America's Dumbest Criminals (7 page)
Just past midnight, an old, beat-up station wagon slowly passed the motel. It rattled up the road, turned around, and came back. The vehicle didn't fit the description of the motel robbers, and there was only one person in the car. But the motel thieves might have changed cars, or they might have just been casing the place. All the hidden officers watched it carefully.
The car turned around and came back for a third pass. Don Parker called his sergeant across the street on his walkie-talkie. “You think this might be our guys?”
“Nah, but he sure is interested in something.”
The car stopped, a door opened, the driver leaned out and looked around cautiously. The sergeant wasn't taking any chances.
“All units stand by. We've got some activity out here, but I don't know what's going on.”
Everybody watched as the mystery man stepped from the car.
“He's on the ground.” The man walked around his vehicle and into the light of a street lamp. “He's on the street side of his car now. Okay, I can see him now . . . oh, no!'
But Bad Luck Brown's luck held true. Just as he was about to disappear, he tripped over one of the officers and sprained his ankle.
Parker didn't like the tone of Sarge's voice. “What? What?”
Sarge radioed back, “It's Bad Luck Brown.”
The man eased over to the patch of grass in front of the motel and finally stopped next to a lawn mower that someone had carelessly left out.
Sarge was almost laughing. “I don't believe it. He's stealing the lawn mower!”
Quickly and silently, Bad Luck Brown rolled the lawn mower to his station wagon, dropped the tailgate, and loaded the mower into his car.
“Move in.” Sarge gave the command with a bit of resigned frustration in his voice.
The two unmarked cars in the parking lot pulled up to block the station wagon just as Bad Luck started it up. The officers hopped out with drawn guns and called him to freeze. Instead, Bad Luck jumped out and made a run for it. He dashed across the street into the woodsâright where Parker was hiding.
“We almost scared him to death when we jumped out. But he was determined to get away this time, so he bolted to the left into the dense undergrowth. Now, a foot chase at night in the woods is the worst. You're running into trees and falling down into gullies. So I decided to try to scare him into stopping.
“âHalt, or I'll shoot!' I fired my gun into the ground. Unfortunately, this didn't have the effect I had hoped for. All the officers hit the ground, but Bad Luck just sped up. It looked like he was going to get away clean.”
But Bad Luck Brown's luck held true. Just as he was about to disappear, he tripped over one of the officers and sprained his ankle.
“We never did see the motel thieves that night,” Parker says. “But once again, it was our privilege to book Bad Luck Brown. He never ceased to amaze us.”
Y
et another story about the notorious Bad Luck Brown from Pensacola, Florida, involves a time when this dumb criminal's bad luck
almost
changed.
One sunny afternoon Bad Luck Brown entered a busy liquor store with the intent of robbing it. Once he got into the store, however, there were too many people around for a real stickup, so he switched to Plan B. Fishing in his pocket for a piece of paper, Bad Luck scrawled a note to the cashier demanding money.
The cashier read the note and quickly handed over all the money in the drawer. In a flash, Bad Luck was out the door and gone. He seemed to have pulled off his robbery with flawless precision.
Except for one thing.
When the police arrived on the scene, they found the holdup note used in the robbery. When they turned it over, they knew exactly who to go after and where to find him.
Bad Luck Brown had written the note on the back of a letter he had received from his probation officerâcomplete with his name and address. When police tracked him down at home, they were able to inform him that his streak of bad luck was still intact.
This explosion, they believed, would pour millions of cubic feet of water onto the helpless city, transforming Nashville into a sort of country-and-western Atlantis.
I
n the great state of Tennessee three fools came up with a plan to make themselves rich. They were going to knock off the entire city of Nashville.
Our schemers needed a few supplies. Dynamite, for instanceâlots of dynamite. Their warped plan was to blow up Percy Priest Dam approximately ten miles east of the city. This explosion, they believed, would pour millions of cubic feet of water onto the helpless city, transforming Nashville into a sort of country-and-western Atlantis. Then they would don their scuba gear, swim through the submerged city, and steal all the Rolexes, diamond rings, and money they could carry.
