Archive Category: Crime & Law
6 People Who Faked Their Own Death (For Ridiculous Reasons)
Faking your death is not simple or to be taken lightly. A few people thought it was the easy way out of a difficult situation, or just a cool stunt to pull off. Read about the woman who faked her death because she found it too hard to break up with her boyfriend, or the guy who wanted to see how many people would come to the funeral, or the one who disappeared for years because of a mistaken idea. Link -via Gorilla Mask
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Hail to the Thieves: Famous Heists We Love
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A REAL LIFE "OCEAN'S ELEVEN": The 2003 ANTWERP DIAMOND HEIST
HOW THEY DID IT: Not ones to rush into something this big, the Turin boys began laying the groundwork for the project three years prior. Posing as a company owner, Notarbartolo rented an office in the Center in 2000 and proceeded to obtain copies of master keys and learn how the alarm system worked. Then, the group waited for the perfect distraction - the Diamond Games tennis tournament on February 15-16, 2003. As Venus Williams wowed throngs of spectators (many of them Diamond Center employees and security guards), Nortarbartolo's crew used their duplicate keys to sneak into 123 of the building's underground vaults. Simply riding the elevator down to the basement, they deactivated a motion sensor and taped over light detectors. Then, instead of just covering the lenses of the CCTV (closed circuit television) security cameras, they avoided suspicion by replacing the tapes with previously recorded footage. Of course, the biggest hurdle was getting past the vault's 12-inch thick doors. Knowing the doors were equipped with internal magnets that would set off alarms if they detached, the robbers drilled through the bolts, carefully taped the magnets together, and moved them out of the way so that they wouldn't separate. After that, all they had to do was break the locks to the safety deposit boxes, rake in the diamonds, and then quietly flee the scene. To escape undetected, they memorized the surveillance patterns of the 24-hour police patrols outside the building. (Hey, they didn't have nicknames like “The King of Thieves” and “The Magician with the Keys” for nothing.) Amazingly, even though the heist took place early Sunday morning, authorities didn't discover anything suspicious until Monday. HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Here's a tip for would-be thieves: If you leave the crime scene with a bag full of diamonds and then dispose of the bags on the road leading out of the city, make sure you don't leave your half-eaten sandwich in one of them. Inspectors used DNA evidence found on the food to nab Notarbartolo, and further DNA traces in the vault to arrest two other gang members. In 2005, he was convicted, sentenced to 10 years in prison, and fined $1.3 million. Meanwhile, none of the diamonds have been recovered. Some have microscopic inscriptions on them that would reveal their identity, but only if the thieves ever decide to sell them legally. (Photo and a very interesting in-depth story by Joshua Davis at Wired Magazine) BRUTE STRENGTH AND NUMBERS: THE SECURITAS DEPOT ROBBERY
HOW THEY DID IT: Picture this: You're driving along a road in Stockbury, England, when the whirring sirens of an unmarked police car startle you from your evening commute. You roll down your window and chipper police officer tells you he needs to speak with you - in his vehicle. Oops, you've just been kidnapped. That's how Colin Dixon was unwittingly reeled into one of the biggest heists of the century. The crooks handcuffed Dixon - a manager at the Securitas cash collection and money transport company - and told him his family would be killed if he didn't comply. Meanwhile, fellow gang members abducted Dixon's wife and son, posing once again as police offices with a fake story about “an accident involving your husband”. The manager led the thieves to the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, where the criminals- wielding guns and cloaked in knit caps - accosted another 14 employees and made off with a giant trick full of loot. While the event was certainly traumatic for all the victims, fortunately, no one was injured. HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Good old-fashioned police work. Apparently, it takes a lot of accomplices to stage multiple kidnappings. In total, investigators have arrested about 30 people in connection with the crime, including drivers, face police, a car dealer, a salesman, a roofer, and a hairdresser named Kim Shackleton. Guess where she's headed? BRAZIL'S BIG DIG: THE TUNNEL RATS BANK ROBBERY
