America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 1, Episode 3 - Two Bits - Full Episode | Forensic Files

DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): This is an ADC Warning. The crimes you are about to see are true.
Only the names were changed to protect the ignorant. [theme music] Tonight, on "America's Dumbest Criminals,"
a girlfriend who bails out her beau, frightening footage with a happy ending, and the dumbest DUI excuse ever made.
These are just a few of-- "America's Dumbest Criminals." Welcome to "America's Dumbest Criminals."
I'm Daniel Butler. You know, the minute you decide to break the law, you become dumb.
And when the going gets dumb, the dumb get caught. And we've got the proof. You're about to meet the cream of the criminally coddled,
as we open the files on America's dumbest criminals. In our first case, an undercover officer from Birmingham
tells us of a deadly chase. -We sent a warrant on this house. And when we made entry-- myself and several offices worked
in the narcotics unit here-- we secured the individuals inside a house. And there was this large guy, a male about 23 years old.
What happened, when we came in, we could smell that they've been doing drugs. -Aah!
Run! Run! Hide the drugs. Hide the drugs. -Turn around. Turn around. -I didn't do anything.
Let go of me, man. -And when he was being escorted into a room to be searched, he got an idea about escaping, even
though we had the perimeter all secured. So as he got to the room, he just barreled his head down
and headed straight for the limo. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Our dumb criminal is about to learn his ABCs.
A, the window is closed. B, he's on the second floor, not the first. And, C, he cannot fly.
OFFICER (VOICEOVER): Myself and other officers-- when we looked out, there he was, straight down.
He hit the ground. We thought for sure he was dead. We look at him, and all of a sudden, he pops up,
starts running from us now. When we get behind him, he then dives off about a 8-to-10-foot drop off.
Handcuffed behind him, he dives off into the brush. When he does, the tree impales him in the chest.
And then you hear it snap, a big old snap. Hits the ground. It pops back up. He starts running again.
So about this time, we're all, you know, what are we gonna do when we catch this guy?
You know what I mean? He fell out two stories, and went through this tree. So anyways, we get the guy stopped.
We get him back over to the house. And he's sitting there, and he's apologizing for jumping out the window.
He had some little lacerations, but he had no broken bones. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): The draped crusader
had made his final curtain call. The man later told police he was giving up drugs and alcohol,
citing they were just too hard on the body. You can be arrested for molesting an alligator in Miami, Florida.
But in Pensacola, during a cold snap, you can wear weasels as gloves. And now, actual surveillance cam footage
from the dashboard of a trooper's car. It's a brush with death we call citizen's arrest.
This trooper just pulled over a car for a minor traffic violation on an interstate highway.
As he's ticketing the vehicle, a pickup truck loses control. The pickup truck brushed the troopers left hip.
The rear view mirror slapped the trooper in the left shoulder, but the trooper is not seriously hurt.
The pickup truck did not slow down or stop. He fled the scene of the accident. The people who had been stopped for the traffic violation
were concerned about the trooper's safety, but he was fine and back in his car within moments,
in pursuit of the dummy in the pickup. Fortunately, a citizen driving on the interstate who
saw the whole thing also gave pursuit. Moments later, he had made a citizen's arrest.
This driver was dangerously dumb. You know, we've all heard the term "the clothes make the man."
Well, those words were never more true than in our next story. Officer Brad Burrus tells us why.
-It was about February when it's kind of cold, and it was on day shift. And me and another officer were pulling into a pawn shop.
I parked right next to another vehicle. A lady was in there counting money. And I got out of the car, and I walked over
to the front door of the pawn shop. And then, as soon as I walk in, the lady runs in right behind me, says she got a robbed.
[shouting] -Stay back inside. Go back inside. BRAD BURRUS (VOICEOVER): I get in my car,
and I circulate about two blocks, and I see this guy walking across this little field.
A heavyset guy, and it's pretty cold outside, and all he's wearing is a t-shirt and he's sweating bullets.
So I figured maybe he probably did a little running. And so I got out and started talking to him.
Went over there where he was standing, and there's the lady's money, and there's a green jacket
that he was described as wearing, with a leather collar on it. And he's swearing it's not his jacket.
He just walked by. It's not his jacket. So I asked him if he had any identification on him.
He handed me his driver's license. -I just gave it to you, man. That's my daughter's--
-Is that your picture in that license? -Hey, I gave you that license. -Then this is your jacket. -Oh, yeah?
How'd you figure that, man? -Because you're wearing it in this picture. [theme music]
DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Coming up on "America's Dumbest Criminals," a dumb criminal who can't
tell a front from the back. Welcome back. Next, the story of a gang who suffered
from an extreme form of peer pressure. Officer Studyvin and his partner spotted a stolen car in Birmingham.
They gave chase, and almost immediately, the dumb criminals hit a telephone pole.
Now, there were five suspects inside the car and only two officers. Now, ordinarily, that meant that three of the suspects
