. The men explained they were going to help a friend fix a toilet. But when the officer asked them the name of their friend, they couldn't give him a last name, phone number, or address. Then, the officer found a large crowbar stuck in a snow bank and the men's footprints in the snow, leading to the back doors of several businesses that had also been burglarized the night before.</p><p><strong>Anthony</strong>Chiofalo, a twenty-two-year veteran police officer assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, took a random drug test in 2005, and tested positive for marijuana. He was suspended without pay and subsequently fired, but tried to fight his suspension by arguing that his wife had spiked his meatballs with the illegal substance so he would fail his drug test and be forced to retire. The Police Commissioner refused to reinstate him, however, because the excuse was not credible.</p><p><strong>In </strong>another case, a worker in Romania was accused of fraud and fired after he tried to get money from his company by claiming his mother had just died and he couldn't afford to pay for her funeral. Florin Radu Hretu, 27, from Pascani, Romania, asked his employer to lend him $300 to pay for his mother's funeral. His employer was very sympathetic and handed over the money. Unfortunately, luck was not on Hretu's side when a few minutes after his employer gave him the money, his mother turned up to pay him a visit—;;very much alive. Needless to say, he didn't get his job back—;;but he still has his mom.</p><p><strong>A </strong>dentist in Woodland Hills, California, Dr. Mark Anderson, was threatened with losing his dental license after he was accused of fondling the breasts of twenty-seven female patients. He tried to argue that chest massages were an appropriate procedure in certain cases and even claimed that dental journals said that massaging pectoral muscles was a treatment for common jaw problems. Unfortunately for Dr. Anderson, he only used this treatment for his female patients.</p><p><strong>In </strong>another case, a man convicted of being a serial flasher argued that he couldn't be guilty of the crime because his genitals were too small. The case occurred after Michael Carney, 41, of Fleetham Grove, England, was charged at the Teesside Crown Court with outraging public decency by flashing in front of six different women over a number of years. He argued that he couldn't have exposed himself because he was too embarrassed about the size of his penis to expose himself to women. He even showed the court explicit photographs taken by his wife that showed his smaller-than-average penis. However, he was soon convicted after the jury found out that he was earlier found guilty of sexually assaulting five women, and that on several occasions, he exposed himself to passersby while standing naked in front of his window. So, needless to say, whether he had small genitalia or not, the jury thought his small genitalia excuse was just a great big lie.</p><p><strong>In </strong>a Florida case, the driver of a car that fled police tried to explain his decision to flee by claiming that he thought the package on his lap held a bomb, rather than the marijuana it actually contained. The case started when David Bennett was sitting in his car by the woods in Indian River County, Florida, at 2:00 a.m., when a sheriff's deputy drove by and thought he seemed suspicious. The deputy got out of his car and walked up next to Bennett and saw two bags filled with marijuana sitting on his lap. Before he could make an arrest, Bennett stepped on the gas and took off, knocking down the policeman as he went. However, he didn't get far before he crashed his car. When the police officer followed Bennett to arrest him, the officer saw Bennett throw a bag of drugs into the woods. <em>Eventually,</em>when the case went to trial, Bennett tried to explain away his actions by claiming that he thought the package in his vehicle held a bomb. He told the judge that he didn't know it was a police officer who was approaching his vehicle, and when the man pulled out a gun and threw a package into Bennett's car, he thought it was a bomb and just wanted to get away. Needless to say, the judge didn't believe him, especially with Bennett's fourteen prior felony convictions, and Bennett was sentenced to thirty years in prison. So you might say Bennett's unbelievable excuse really bombed.</p>