HOW THE DID IT: For the 23 or so suspected gang members involved in this operation, the first step was posing as a company that was renting an office building- which just happened to be located near a bank. Cleverly enough, the crooks set up an artificial business as an artificial turf com - called Grama Sintetica, complete with artificial employees and fancy logo. For weeks, a group of men worked around the clock digging a tunnel leading two city blocks over to the Central Bank building Somehow, the process was so shrewdly executed that Grama Sintetica's neighbors failed to notice that a van was transporting several loads of dirt away from the building each day. And if their stealthy moves don‘t seem impressive enough, consider the tunnel itself: In it, the gang installed electric lighting, air conditioning, and wood-paneled walls (to make sure the tunnel didn't collapse). To pull off the heist, the gang managed to break through the bank's three-and-a-half-foot-wide vault floor, using (as police later discovered) a bolt cutter, a drill, an electric saw, and a blow torch. Over the course of the weekend, they eventually removed five containers full of bank notes, weighing nearly 7,700 lbs. Unbelievably, nobody discovered the theft until that Monday. All told, the heist required experts in electrical engineering, global positioning systems, excavation, and, of course, theft. The most brilliant idea, though? Picking a crowded, noisy area in Brazil for the heist, reasoning that no one would notice the sound of tools and digging in the daily commotion. HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: The thieves did a good job of covering their tracks (they used a white powder at the crime scene to hide fingerprints), but apparently, tunneling underneath nations is a little trickier. Attempts to transport the money out of the country using truck transports and chartered planes failed, and the assumed mastermind behind the theft, Luis Ribeiro, eventually turned up murdered. So far, the police have arrested a few dozen suspected members of the gang. NOT-SO-GOOD FELLAS: THE LUFTHANSA AIRPORT HEIST
HOW THEY DID IT: The wrong way - with brute force. Even
though it became source material for the 1990 film “GoodFellas HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Unlike the other heists, in which some gang members fled the country to hide, the Lufthansa Airlines gangsters stuck around. Not only that, but they made the mistake of displaying their newfound wealth a bit too obviously. The police had a pretty good idea who was behind the crime, and it wasn't long before snitches implicated Werner and a few others. Many of the participants were murdered before they could squeal, while still others became informants and joined the Witness Protection Program. Werner, who organized but didn't participate in the actual theft, was the only one convicted for a role in the heist. |
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The article above, written by John Brandon, appeared in the Jan - Feb 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission. Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!
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If
you thought George Clooney's Ocean's Eleven character was smooth, check
out the velvet finish on criminal mastermind 
February
must be a good month for crime. In February 2006, three years after the
Antwerp diamond heist, a Securitas money depot in England was robbed by
a band of thieves who coordinated simultaneous kidnappings. They made
off with a jaw-dropping $92.5 Million (US) in cash - most of it unmarked.
Today, it's considered the largest cash robbery in British history. (Photo:
PA, via 
Sometimes
there's a light at the end of the tunnel, other times, there's $72 million
(US). Such was the case in August 2005, when a group of criminals in Fortaleza,
Brazil, used their 260-ft. long secret passageway to make off with some
serious loot. The trick: Spending three months excavating the thing and
tediously sneaking vanloads of dirt past the thousands of workers in the
busy urban area above. (Photo: AP, via 
In
1978, Lufthansa Airlines employee Louis Werner knew two important things:
First, that a Lufthansa airplane occasionally transported unmarked bills
from West Germany to New York's Kennedy Airport, where they were temporarily
held in nothing more than cardboard boxes locked inside a vault. Second,
that he owed about $20,000 in gambling debts to his bookie.
”
(plus several books and even a few copycat crimes), the Lufthansa Airport
Heist was a brutal affair. Using a few helpful tips from Werner, infamous
crime lord Jimmy Burke put together an operation that involved several
phases - breaking into the airport's cargo terminal, handcuffing employees,
and subduing guards. Once inside the vault, they found 72 boxes of cash
and jewelry totaling about $6 million (instead of the $2 million they'd
expected). As for the getaway, the gang used bloody force to make sure
no employees reported the crime until long after they'd left the airport.