would get away just from the simple math of it. But these guys ran in a pack. [dog barking]
They never broke up. They were like the Siamese suspects. It was like the keystone crooks.
Finally, falling down in the middle of the road, they were captured and immediately enrolled
in the Witness Protection Program. Now, actual footage of a dumb criminal who took a test
drive to trouble. This helicopter is searching for a man who left a car dealership in this car for a test drive.
He never returned. Then, chased by police, he fled from the car and ended up here in the middle of
a swollen, freezing, flooded river. Shivering and freezing all night, stranded in the middle
of the river, the fire department had to rescue our robber the next day. Our would-be Noah was taken shivering back to the hospital,
and then charged with grand theft auto, which is all in a day's work for a dumb criminal.
This next story involves a smooth-talking convenience store robber who says two words too many.
-This here's the story about a robber. And he walked into this Quik Mart and decided he was gonna rob it.
-You working by yourself today? OFFICER (VOICEOVER): And there was a girl behind the counter,
and he told her to back away from the cash register. -I'm gonna rob this store. And don't hit that button under the counter.
-I wasn't. I wasn't. Hey, how do you know about that button? -He says, I've been doing this for a long time.
He says, I've been robbing places since I was 11 years old. -They're gonna catch you, you know.
-You'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch old Bo Ramsey. DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): The intensive manhunt took, oh,
30 seconds. The United States has more lawyers than any other country in the world.
There are 846,000 active or resident attorneys in the US today. We also have the most ambulances, which might account
for the unusually high number of attorneys. And now, we take you inside the courtroom for trial and error.
Let's hear how a would-be robber at a fast food restaurant arrives just ahead of schedule.
-Now, Mr. David, what happened that morning when the man stepped up to the counter and demanded the money?
-I said, I can't give you any money, because the cash drawer isn't open. -And when he told you to open the cash drawer?
-I said, it won't open without a food order. -And when he ordered the onion rings?
-I said, I'm sorry. That's not available for breakfast, fool. That's when he turned around and stomped off.
[theme music] DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Performing acrobatics that would frighten horses is illegal in Denver, Colorado.
However, bad contortionists can terrify goats. Captain Don Parker tells us about a dumb criminal
who gets stung after the sting. -We were involved in a sting operation one time here at the Sheriff's department.
It was-- we had a fake pawnshop set up where the people came and sold us goods, and we'd videotape them
and recorded them and all. It went on for months. At the conclusion of the operation,
we shut the thing down, went out on big arrest parties. We must've arrested 30 or 40 people
that had sold us stolen goods. We recovered everything from 18 wheelers down to stolen silverware, if you can imagine that.
We attracted national attention. We had media from all over the country come in,
and it went on for a week. I mean, it was a media feeding frenzy, because the video was so good and the audio was so good.
Everybody just loved it. A week after the pawn shop has been closed, we have had nothing but nonstop news coverage.
We send a team out there to tear out our stuff. You know, get the equipment out of there,
close the building up, and so on. We've got a great big old truck from the jail that says Escambia County Jail.
We've got a couple of prisoner trustees to do the hard labor, two guards, and a couple of plain-clothed deputies.
As they pull up at the front of our closed up pawnshop, there's a guy sitting on the front steps with a beer.
He looks at this entourage, recognizes one of our undercover agents who had work
the thing, waves to him. This guy walks over, and the bad guy says, where you been?
He says, we've been around. What's up? Reaches is in his pocket, pulls that three
stolen social security checks. He said, well, he said, I got three social security checks.
I'll see them to you $0.10 on the dollor. I said, no problem. I'll be happy to take him.
He takes him, arrests him on the spot, of course. And, of course, they got the handcuffs on him.
They're putting him back in the cruiser car. And nobody could resist, so they had to ask him,
didn't you recognize the Escambia County Jail truck? Didn't you recognize the fact that these were guards?
He said, yeah. He said, I thought you stole the truck and you were fixing to sell it down here.
[theme music] DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): Coming up, a motorist who picks up a designated driver a little too late,
on "America's Dumbest Criminals." [theme music] -Hi, and welcome back to "America's Dumbest Criminals."
You know, when David Payton was arrested for a string of vending machine robberies, of course
he denied the charges. The man was arrested and booked, and his bond was set at $400.
The suspected snack machine snake was allowed his one phone call. Then the accused vending violator
waited for his girlfriend to arrive with the $400 bail, which she did. All 1,600 quarters.
A two-bit thief who needs to get a life and a new girlfriend. [theme music] Police horses in New York get a 15-minute break
for every two hours they work. But in Wisconsin, dairy cows get an hour and a half nap every day.
Officer Brian Barton told our ADC crew about a particular drunk who chose the wrong designated driver.
