Stuff You Should Know - 10 Terribly Bungled Crimes

Episode Date: August 14, 2008

Ten terribly bungled crimes throughout history are explored, such as drug deals gone wrong. Find out which ones are at the top of the list for Josh and Chuck in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. In 1968, five Black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mt. Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Deffie Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of Black children suffered

at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to unreformed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things we like to think about. Online fraud shouldn't be one of them because with every purchase, visa prevents, detects, and resolves online fraud. Safe, secure, visa. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. Josh and Chuck here. Josh Clark and Charles Bryant,

pair of staff writers for HowStuffWorks.com. What up, Chuck? What up, Josh? How's it going? It's going good, man. T-G-I-F. We record these on Friday. People might not know that. It's a great way to finish out our week, and I'm happy to be here. So, Chuck, you were telling me about a video you saw recently, something about a guy falling through the ceiling. Did you see that on YouTube? I did. I saw it on the YouTube. It's a really good one. It's a bungled crime. This guy was robbing a liquor store, and he snuck in, and they had video cameras outside that captured him going in through the roof, and then a video capture inside that showed this guy falling through the ceiling. Was there a star wipe when they went from camera? No, they shouldn't have done that. But

he fell through the ceiling and was gathering up some cash or whatever he could find, and then he realized that he couldn't get out. So then it's a time-lapse deal. It shows him over time. He gets a ladder, and he puts the ladder in there, and then it's still too high to get back through. And then the last shot of this video is classic. It shows this guy basically just sit down and smoke a cigarette until the cops come. That's beautiful. Chuck always has the best viral videos. He's always sending stuff out, you know, to everybody, to everyone's delight. But you know that guy sitting there with the smoke and a cigarette waiting, you know, resigned to his fate waiting for the cops to show up reminds me of an article I wrote called The Ten Terribly

Bungled Crimes. Right. These are great. They really are. I think everyone likes hearing stories, kind of like the Darwin Awards, except of the criminal nature. That's exactly right. You know, there's plenty of great, great heists that were pulled off, right? Like, Lufthansa. I know you're a good fellas fan, right? Yeah. And that was Jimmy. Right. The Lufthansa heist, which was in 1978. I think like 5.8 million bucks. Yeah. And I went on to the Department of Labor Department of Statistics. One of them has a website, an inflation calculator, and I calculated it. It was still, it was $20 million in 2008 dollars, which is nothing compared to what some guys did in 2006 in Great Britain, I think. They made off with $92 million. And I

don't think all of them were caught either. That's quite a heist. So these are like at the high end of the spectrum. They're in like the ultraviolet range. Down in the, we'll say yellows, right, are the ones in this article, Ten Terribly Bungled Crimes. Yeah, bless these folks. Yeah. They're just trying to commit a crime and like everyone else, and it's just not working out. Exactly. And what do you suspect is the reason why people engage in these horribly bungled crimes? My personal theory is that unless you're a career criminal, unless you're one of those guys who pulls off a Lufthansa heist or a $92 million take or whatever, you're basically just lazy, which is why you're a criminal. I think most criminal acts are basically in a statement of laziness.

Right. Trying to get something for nothing. So I mean like if you're just a burglar or whatever and you're a so-so burglar that hasn't been caught, you're generally lazy. If you are a bungling burglar, then you're the laziest of the lazy. You're so lazy, you're incompetent. Right. You're so lazy, you don't even commit crimes regularly. Exactly. Well, I think we should dive right in and talk about some of these incompetent people. Yeah, we'll talk about a few of them. Chuck, what's your favorite out of these Ten Bungled Crimes? And be forewarned, we don't have time to go over all ten, but you can read it on howstuffworks.com. Well, my favorite, actually I'll give you my second favorite. We'll build up to this.

All right. My second favorite is this Atlanta, I'm sorry, not Atlanta, but Rochelle Georgia woman. Man, you took mine. Yeah, this is a good one. She bought some crack cocaine, which is a drug, that people smoke to feel better. About themselves and their surroundings. Right. And so she stole this crack and got home lit up. And I think she found out that it wasn't cracked. She thought it wasn't cracked. Right. Because there was nothing happening. So the smart lady, we're not going to say her name. No, I don't think we can. Well, it's in the article. She called the cops to come over to her house and help her get her money back for her drug purchase. Yeah. And the police showed up and they said, hey, thanks for the easy caller.