The entire robbery took only 64 minutes, but it became one of the most
complex and lucrative heists in U.S. history.
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Man Stabbed Self to Hide Skateboarding Accident
Aaron Siebers, 27, had a problem. He was skateboarding one afternoon, fell, and ripped his Blockbuster-issued khakis. Worried about getting "written up," Aaron hatched a criminally (not so) brilliant plan:
Instead of just calling in sick, he stabbed himself in the leg and showed up at work claiming to have just been attacked by three Hispanic males. Siebers, who told cops he was assaulted as he walked toward the Blockbuster in Edgewater, had a deep stab wound in one leg and several other minor cuts on his face and stomach. As investigators began hunting for the assailants, they reviewed surveillance video from outside a Target store where Siebers claimed the attack occurred. The footage, however, showed no such assault. Confronted by cops, Siebers, pictured in the below mug shot, admitted that he had stabbed himself. He told investigators about the skateboarding accident, the resulting ripped pants, and how "he did not want to lose his job so he stabbed himself in the leg," according to an arrest affidavit sworn by Officer Shawna Naumann.
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Bank Notes
The blog Bank Notes is a collection of real robbery notes from all over. They aren’t literary masterpieces, but some are interesting, along with sparse details of the actual robbery. Link -via Metafilter
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The Worst Disguise Ever: The Permanent Marker Disguise
This has got to be the worst disguise ever: Carroll, Iowa police apprehended two men who decided to color their faces with permanent marker in order to disguise themselves!
Police received a call Friday night that two men with hooded sweatshirts and painted faces had tried to break into a man’s home in Carroll, Iowa.
When police stopped a vehicle matching the caller’s description blocks away, they were stunned by the men’s disguises.
There were no ski masks or stockings pulled over their heads; instead, Matthew Allan McNelly, 23, and Joey Lee Miller, 20, streaked their faces with permanent black marker.
Previously on Neatorama: Duck Tape Robber
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Your Prefix of the Day: Yotta-
Mr. Dalton Chiscolm sued Bank of America for $1,784 billion trillion dollars. That’s $1,784,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. In the International System of Units this amount would be expressed as 1.784 yottadollars.
The range of SI unit prefixes is shown above; “yotta” is the largest accepted prefix, used to measure things like the diameter of the known universe (in yards).
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who heard the case in Manhattan’s federal court, presided over the Bernie Madoff trial, and thus is familiar with large amounts of money – but even he was impressed by the size of Mr. Chiscolm’s claim. If every person on earth had as much money as Bill Gates, that total wealth would still only be 1/1000th of the amount requested.
The plaintiff was asked to provide further evidence to support his claim.
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The Geezer Bandit
Have you seen this old man? He’s the "Geezer Bandit," a serial bank robber than has robbed three banks so far (once while carrying an oxygen tank!):
Authorities say he walked in to a Bank of America branch in Rancho Santa Fe Monday, handed the teller a demand note, and showed a black handgun. It happened at the beginning of the business day around 10 a.m. at 17008 Avenida De Acacias. FBI agent April Langwell said investigators believe he’s hit up three other banks in the last two months. He’s suspected of robbing the U.S. Bank branch inside the Von’s grocery store in Santee on Aug, 28.
Two weeks later, on Sept. 12, he walked in the National Bank branch in La Jolla and got away with an undisclosed amount of cash. Surveillance video showed him carrying an oxygen tank with tubes running up to his nose.
Then two and a half weeks ago, on Oct. 9, he targeted another U.S. Bank inside a Von’s grocery store in Carmel Valley.
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Murder mystery party guests fail to spot actual crime!
A church group staged a murder mystery dinner theater in Yeovil, England on Saturday night. They spent the evening looking for crime clues, but failed to notice that thieves had taken a large TV, laptop computer and the contents of a safe the night before. Elim Pentecostal Church was the victim of a break-in that went unnoticed until Sunday, despite the crime-solving party. The crime was finally noticed by Reverend Howard Davenport, whose car had been vandalized at the church earlier in the week.