Bizarre, yes, but that was the plan. Our three aquatic airheads bought some dynamite, carried it to the dam, and succeeded in setting it off. The small explosion did little serious damage. The scheme wasn't even discovered until a short time later, when the explosive conspirators were captured and arrested.
T
he record for being arrested belongs to Tommy Johns of Brisbane, Australia. By 1985, Tommy had been arrested for drunkenness two thousand times, according to Brisbane police. His total number of arrests for public drunkenness at the time of his death in 1988 was “nearly three thousand.”
Legend has it that when Tommy was cremated, it took three weeks to put out the fire.
I
n the 1980s, New York's nonviolent offenders were allowed to choose sidewalk sweeping or trash collecting instead of jail time.
Of the first one hundred arrested, ninety-seven chose jail time!
They all knew that jail was safer than the sidewalks of New York Cityâprobably cleaner, too.
The Light at the End of the Tennie
J
ust outside Lawrence, Kansas, police were called to an all-night market that had just been robbed. A male Caucasian had brandished a weapon and demanded money from a store employee. After stuffing the money into his pants pocket, he fled down the street.
Units in the area responded quickly to the alarm. Within moments, two officers on patrol had spotted a man running behind some houses in a nearby neighborhood. Certain that they had the right man, they gave chase on foot.
But the suspect wasn't really worried. It was dark, he was a very fast runner, and he knew the neighborhood like the back of his hand. He was sure he would have no trouble eluding the cops.
It didn't take long for the fleet-footed suspect to leave the first pair of officers behind, but he was surprised when more officers quickly joined in the chase. Each time the thief would elude one officer, he would be spotted by another. The crook couldn't understand it; he was using his best moves.
The pursuing officers had just followed the lights.
At last there were too many officers on the scene who apparently could see quite well in the dark. Our suspect looked frustrated and surprised when he was finally captured.
But he was even more surprised and frustrated once the police told him how they knew where he was all the time. He really hadn't been hard to follow at all, thanks to advanced technology.
The pursuing officers had just followed the lights. Not the infrared lights used for night vision, but the red lights on the heels of the suspect's high-tech tennis shoesâthe ones that blinked on and off every time his feet hit the ground.
Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law
I
n Edina, Minnesota, two would-be robbers hit on a foolproof getaway planâor so they thought. Rather than using one of their own vehicles, which would be traced directly back to their home, they decided to steal a pickup truck right before they robbed the bank.
Two blocks from the bank, they found a really nice pickup easy to hot wire. They then parked their stolen pickup outside the Norton Bank while they went inside to rob it.
So far, so good. But those bandits hadn't figured on the determination of the pickup's owner, who had spotted them driving away and sprinted after them.
The two clever thieves got a substantial haul of money from the bank and then ran outside to find their stolen truck had been, well . . . stolen. The original owner had reclaimed it while they were busy at the bank. Panicked, the robbers attempted their getaway on foot, but they failed. The next pickup in this story was by the police.
The hapless robber finally made it to his truck with a fistful of greenbacks, only to have his car key break off in the door. As if that wasn't bad enough, he shot himself in the foot with his revolver while struggling to open the locked door.
T
here are some days when nothing seems to go rightâ and this is truer of dumb criminals than it is of most of us.
Near Cleveland, Ohio, a lone gunman entered a cafe, pointed a gun at the waitress, and announced, “This is a robbery!” The waitress filled a paper bag with money as instructed, and the gunman escaped with the cash. But as the man ran across the parking lot the bag tore open, spilling bills and coins across the asphalt.
The hapless robber finally made it to his truck with a fistful of greenbacks, only to have his car key break off in the door. As if that wasn't bad enough, he shot himself in the foot with his revolver while struggling to open the locked door.
A few minutes later, he hobbled into a hospital emergency room. The police were notified and the footloose, clumsy, unlucky bandit was arrested.
D
umb criminals usually do their best to avoid arrest, but there are exceptions even to that rule. Charlie Hackett, chief of police in Kokomo, Indiana, remembers a criminal who decided the police were by far the lesser of the evils confronting him.