True Stories About Real Criminals
"Really Stupid People"

A couple of midnight bandits tried to steal money from what they thought was a local bank's night depository. They lit a stick of dynamite, dropped it into the deposit slot and stepped back a few feet. Unfortunately for them, they had confused the bank's night depository with the drop vault of a nearby car wash. The dynamite exploded, blowing the front off the vault. The paper money was blown to shreds and the coins were propelled out like shot out of a shotgun, severely wounding the would-be bank robbers.

A young man asked his mother to drive him to the bank without telling her he planned to rob it. He told her to wait while he went inside to conduct his business. A few minutes later junior came running out with the cash, only to find that mom had parked the car and gone inside a nearby grocery store to do some shopping.

 A Cleveland drug dealer decided to impress his friends by hiring a limousine for a big night on the town. His first stop was at a posh suburban residence to sell some cocaine to a rather influential individual. Hoping to earn a little extra profit by blackmailing his wealthy customer, the crook handed a camcorder to the limo driver and asked him to record the event for posterity. The driver, a moonlighting member of the Cleveland Police Department, was happy to comply. 

 A New York man robbed a bank and used two plastic garbage bags to haul the loot. The bags were so heavy he had to drag them. Before he got out of the bank, one of the bags started to rip, spilling money all over the floor. As he stopped to gather it up, the police arrived and offered their assistance. 

A couple of California geniuses pulled into a bank's drive-up lane, put their stick-up note in the pneumatic tube, pressed the button to send it in, then patiently waited in their car for the loot to arrive. The police arrived a few minutes later and arrested the pair.

 Last year a pair of crooks broke into our local lumber company. One of the crooks attempted to steal a table saw that was still packed in the shipping box and must have weighed over 60 pounds. He climbed up in the loft where it was stored, grabbed hold of it and then lifted it over a wooden rail and then down to his buddy. The problem? He forgot to let go of the box and it was rather heavy. He plunged over the rail, landing on his head and died shortly thereafter. His partner got sent up for burglary.

Shan Socha, man accused of a bank robbery in Marietta, Ohio, and other charges was arrested after he called 911 to see if there were any warrants out for his arrest. Mr Socha, 35, was arrested for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and being a fugitive from justice for the bank robbery. Socha's wife, Mona, 43, was also arrested when police showed up shortly after the phone call. Socha also faces warrants on 15 bad checks and a state charge of violating parole in Cabell County. The couple was being held in the Cabell County jail awaiting a federal court hearing set for Monday.

Charles Demery, 32, walked into the Hickory Smoke Bar-B-Que restaurant in Shreveport, Louisiana and ordered a rib plate to go. He paid for his meal and, seeing all the cash in the register, decided to rob the place. He held his folded sunglasses in his right hand and covered them with a bandana so the clerk would think he had a gun. It worked. The frightened clerk handed over the cash and Demery ran from the store. Unfortunately for him, he'd left his wallet on the counter. The wallet contained several pieces of identification, including a prison ID card. Officers found him hiding in the attic of a nearby residence. He refused to come down voluntarily. Gravity and a weak ceiling, however, resulted in a crash-landing on the kitchen floor. Demery was arrested for first-degree robbery. 

 A man walked into a local police station, dropped a bag of cocaine on the counter, informed the desk sergeant that it was substandard cut, and asked that the person who sold it to him be arrested immediately. 

Amy Brasher was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, after a mechanic reported to police that 18 packages of marijuana were packed in the engine compartment of the car, which she had brought to the mechanic for an oil change. According to police, Brasher later said that she didn't realize that the mechanic would have to raise the hood to change the oil.

Drug-possession defendant Christopher Johns, on trial in March in Pontiac, Michigan, said he had been searched without a warrant. The prosecutor said the officer didn't need a warrant because a "bulge" in Christopher's jacket could have been a gun. Nonsense said Christopher, who happened to be wearing the same jacket that day in court. He handed it over so the judge could see it. The judge discovered a packet of cocaine in the pocket and laughed so much he required a five-minute recess to compose himself.

The attorney for Howard "Wing Ding" Jones, accused of selling drugs, sought to lower his client's bail from $150,000, insisting in a Norristown, Pennsylvania, courtroom that Jones was not a risk to flee. At that very moment, Jones bolted from the courtroom and sprinted out the front door. Police captured him 50 minutes later and returned him to the courtroom, where his bail was raised to $500,000.

New Jersey Trooper Glenn Lubertazzi stopped a car for speeding and was asking the three occupants routine questions when one of them, Tina Stigger, 30, asked if she could have a cigarette from a pack in the car's glove compartment. While handing the pack to the woman, he noticed it contained a marijuana joint. Authorities reported that a search of the vehicle turned up $32,000 in suspected drug-buy money, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove home. With the chain still attached to the machine. With their bumper still attached to the chain. With their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper.

A man walked up to a cashier at a grocery store and demanded all the money in the register. When the cashier handed him the loot, he fled--leaving his wallet on the counter.

A man went into a drug store, pulled a gun, announced a robbery, and pulled a Hefty-bag facemask over his head -- and realized that he'd forgotten to cut eyeholes in the mask.

A man convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600 in damages rather than serve a prison sentence. For payment, he provided the court a check -- a *forged* check. He got 10 years. 

A man successfully broke into a bank's basement through a street-level window, cutting himself up pretty badly in the process. He then realized that (1) he could not get to the money from where he was, (2) he could not climb back out the window through which he had entered, and (3) he was bleeding pretty badly. So he located a phone and dialed "911" for help...

Two men in a pickup truck went to a new home site to steal a refrigerator. Banging up walls, floors, etc., they snatched a refrigerator from one of the houses, and loaded it onto the pickup. The truck promptly got stuck in the mud, so these brain surgeons decided that the refrigerator was too heavy. Banging up *more* walls, floors, etc., they put the refrigerator BACK into the house and returned to the pickup truck only to realize that they locked the keys in the truck--so they abandoned it.

A policeman picks up a man running down the street with a woman's purse (since he fits the description of a purse snatcher reported just seconds earlier). The policeman tells the criminal he will take him to the lady for a positive identification, meaning he wants the lady to positively ID the criminal. When the purse snatcher steps out of the squad car, he says, "Yes, Sir, that's the woman I robbed alright!"

The Belgium news agency Belga reported in November that a man suspected of robbing a jewelry store in Liege said he couldn't have done it because he was busy breaking into a school at the same time. Police then arrested him for breaking into the school.

R.C. Gaitlin, 21, walked up to two patrol officers who were showing their squad car computer equipment to children in a Detroit neighborhood. When he asked how the system worked, the officers asked him for a piece of identification. Gaitlin gave them his driver's license, they entered it into the computer, and moments later they arrested Gaitlin because information on the screen showed that Gaitlin was wanted for a two-year-old armed robbery in St. Louis, Missouri.

A bicyclist who confronted three well-dressed men walking to their hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, pointed what looked like a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun at them and demanded money. The three men turned out to be off-duty federal agents, who drew their own weapons and fired more than 20 shots, hitting the would-be robber, as well as three cars, a truck, two homes and an office building. The injured suspect's weapon turned out to be a pellet gun.