Revd Howard Davenport said: “In situations like this you have to laugh really!
“We were obviously disappointed that the church had been targeted twice in a week, but when I heard that it hadn’t even been noticed I had to smile.
“You’d have thought that eight wannabe detectives might have noticed a real crime a few metres from them only hours earlier!”
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Father Kidnapped Daughter's Killer to Bring Him to Justice
What would you do if someone killed your child, and authorities refused to extradite the suspect? Here’s what one father allegedly did:
A retired accountant whose daughter was killed 27 years ago was facing charges last night over the alleged abduction of the man he always blamed for her death. The man was left bound, gagged and injured outside a French courtroom.
André Bamberski, 72, is suspected of taking justice into his own hands over the German authorities’ failure to act against Dieter Krombach, a German cardiologist, after a French court convicted him of manslaughter in his absence.
Mr Krombach, 74, was found trussed up with head injuries in a lane near the criminal court in the eastern city of Mulhouse on Sunday after an anonymous caller with an Eastern European accent tipped off police. Mr Bamberski, who is of Polish origin and lives near Toulouse, was in Mulhouse at the weekend and is suspected of making the call, police said.
Link (Photo: Remy Gabalda/AFP/Getty Images)
Do two wrongs make a right or is Bamberski – if he did do it – justified in kidnapping the alleged (Update 10/26/09: alleged/convicted – there’s controversy about this) killer? What would YOU do if it were your child?
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No-English Traffic Ticket
Can’t speak English? You better not be pulled over in Texas … Nearly forty people have gotten "no-English" traffic violation tickets:
The Dallas Police Department said it was embarrassed by what it calls a mistake by rookie Officer Gary Bromley after he stopped Ernestina Mondragon for making an illegal U-turn.
In addition for being cited for the U-turn violation, Mondragon received another ticket for being a "non-English speaking driver."
Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle issued an apology:
"We don’t have abilities to determine proficiency in any language, and we shouldn’t be doing it in the first place," Kunkle said. "I apologize to the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community."
After a review of the records, Kunkle said about a half-dozen officers had issued a total of 38 similar citations. He said police would recommend to the courts that any pending cases be dismissed.
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Leech Convicts Australian Robber
Police found a leech at the scene of a robbery in Tasmania eight years ago. They took a sample of the blood the leech had consumed. In 2008, Peter Alec Cannon was arrested on an unrelated drug charge. The DNA from his blood matched the blood from the leech!
Cannon would probably have got away with the crime had he not been charged with drug offences late last year, and asked to give a DNA sample – which matched that from the crime scene.
Detective Inspector Mick Johnston, who was involved in the police investigation from the start, said Cannon’s conviction validated the use of DNA technology.
“It’s a testament to DNA evidence and the legislation that allows us to keep such evidence in relation to unsolved crimes – this is a fantastic result,” he said.
Link -via Boing Boing
(image credit: BBC)
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The 15 Most Brutal Methods Of Execution Of All Time
Human beings seemingly really enjoy getting creative with their cruelty, as these (mostly) out of fashion methods of execution illustrate, including the Spanish Tickler:
Used to tear open the victim’s skin, this weapon could rip through anything, including muscle and bone. The victim was tied up naked, sometimes in public, and then the torturers begin mutilating them. Usually starting on the limbs and working inward, the neck and face were always saved for last.
Warning: the article may be is disturbing. Link
From the Upcoming 
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Was Marie Rogêt Murdered by Edgar Allan Poe?
In July 1841 the dead body of the beautiful brunette Mary Cecilia Rogers was found in the Hudson, near Hoboken.
When the famous author Edgar Allan Poe soon afterwards published his story "The Murder of Marie Rogêt", it was clear that his detective Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin was solving a true crime mystery…
On a Wednesday morning in July 1841, three men in a sailing-boat saw a body in the water off Castle Point, Hoboken. It was the dead body of a beautiful brunette, Mary Cecilia Rogers, just 21 years old. According to the New York Tribune ”it was obvious that she had been horribly outraged and murdered”. Her clothes were torn, her petticoat was missing and a piece of lace from the bottom of her dress was embedded so deeply her throat that it had almost disappeared. An autopsy led to the conclusion that she had been “brutally violated”.