-OK, I was in a downtown area, and they put out on the radio about a vehicle involved in an accident
and gave a description. [siren blaring] A few blocks away from the accident, of the scene of the accident, I observed a vehicle
with a lot damage to the driver side of the car. [inaudible radio dispatch] When I stopped the vehicle, there
were four individuals in it. The only door that could come out was the passenger door,
and they started coming out the passenger door of the car. -Hey. Sir, are you in the back seat?
Exit the vehicle first, please. You weren't followed. -Man, I totally shouldn't--
-Clear the vehicle please. Thank you. -The driver being the last individual coming out
of the car had crawled across the front seat, obviously intoxicated. And as he got out and got to his feet,
he kind of leaned up against me, poked me with his elbow, and he said, tell him you was driving.
[theme music] DANIEL BUTLER (VOICEOVER): ADC Quiz number 1213. The largest jewelry heist ever recorded
occurred on July 12, 1987, in London, England. How many millions in precious jewels did the thieves steal?
A, $12 million? Be, enough to keep Ivana Trump happy? Or, C, $14 million worth of jewels?
The correct answer was, C, the thieves stole 40 million in precious jewels, almost enough
to keep Ivana Trump happy. And now, actual footage of a bank robber knows as the Stinky Bandit.
This man had robbed many banks, and he was caught on surveillance cam more than once.
But he was identified by everyone-- all of his victims, all of the bank tellers-- by his unusually repugnant body odor.
Yes. This man robbed banks. But he obviously didn't bathe. And everyone smelled a rat.
It's too bad we don't have smell-o-vision. [theme music] [theme music] -You know, sometimes to catch an evasive suspect,
the police must have dogged determination, even when they don't have a dog. Here's 25-year Birmingham veteran Johnny Cooley
with a story we call "No Dog Night." -This woman had been divorced from her husband.
And he kept coming around and harassing her. And he did this, like, five, six times a week.
Every night, we'd get a call up there. Her husband's back up there. Well, every time we would go up there,
he would see lights coming down the road. Well, he would run into the woods behind our house.
So we never could catch him. So one night, we were fairly close, and she had sent-- I sent Lee up there
as a backup with another car. Well, you know, we went around the house. He went this way, and I went around this way.
Nowhere in sight. So we got to looking in the backyard, and we noticed that the door's open
that goes underneath the house. - --in there. Can you open the door? -You ready?
-Yeah. -Police department. Come on out. -We happened just to look in there and shine our light.
And he was crawled up in a crawlspace underneath the house and had a pistol in there with him.
He said, y'all don't come in. He says, I'm gonna shoot if y'all come through that hole.
-Come on out with your hands up. Come on out. -And we tried talking to him, you know, to come out.
And he wouldn't do it. So I told-- I told my buddy. I said, I made sure he could hear me.
I said, well, about the only way we gon' get him out of there is call a canine unit.
But go ahead and call a canine. Let's get a dog started over here. We get a couple of German shepherds, and he'll come out.
-Come on out. I'm going to send those dogs in. I'm gonna call the canine unit. -You're gonna have to come on in here and get me.
JOHNNY COOLEY (VOICEOVER): So in two minutes, I told my buddy, I said, go see if the dogs are here yet.
You know, he did. He act-- stomped his feet. He was standing right there, though.
He come back in just a second, and he says, yeah, they're here, so where do you want 'em?
I said, we need to put them in this crawl space right here. He's up underneath that brick column right up there.
Go ahead and unleash the dogs. And my buddy's just standing there. He's going-- [barking]
-[barking] -[barking] And this guy says, don't put them dogs in here. [fake barking continues]
-There's a real dog out there. All right. Don't put them dogs in here. Don't put them in.
I'm coming out. I'm coming out. -Stay down, now. Keep your head down. Come on out.
Hands behind your back. Hands behind your back. Other hand. Other hand. JOHNNY COOLEY (VOICEOVER): And I handcuffed him.
And got him up, started walk-- now he was looking. He was looking. -Where them-- where's them dogs at?
[officer barking] -Oh, man. Y'all done fooled me. -Life on the other side of the law isn't glamorous at all.
It's just plain stupid. Well, that's all the time we have for this show. We'd like to thank the men and women of law enforcement
throughout the country for their dedication and their stories. 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]

In this episode of "America's Dumbest Criminals," we'll witness a girlfriend who bails out her beau, frightening footage with a happy ending and the dumbest DUI excuse ever made.

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

This episode highlights ridiculous criminal blunders and absurd excuses, showcasing the foolishness of various offenders.

Key points

America's Dumbest Criminals. A showcase of ridiculous criminal antics and their consequences.
The Great Escape Attempt. A criminal learns the hard way that jumping out of a window isn't a good escape plan.
The Stinky Bandit. A bank robber known for his terrible body odor gets caught by his victims' noses.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You know, the minute you decide to break the law, you become dumb.

Daniel Butler's commentary on criminal behavior.

1:03WatchDec 2, 2021

Tension

40/ 100Low tension

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