Even master criminals make mistakes – but this bunch of bungling bozos demonstrate how to make things really easy for the boys in blue!
PUTTING YOUR FOOT IN IT…
First of all, a fairy tale crime, but Cinderella turned out to be a criminal and Prince Charming was a police detective…
An unwitting Aberdeen burglar was caught and identified by his toe-prints, after he left a perfect print of his foot at the scene of a crime – through a hole in his sock. He’d gone to the trouble of wearing gloves to cover his fingerprints, but didn't realise his naked tootsies would end up getting him arrested. Talk about making a good impression… in the ground!
SNEEZY DOES IT
This time our thief didn’t just want money but the whole cash machine as well. Unfortunately for him, he’d forgotten a few rather important points…
Not only were cameras filming his every move as he attempted to steal the cash machine, but in case that wasn’t incriminating enough, he left fingerprints all over it too as he pried it from the wall…
What he also didn’t realise is that when a cash machine is moved, it sets off a motion alarm which is, er, very good at attracting attention… and they’re really heavy too so you can’t carry the machine away anyway, unless you’re the size of a horse.
When the police arrived at the scene they presumed our brainless robber had run away, but no, he had decided instead to hide behind the machine itself. He was eventually discovered after a forensic officer looking for fingerprints blew some dust up his nose, making him sneeze… Luck just wasn’t on his side that day!
THE MILKY WAY
A burglar who loved his milk made a big moo-stake when left fingerprints all over the shops he broke into. This thick thief would get into a property, have some cow juice and leave without taking anything. But while he was there he’d leave a very distinctive fingerprint in the shape of a question mark. This made him easy to find, even back in the 1920’s when the crimes were committed. The police eventually identified our villain as William Berger after they found he had been fingerprinted while he was in prison in 1914.
VERY DEAR DIARIES!
In this case it wasn’t just the thieves that were thick – thousands of other people were made to look really stupid too… Twenty-two years ago fraudsters convinced the world that they had discovered the diaries of the German World War 2 leader and all-round nasty bloke Adolf Hitler. Both the public and the press were agog – and the crims’ idea was to sell the diaries and make loads of money.
At first the experts were fooled by the fakes – as was the Sunday Times. But on further investigation, forensic scientists declared that the journals couldn’t possibly be real, by proving the paper used had a chemical in it that wasn’t invented until 1954, 11 years after they were said to have been written. The bindings had also been made from modern materials, the ink used was less than 12 months old – and the monogram on the front of one of the diaries read ‘F.H.’ rather than ‘A.H.’ – oops! The magazine publishers that were behind printing the fraud are estimated to have lost a stupidly large $16,000,000…
BETTER LEG IT!
Oh, no, another cretinous crook! This time our bandit was left hopping mad when he left his false leg behind after he robbed a car parts shop in America. He made off with $50, but lost his expensive titanium leg when a member of the public grabbed it to stop him escaping… The leg popped off and the robber made a slow escape on one foot. Police are still searching for him but with all the evidence against him, he won’t have a leg to stand on.
STICKY SITUATION
You know all those scenes from Action Movies where the heroes crawl through the ventilation shafts? Well it's one case where the "don't try it at home kids" advice is really worth noting!
A burglar in Newcastle thought he'd try this trick to get into a pub, and dived head-first down the roof-top ventalition shaft. But he got stuck.
So stuck he couldn't move up nor down. So stuck, he was there five and a half hours. So stuck, he had to be hauled out by a team of fire-fighters. So stuck, infact, it took them forty-minutes to get remove him.
He tried to claim he was only in there to save a cat, but passer-by who heard his cries from inside the shaft smelt a rat (although, possible less that this poor crim!) and called the police.
WHAT'S GOING ON 'EAR
You've heard of fingerprints and footprints - well they're not the only dinstinquishing marks people can leave at the scene of a crime...
In summer 2001, a burglar in Belgium leant it ear to a door to make sure his victims were asleep. The police found it the next morning but - not having ear marks on record - could do nothing about it.
Two years later, a policeman was arresting a man for trying to sell a stolen phone. He noticed the criminal had rather odd shaped ears, reminding him of the print left on the bedroom door all those years ago, they took an "earprint" and the man now faces burglary charges.