Link – via historicalmysterywriter
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Be Careful Who You Poke
In yet another case of blurring between the lines of virtual and reality, a woman broke the law for poking via Facebook! Shannon Jackson of Tennessee broke the law when she poked a contact on her Facebook list, by violating a restraining order.
The order specifically prohibits either telephoning, contacting, or otherwise communicating with the petitioner. Violation of a restraining order in Tennessee is a class A misdemeanor, punishable up to 11 months and 29 days in jail, as well as a fine up to $2500.
This does leave one big question on the table, however—if the plaintiff here felt so threatened by the defendant, why didn’t she block (a little-known option in the privacy settings) or at least de-friend her on Facebook? From what I can see, you can only poke friends (or possibly people on your network with public profiles). Yes, the accused is responsible and shouldn’t have poked her, but shouldn’t the plaintiff have taken steps to avoid contact if she was distressed enough by their interactions to get a restraining order?
What do you think? Should the perp here have known her poke counted as contact? Was she naive or hoping to subvert the court order?
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Oops! Somali Pirates Attacked French Navy Ship
Bad idea: being a Somali pirate and attacking …
Really bad idea: … in the middle of the night …
Neatorama-worthy: a ship that turns out to be a French navy ship!
Admiral Prazuck told French TV station La Chaine Info the pirates seemed to be surprised that the navy ship fought back.
"Once they realised they were facing a ship that was responding and was heading towards them, they stopped shooting and attempted to flee," he said.
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Thugs' Intended Victims Turned Out To Be ... Cross-Dressing Cage Fighters!
If you think the Somali pirate had a bad case of mistaken identity, check this one out: when two thugs decided to attack a pair of transvestites, they found out the hard way that their intended victims were cross-dressing cage fighters!
The Daily Mail has the story:
Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, singled out the two men walking along a street in wigs, short skirts and high heels.
Bare-chested Gardener was caught on CCTV confronting one of the men in a pink wig, black skirt and boob tube – then seen swinging a punch, a court heard.
But the other cage fighter, wearing a sparkling black dress and matching long wig, sprang to his friend’s help, delivering two lightning-quick punches to the two stunned yobs.
The defense attorney for the two remarked:
Mark Davies, defending, said: ‘You know it cannot have been a good night when you get into a fight with two cross-dressing men.
No words on why the cage fighters were out wearing such lovely dresses in the first place: Link (CCTV still image: Wales News Service)
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Crocodile Thrown in Jail
Police in Gunbalanya, Northern Teritory, Australia arrested and detained a two meter long female crocodile. The charge? Loitering!
Police said they found it loitering near a fence, trying to look innocent.
Brevet Sergeant Adam Russell said intrigued residents had gathered around to watch the arrest – but any dreams he had of nabbing the gnasher in style were promptly voted down.
“I wanted to jump on it Steve Irwin style,” he said. “But (the rangers) wouldn’t let me.”
After three days in the clink, during which the croc endured a hosing-down every few hours, the prisoner was turned over to a crocodile farm. Link -via Arbroath
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Bird Caught Stealing Doritos
The best thing about this bird stealing Doritos from the store is how human he looks while doing it. He enters and looks around very casually, grabs the loot, walks out a little faster, and then runs when he gets out of the store. It’s like he watched a human shoplift chips first.
Link Via Mental Floss
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Twitter User Served Writ...By Tweet!
A lot of Twitter users are impersonating celebrities, using the social networking service to send bogus tweets on behalf of someone else. That is against the site’s policies, and a ostensibly a crime. Now, for the first time, Britain’s High Court is setting precedent by ordering one anonymous perpetrator to cease and desist. They simply sent him a tweet.
Andre Walker at Griffin Law said the anonymous Tweeter targeted by the writ will get a message from the High Court the next time they open their online account.
