America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 1, Episode 2 - Funky Footwork - Full Episode | Forensic Files

DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): This is an ADC Warning. The crimes you're about to see are true.
Only the names were changed to protect the ignorant. [sirens wailing, theme music]
Tonight on "America's Dumbest Criminals," some pretty funky footwork, a drive-by surprise,
and a mighty fall from grace. Welcome to "America's Dumbest Criminals." I'm Daniel Butler.
In the interest of fairness, besides dumb criminals, our show also features brainless,
dense, dopey, and dull criminals. And you're about to meet them all. The elite of the criminally inept
as we open the files on America's dumbest criminals. Our first case comes from Gordon Martines--
the mystery of the closed car. -About, I say, February of 1981, it was my last day in uniform patrol.
My partner and I were working on the graveyard shift, and we were dispatched to a silent burglar alarm.
We responded to the location, and we positioned our patrol car just north of the glass entrance
into the department store. We could see that the glass was all broken out. We entered the store, and we had noticed
that there was a hole in the roof. The burglars had pried open a vent. As we were searching around, we saw a male re-enter the store.
I mean, he came into the store, and he began loading up with more items. He was just grabbing things off the rack, off the display
counters. And he was going toward the front door again. The one where all the glass was broken out.
We apprehended him immediately. And we walked him outside. And we noticed that on the hood of our patrol car
was an enormous amount of merchandise from inside the store. We couldn't understand this.
There was a pile of clothing and items that were taken from the department store right
on the hood of our marked black and white patrol car. Well, we surmised what happened.
These guys had a plan. Their plan was to break in through the roof, which they did.
But then they had to break out to get to their truck. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Now, they
begin to loot like a well-oiled machine. One piles the goods on the hood, while the other stashes
the goods in the truck. But watch what happens when the police show up. So much for his pal.
He's gone with the wind. And the police? They're going to park in exactly the same spot.
Now, one white hood looks just like the next one, doesn't it? So as the cops enter the store, our accomplice runs right
behind him and he doesn't miss a beat. Yep. He placed the evidence to convict him
on the hood of a marked police car. In Arizona, it used to be against the law to drive your car in reverse.
Now it's against the law to drive your car on top of other cars. Our next story comes from police officer Perry Knowles
of the Pensacola Police Department. When Perry heard gunshots coming from inside a local bar,
he had to go in alone. In the back room sat the bartender, still clutching the smoking gun.
There were bodies everywhere. -And I got a call of shots fired at one of our little,
what we'd call, a little beer joint over on the west side of town. So I get over there.
I am the first unit there, and I can hear, pow, pow. But as I look through the door and saw
the people were still dancing, shooting pool, and standing around talking. So I ease on through the door and I listen for another shot,
and I hear it. It's down this little corridor. So I ease up to the corridor and I look down the corridor there.
These guys got a pistol out. Well, needless to say, I didn't figure he was in his right mind
to be doing something like this. So when he broke the cylinder open to reload, I went it and took him down.
And I asked him. I said, you know, what are you doing? -Put it down! Put it down!
What are you doing? -I'm killing cockroaches, man. -He said, everything we've tried in here won't do it,
so we have to shoot it to get rid of it. -Gun control versus pest control. The debate continues.
And now, for the first time anywhere, actual surveillance cam footage of a postal worker
becoming disgruntled. Postal workers suspected one mailman of stealing the mail.
So they planted Christmas cash in his deliveries, and sure enough, he did deliver.
He kept the cash and stashed it in his drink cup. The inspectors were immediately on hand to arrest him,
and he was booked for stealing grandma's Christmas money. Sure, the federal pin sounds bad.
But wait till grandma gets a hold of him. He'll wish he was in the Witness Protection Program.
Coming up, a dumb criminal who's playing with pain, on "America's Dumbest Criminals."
on "America's Dumbest Criminals." And now, ADC technical advisor and 20-year veteran officer
Pete Peterson pulls a man over who soon suffers an identity crisis. We call this one "Big Brother Is Watching."
-I was working patrol in a fairly large city. And we had had a burglary. And we knew that we'd caught a burger,
and we knew that there was a pickup car in the area. So we're kind of looking, and this one car
kept traveling around and traveling around, and he was suspicious. And I stopped him, and he got out.
I ask him for his driver's license, of course. -Here you go. -What are you doing in this neighborhood?
-Cruising around. -Just driving around? -Yes, sir. -I see you're not from here. -No.
I'm from a little town about 50 miles from here. -I said, well, tell me the information
on there, if you will. So he gave me the name. And I said, OK, and he gave me the address.
And he had memorized it pretty good. I said, well, tell me about the neighborhood.
He said, well, it's an average around-the-mill neighborhood, you know? And I said, well, you know, I've got some relatives who