Right. Yeah. So that was my second favorite. I like that one too. That one's... All right, I'll go with my second favorite then, because actually that was my first chuck. So my second favorite was the guy in Miami who was driving through an unnamed fast food chain. This is my favorite one. Awesome. Got you back. Yes. Okay. So this guy is driving through. It seems late at night. I don't know if he was on anything or drunk or just maybe in a really bad mood. He ordered some food. It came to like $7.41 or something like that. And when the person told them through the little box that that's how much it cost, he clearly told them that he was not going to pay more than $1.75. Number one, apparently that's all he thought it was worth. Right. Number

two, coincidentally, that's all he had on him. Right. And I love that this guy just thought that's all it's worth. You should only break even here on this transaction. Exactly. So that's what I'm paying. I'm not even sure if that's breaking even with the, you know, food costs these days. I think it would have been very much tilted in his favor. Don't get yourself. I bet a number six is really worth about $0.75. Yeah, you're probably right. Sorry, Chuck. I get naive sometimes. So back to the story. The guy decides that he's not going to pay more than $1.75. He tells him that. They tell him, no, you know, sorry, Bob, you know, they go back to putting the burger or whatever under the heat lamp and he drives off, but he doesn't drive very far. He

drives into a parking space. This is where it gets good. And he, he runs up to the drive-through window on foot and brandishes a weapon when they come to the window. And he tells them that he wants their money. And apparently these were the baddest fast food employees around because they turned them down again. And in retaliation, just to save some face, the guy grabs a handful of ketchup packets and runs off, right, peels off into the Miami night. Yeah. So that one was, that was my second favorite. Tied with the woman from Michelle, Georgia, who wanted the police to get her money back for the crack. Right. That's a good one. And you know, since you stole my favorite, I guess I'll just, I'll pick out another one here. The guy in Phoenix, Arizona on the police

chase. Yes. Oh, he's good. Yeah. I can understand his pain, actually. He robbed a bank and a lot of bank robbers in here and not very skilled bank robbers. And he was in a high, high speed pursuit by the cops and decided to make a little detour and get a pack of smokes. So he whips it in a convenience store, goes in and actually tries to pay for him, which is kind of cool. He robbed a bank, but he won't rob the convenience store. He tried to give him a 20. A 20. He's like, here's 20 bucks. Just give me the pack. Yeah. And the guy gave him the pack of smokes. He went and jumped back in his car and the chase resumed as if it was a Cohen Brothers film. Yeah. The clerk apparently said he saw the guy drive off and like 30 seconds later, this horde of police just driving past

you and he figured out what was going on. Tell him the absolute worst part of that story, Chuck. Cigarettes kill. No. No. Even worse than that, when they pulled the guy or when they finally caught the guy, the pack of cigarettes was unopened. Right. You hadn't even had a chance to smoke one of the cigarettes. Yeah. And chances are he would have been caught anyway. But at the very least, you could have had a last cigarette. Exactly. Because contrary to what they teach you on Oz, you can't smoke in prison. I thought they were trying to tell you. No. No, you're not supposed to smoke cigarettes in prisons against the rules. Yeah. So, Chuck, there were a couple that didn't make it in here. They bordered on the line of urban legend that I wanted to share that I couldn't

get really good sources to cite to back these stories up, which you kind of need when you're writing about these outlandish crimes. Yeah. For one, the best source I could get was a, it looked like some sort of monthly newsletter of a sheriff's department in Missouri or something, and I couldn't find any other verification for it. But I had heard it elsewhere. What's that one? That a guy in Michigan supposedly goes into a convenience store, robber, right? And he is really drunk. He tells them that he wants all of their money, and they say no. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a note even. He was just this loud, belligerent guy. And he told the, I think a pair of clerks that he was going to call the cops if they didn't give him the money.

That's a good one. So he calls the cops and the cops show up and arrest him on the spot. But backfired. Yeah, it backfired terribly. Yeah. And I think this guy was too drunk to even resign himself to his fate and, you know, sit down and smoke a cigarette. Yeah. You know, the guys like that should get a break. I agree. I agree. Personally. At the very least, not a baton to the head. But you should read all about this stuff. We haven't even cracked the surface. What'd we talk about? Like three, maybe? Yeah. At least seven more for you to go read and ten terribly bungled crimes on howstuffworks.com and stick around to find out what Star Wars character poses as a Dr. Pepper bottle on the howstuffworks site right after this.

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is Lando Calrissian. Yeah, that's what I hear. Very ably played by one, Mr. Billy D. Williams. Yes. Now, it's Lando Dr. Pepper is the character's name. There's a video on How Stuff Works site. It's a very little known video. And you can find that video embedded in how the One Man Star Wars trilogy works. I'm not going to go any further in explaining it. You just need to see everything for yourself. It is so awesome. Go type in how the One Man Star Wars trilogy works on HowStuffWorks.com. You will not be disappointed. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for our drug pilot. Would claim he did it all for the CIA. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami.

Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mt. Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to Unreformed on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.