“Whoever they are, they will be told to stop posting, to remove previous posts and to identify themselves to the High Court via a web link form,” he said.
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Nothing Says It's Over Like Fried Goldfish
A woman in Texas was so angry at her former common-law husband that she decided to fry and eat his pet goldfish. The not-so-lucky 7 gold fish were bought by the couple during happier days. Police say it’s a civil not a criminal matter and left the couple to work out the issue. I guess revenge is a dish best served fried!
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Man Caught With 1700 Animals In His Trunk
Talk about junk in your trunk (sorry, but I just had to). An Italian man was arrested after a routine police stop ended up with authorities seizing over 1700 animals in his trunk. Included in the bust were 216 parakeets, 300 white mice, 150 hamsters, 30 Japanese squirrels, six chameleons and over 1,000 terrapins, a type of turtle.
It seems he was going to sell the rare critters, but they have instead been given to local zoos.
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Should Roman Polanski Be Arrested?
So. Three decades after he fled Los Angeles, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland.
In 1977, Polanski pled guilty of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" to avoid being charged with rape by use of drugs (he gave alcohol and quaaludes to the then-13-year-old female model he was doing a photo shoot with) and sodomy, amongst other charges. He fled the United States before his sentencing and has been avoiding traveling to countries that could extradite him ever since. The victim has since forgiven him and settled a civil suit against Polanski for an unspecified amount.
Granted, the Polanski case was tawdry. It was filled with celebrity, sex, drugs and violence (not to mention charges of ethical misconduct of the judge presiding over the case). In short, it was the stuff of Hollywood. So the media frenzy of the arrest was not unexpected. But what surprised me was the diplomatic row that ensued when both France and Poland (Polanski is a dual citizen of both countries) protested Polanski’s arrest.
Is rape of a minor not a serious offense in those two countries? How about fleeing and being a fugitive from the law (while not exactly hiding – Polanski continued to direct award-winning films even with warrants outstanding)? Was the arrest outrageous, as journalist Anne Applebaum wrote in a column for The Washington Post? Or was it justice finally being served?
What do you think of the whole drama?
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The Foxy Golfball Thief
Tom Houk of Steamboat Springs, Colorado built a putting green in his yard, and got into the habit of leaving his golf balls where they landed until he returned. A few months ago, he woke to find all his golf balls gone! Houk produced more balls, but the next day, they would be gone, too. This continued until Houk finally spotted the thief.
A hairless fox was standing there with one of his golf balls in his mouth.
“We just couldn’t believe it and we thought he just snatched one,” Houk said.
The fox had more than one golf ball in mind.
“He doesn’t just take one ball,” Sally Houk said. “He came back and forth and back and forth until he took all of them.”
Tom Houk thinks the fox has taken nearly 100 of his golf balls.
What does a fox do with a hundred golf balls? Jerry Neal of the Colorado Division of Wildlife thinks he probably plays with them. No word on what size clubs the fox uses. Link -via Arbroath
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10 Humiliating Reasons People Have Been Arrested
Being arrested is bad enough without having some embarrassing details publicized as well. Someday, when your grandchildren ask you if you’ve ever been in the newspaper, on TV, or published on the ‘net, you’ll be glad you aren’t these people!
It will be the second offense for Portland’s Gary Moody who was caught hiding inside the pit of a campsite latrine, once again. The creature of the black latrine claimed that he was not leering at the backsides of bathroom goers. His excuse was that he dropped his shirt down the hole; the previous time he stressed that he had dropped his wedding ring (which was never found). Moody entered a plea of no contest to trespassing for which he will serve two years of probation. He is also required to pay a fine of $1,000 and $700 to the Forest Service for the cost of pumping out the toilet tank and screening the contents.
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Wacky Anti-Piracy Methods of Yore
Software piracy ain’t anything new (before there was the Internet and all these fancy P2P piracy, there was the old school Sneakernet kind).