live down there, and I know some of those Petersons down there. And I said, you might know some of them too.
He said, well, there's a whole bunch of them down there. He said, you know, I don't know whether I'd know any of them
or not. -In fact, we might be related. -You and me? -Yes, sir? -I don't-- I doubt that.
-You don't think so? -No, sir. I need to go. -I don't think you need to go. -And finally, I said, son, that's
not your driver's license. He said, it is. I said, no, I don't think so. I said, that's my brother's driver's license.
He said, I need to go back in my car, and I need to go. You've wasted enough of my time.
I said, look, I think you need to look at my name on my badge and take a look at the name on the driver's license.
Then you'll know that I'm telling you the truth. My folks live with that address.
And he said, oh crap. He said, this has been one terrible day for me. And things went downhill from there for him.
DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Now, actual surveillance cam footage we call "Sleeping at the Till."
Business was slow, so bartender decided to take a nap in her own bar, while our one stray customer
decides to help himself to the money in the till. He's checking out the sleeping bartender,
but what he doesn't realize is that surveillance cameras never sleep. ADC quid number 728.
Suppose that you have just escaped from an American prison. You swim across the Rio Grande when
you realize your pickup man isn't there. Do you-- A, find a place to hide and wait
for him, B, have a taco and a cerveza, or, C, swim back across the Rio Grande into the US
to find a phone? Remember, you're a dumb criminal. Of course, the answer is C. Three guys actually
did this, swam back to the US, were spotted by the highway patrol and re-arrested.
Sometimes the police run into characters that aren't necessarily dumb criminals,
but they are just criminally dumb. -About a block behind the police station is a condominium, about an 11-story condo.
We get a call there one night that somebody up on the top floor heard somebody out in the hallway moaning like they were hurt
or maybe faintly drying for help. So we go up, and we meet with the complainant who was calling in.
We go up there. We look around. We can find anybody. We're walking the hall, and we're looking in the stairwell,
and we don't hear anything. We can't find anybody. We figure it's all right, so we clear.
Call was unfounded. Couple hours later, we get a call back again, this time maybe from the eighth floor.
Somebody who used to be out in the hallway. Sounds like they're hurt. Sounds like maybe they're crying for help.
So we go up and walk around the hallway, can't find anybody. We look out in the stairway, the stairwell, can't find anybody.
We're clear. Probably around 4 o'clock in the morning, we get a call from somebody around the third floor.
They're hearing the same thing. And we can't find nothing. We're walking all over the hallways.
We're going up and down the fire exits, elevators, can't find a thing. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): The next day, Sergeant Bigelsen
received a report of an injured man found in the dumpster of the 11-story condo.
This could be his big break in the mystery by interviewing the victim and the dumb criminal.
They were the same guy. -We contacted the hospital. And I believe they kept him overnight,
and he was released, and went to see him. And he had two broken legs, two broken arms, broken ribs.
He was all-- arms cast and all taped up along with broken legs. -Oh, well. Heh. I guess I had too much to drink, you know?
-So up on the roof, he had a skylight with a ridge around it. Well, this guy was up on the roof, a little bit
too much to drink, and he was playing a high wire act, walking around the rim of the skylight.
He loses his balance and he falls. Well, he can't fall off onto the roof. He falls right through the skylight
and down the incinerator shaft. This is an 11-story building. Up the incinerator shaft, they had steel bars
coming out, alternating like this. Every floor, they had two sets of these. So he fell to about the first couple of floors,
just hopping from one to the other. He got hung up laying over the bars. And he was too drunk and hurt to kind of climb out,
so he just kept on flip-flopping from floor to floor to floor to floor through 11 stories.
[dinging, man groaning] All night long from bar to bar down the incinerator shift,
and it dropped into a Dixie dumpster at the end of it. -Now, it's already taken this guy
eight hours to fall 11 stories. Would could be worse than that? When we come back, we'll tell you.
You won't believe it. Welcome back to "America's Dumbest Criminals." Officer Bigelsen just told us of an unlucky man
who went bar hopping and ended up in the never-ending stories, literally. Now he's about to become an uneasy [inaudible]
in the continuing case, which we now call "The Motorcycle Mummy." -Approximately, three weeks into his healing,
he's still walking around with casts on and all. And he starts feeling a little bit better,
and he wants to start getting out and catching up with his personal life and taking
care whatever his business is. However, his only means of transportation is a motorcycle.
-[groaning in agony] [groans again] PETE BIGELSEN (VOICEOVER): This guy has casts on his arms and his legs.
And his manages to get on the motorcycle, and he takes off to start running his errands.
-[groaning and grunting] He ends up on this main road I was telling you about before,
Park Boulevard. He's going down the road, and somehow, I think because of his cast, he's not
able to function on a motorcycle like you normally would. He loses control of the motorcycle,
and he can't reduce the speed. And the motorcycle is just climbing in speed. He hits a bump.
It throws him off. And as he gets thrown off the motorcycle, his leg is hung onto it and can't
get free of the motorcycle. And the motorcycle starts bouncing on its feet and standing up and going down the road and dragging him.
And as it's dragging him, he's in a median lane, and he keeps getting slapped against little concrete curb
median on the road. And he goes for about maybe 2 and 1/5, maybe 3 blocks before the motorcycle
falls down and stays down and dies. We get called to the accident. This is probably, 1:00, 2 o'clock in afternoon.
Traffic all over the place, and here he is tied to that motorcycle with the cast.
And he's laying in the road where he lost sight of the median in his motorcycle.
He was unconscious. We call the ambulance, and we ship him off to the hospital. -Well, I was drinking again.
PETE BIGELSEN (VOICEOVER): We contact him. It was about two, three days that he was released from the hospital.
And he was treated by the same doctor who'd treated him about a month prior, going down the incinerator shaft.
-They won't let me up on the roof anymore. -The doctor said, it wasn't for the casts that were on him,
he says that median curb just would have beat him to death. And the casts saved his life or prevented him
from getting any further injury. He had no further injury. Everything was done with the cast.
Same individual. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): In Montana, it used to be against the law to doodle window shades.
It was also against the law to toss toddlers named Tina. And now, actual surveillance cam footage
of an officer who has this cover blown but still manages to do the deal. The first thing this dealer says to our undercover officer
is that he saw him at the police station. But he continues to do the deal. This guy knows he's a cop, but he still does the deal.
-Can I see it? Can I look at it? -Yeah, look at it in the morning. -Well, let me tell if it has a [inaudible] first.
DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): He believed right, and he got busted. Now, here's officer Marsha Underwood
to give us the poop on a disturbance call she answered one day. -And we got a disturbance call.
And when we got there, I had a trainee with me, and there was another officer with a trainee.
So as we're going up toward the front of the house, this guy comes running out and he's got a gun.
We got that guy, took care of him, went upstairs, and there were three more still fighting.
So we got one out, put him on the ground, and I put my foot on his shoulder, right at his neck.
And I'm holding him. Two other officers are in there trying to separate the other two.
Well, as they were pulling on him, this lady-- this guy's down here going, lady, lady, please.
I said, shut up, man. Lady, lady, please. Aw, come on, lady, please. I'm saying, shut up, shut up.
You know, it's a pretty stressful thing with everybody fighting. And then he said, oh, lady, lady, please, please.
And I said, what, man? What? And he said, you got dog poop on your shoe. And I did have.
DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Now, inside the courtroom for trial and error. It's dumb to sell drugs.
It's really dumb to sell drugs to cops. But what this guy did is even dumber. -Can you recognize the man you claim sold you the drugs?
-Well, now, he's had a haircut, shaved, cleaned himself up. Somehow I can't honestly say that I do.
-So if you can't recognize him, then how can you say that this is the man who sold you the drugs?
-Because when I gave him the money to go buy the drugs, I asked him to leave his driver's license so I'd know
he's come back, and I kept it. [theme music] DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Now a story
from James Claiborne we call "Rops and Cobbers." JAMES CLAIBORNE (VOICEOVER): Brought a suspect in.
He was suspected of stealing a pocketbook from a lady, a strong-arm robbery. Same day, I begin the interrogating and talk to him
about the robbery and he-- he spoke up and he said, look here, mister. I've not done no arm-strong robbery.
And I'll blow in a polygram anytime you want me to to prove it. -We don't make these stories up, because, of course,
truth is dumber than fiction. Well, that's all the time we have for the show. We'd like to thank the men and women of law enforcement
throughout the country. I'm Daniel Butler saying, don't be dumb, don't break the law,
or we'll catch you. Next time on "America's Dumbest Criminals." [theme music] [theme music]

In this episode of "America's Dumbest Criminals," we'll witness some pretty funky footwork, a drive-by surprise and a mighty fall from grace.

Crime is no laughing matter, except when the criminals are bumbling fools. Hosted by Debbie Alan and Daniel Butler, this show looks at lawbreakers through a humorous lens.

Brief Summary

Bizarre criminal stories include a burglar caught on a police car and a bartender shooting cockroaches.

Key points

America's Dumbest Criminals Introduction. Daniel Butler introduces the show and its theme of showcasing inept criminals.
The Mystery of the Closed Car. A burglar's plan backfires when he accidentally places stolen goods on a police car.
Killing Cockroaches. A bartender uses a gun to deal with pests, leading to a surprising encounter with police.
The Motorcycle Mummy. A man with broken limbs attempts to ride a motorcycle, leading to a bizarre accident.
Trial and Error. A drug dealer's mistake leads to a courtroom revelation about his identity.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Only the names were changed to protect the ignorant.

0:10WatchDec 2, 2021

Tension

35/ 100Low tension

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