Royal Pingdom blog has a very interesting, blast-from-the-past article about fighting piracy through various copy protection methods, including code wheels, dongles, and feelies. For example:
Dongles
Dongles started appearing in the early 80’s and were used both for games and commercial software of other kinds. The dongle would need to be plugged in to the computer somehow, often through the serial or parallel port. Without the device plugged in, the software wouldn’t run.
The very first program to use a dongle was Wordcraft on the Commodore PET in 1980. Its dongle (the inventor named it so for lack of a better word) connected to the computer’s external cassette port and was two cubic inches large (32 cubic centimeters). We were unfortunately unable to find a picture of it.
These days some software uses USB dongles for copy protection, so we’re not rid of them yet. Dongles are pretty unpopular among users (it’s arguably one of the most hated software protection methods ever), so usually only more specialized and expensive software get away with using them.
Link – via GeekPress (Photo: GamesRadar)
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Celebrity Bird Attacks Policeman
A 3-foot-tall macaw named Chip is in a bit of trouble over a traffic stop. The bird, who starred in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, attacked a policeman in the course of his duties in Dover, England.
The officer arrested the woman on suspicion of driving while banned.
The attack came when he attempted to drive her car to the pound, with Chip loose inside.
The parrot, who has a 1.2m wingspan, perched on the steering wheel, pecking at the officer’s fingers throughout the journey.
Chip was not arrested, but is being held by the RSPCA until his unnamed owner is released. Link -via Arbroath
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Robber Returned ... to Ask Victim Out on a Date!
In the long line of stupid criminals featured on Neatorama before, this one is probably the stupidest (and probably loneliest): Stephfon Bennet, 20, allegedly robbed a woman and then returned a couple of hours later … to ask his victim out on a date!
"We are not exactly sure what he was thinking at the time," said Columbus police Sgt. Sean Laird. "She recognized him right away when he returned and was able to have her cousin call 911."
Officers arrived and arrested Bennett in front of the house, police said.
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Thief Identified Through His Turd
This has got to be one of the strangest police investigations ever. Detectives in Valencia County, New Mexico, identified a possible suspect by extracting DNA from a very unusual piece of evidence left by the thief: his own turd!
The thief used the bathroom and left his solid waste on display for the homeowner. "It’s more of an insult right there. It was a big slap in the face," the homeowner said.
That same type of evidence was found at several different burglary scenes. The detectives on the case said they used the thief’s calling card against him. The feces went into evidence and the state crime lab extracted DNA from it. "We ended up getting a hit," Rivera said.
Good work, CSI Valencia County! Link – via Dave Barry’s Blog
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Naked Neighbour ‘put me off men’
Denise Woodage of Reading, England told a court that the sight of her neighbor naked put her off men and sausages for life. 53-year old Paul Darlow was arrested for indecent exposure after Woodage saw him naked in his garden.
The 54-year-old, who is mum to Hazel, 26, told the Post she was now anti-men as a result of seeing Darlow’s “pale and hairy” body in the November chill and is now on anti-depressants.Mrs Woodage, who does not work, first saw the 53-year-old flashing in March 2008. She complained to police and they installed CCTV.
In November 2008 – after capturing Darlow on film flashing his bits yet again – he was arrested and charged with indecent exposure.
He initially denied the incidents but during his trial, before Judge Zoë Smith, he confessed to touching himself outdoors
Darlow was sentenced to six weeks jail time. Link -via Arbroath
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Man Slaps Stranger's Toddler: "If You Don't Shut That Baby Up I WIll Shut Her Up For You"
Sixty one year old Georgia man named Roger Stephens was apparently fed up with a crying toddler while shopping at Walmart. Not one to suffer in silence (just look at that scowl!) Roger took matters to his own hands – literally:
The child was crying, which apparently greatly perturbed Matthews. "If you don’t shut that baby up I will shut her up for you," Stephens warned Matthews, according to a Gwinnett County Police Department report. Moments later, Stephens acted on his threat, slapping Paige "across the face approximately four or five times." Though the child "started crying and screaming" after being struck, Stephens told Matthews, "See, I told you I would shut her up."
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