America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 3, Episode 10 - Stealing Stinks - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: Tonight on America's Dumbest Criminals, when this guy broke into a van, he got
a lot more than he bargained for. If this is a robber's disguise, do you think his weapons should have been a pail and a shovel?
And just one whiff was all it took to know this guy was trouble. Pee-ew! Hold your nose and hold your position.
You won't believe how many ways that people can run afoul with the law on America's Dumbest Criminals.
[theme music] NARRATOR: Now, welcome your hosts for America's Dumbest Criminals, Daniel Butler and Debbie Allen.
-Hi, everybody. -All right. OK, OK. Debbie, I'm going to guess something about you.
-Oh, no. Not another joke about my height. -No, no, no. Nothing like that. It's just a question, all right?
-OK, then go ahead. -Well, I'll bet you startle easily, don't you? -Are you getting ready to play some kind of trick on me?
-No. No trick. It's just a question. Do you startle easily? -If I see something scary, yeah.
-Ha! OK, you're funny. Now, well, that makes us a perfect match. -You're easily startled, too?
-No. I just like startling people. You know, it's kind of a hobby. Jumping out, going whoo!
You know, then jumping back. -You're bad. You're bad. -I know. But wait. Well, we'll meet a crook later who was startled in a big way,
except he didn't hear boo. He heard bam. -Oh, OK. I'd like to avoid both tonight, just so you know.
But let's start our show with a bang. -Well, we're about to see a released thief who
just can't wait to get back to work. -In fact he doesn't even want to leave the police station.
-No. -Let's steal a peak with this surveillance camera footage. -The video tape that y'all received from the Bel Air
Police Department, Corporal Lee is releasing three prisoners. Corporal Lee was walking ahead of the three prisoners.
The last one waits, reaches in to an unlocked property box, removed money out of different personal property,
and leaves with it. The following day we end up filing theft on that same guy for taking the money.
-Yep, well, you know, it's the little details that bring down criminal time after time.
Or in this case, one particular criminal time after time. -In a two part miniseries of Something To Remember Me By,
we meet up with a crook who, just like our first criminal, definitely has not learned from his mistakes.
Here's part one. -Well, here in Sweetwater we do have our share of stupid criminals.
Our detectives went out one day, worked a burglary at a liquor store. It was pretty hard to solve.
The guy had been inside, working all night. Industrious fella. I guess he was working pretty hard,
because he got pretty hot. Took his jacket off and left it at the crime scene. Whenever we got there, we found his jacket.
Looked in the pockets, found his check stub. Full name, address, and where he worked.
Not too hard to find him in a town of 12,000. -He made it easy. -Well, hey, you know.
I mean, the truth is I leave my jacket behind all the time, but never at the liquor store I've robbed.
That didn't come out right. But I guess that's why my consequences aren't so great, either.
Truth or consequences. -Oh, man. Well, now on to part two. OK, I get it. A year has passed, and our crook has served his time,
but has the robber seen the error of his ways? I think you already know the answer to that question.
Let's confirm your suspicions as we return to Sweetwater, Texas. -We were running a search warrant at a housing project
here in Sweetwater. I went outside to my police car to get a camera, and heard a car squealing into the entrance of the project.
I flagged this car down, guy got out, and we're just standing there talking. And it was very obvious that he was drunk.
I asked this guy for some identification, he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a packet of papers.
And instead of just handing them to me, he threw them at-- he threw them at me-- he threw them at me
and swung at me, and took off running. He won the foot chase. I didn't catch him then.
However, I went back and picked up all the papers, and one of the papers was his release from the Texas prison
system, from the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole in his name. So we knew who our guy was.
About 10 minutes later he came back, claimed to be his brother, and anyway, me and several other officers arrested
that individual at that time. This guy was really good at doing the same dumb thing twice
in a row, just four years apart. -It's unbelievable. -What's worse than running from police?
Well, running into police. This criminal did both. And oh, did I mention that he was driving drunk?
-OK. Witness as this guy is forced to surrender after his bender turns into a fender bender.
Watch. NARRATOR: The police officer following this car senses something isn't quite right.
The guy behind the wheel is a little too tentative in his driving, a little too meandering
in his maneuvering, a little too free form in his turns. Sort of like my Great Aunt Sophie.
Except Sophie's pushing 90, and this guy's just pushing the accelerator, possibly
under the influence of some tonic that Sophie would never touch. So the officer follows him, just to confirm his suspicions,
and see if he makes any wrong moves. Yow! He just ran into the squad car of another officer who
has stopped yet another person for DUI. Yep. I'd say that was a wrong move. Glad to know that wasn't my Great Aunt Sophie.
At least not this time. NARRATOR: Here's another dumb law. In Fairbanks, Alaska, it is illegal to give any form
of alcoholic beverage to a moose. -OK, yeah. There's nothing worse than a moose on the loose who
can't hold his juice, you know? Liquor. You know what I mean. Well, our next story involves a crook on the loose in a liquor
store, but he doesn't see it that way. In fact, he tells officers that he was just minding his own business.
Take a look. NARRATOR: Rolled up to the scene at this convenience store, and the first thing I observer is the front glass
door smashed right out of it. Called for backup, and I grabbed my trusty shotgun.
I walked up to the door, and as I come around the door, I see a gentleman without his shirt
on, with three cases of beer in his hands. And I crank that shotgun, and he goes, whoa.
He says, uh, hey, I work here. There must be some mistake. And I says, you know, set the beer down
and stick your hands in the air. So he tries to comply, and he's got this stupid look
on his face, like he can't believe I don't believe him. You know, he thinks I'm some idiot, I guess.
So nevertheless, he puts the beer down, and I get him where he's secured, and I start questioning him about this.
I went for my backup and he says, oh, yeah, I work here. And I says, well, explain why you
knocked the whole front door out. You know, the whole building here. He says, well, I left my keys home,
and I had this graveyard shift, and my assignment was to come and sort all the beer out.
So I was going to move it all outside here, and then rearrange it into storage. Subsequently we did arrest the gentleman that night,
and he did admit to burglarizing seven other businesses in the area. So it was a great bust.
That's probably about the dumbest excuse I've ever heard as a police officer. -Yeah.
Oh, yeah. I'm just sorting out the beer in the refrigerator, honey. Maybe that bogus liquor store owner
should have taken the fifth, huh? What do you think, Debbie? Get it? -Oh, I get it.
-Fifth. -That was a good one. Every once in a while, Daniel. Here on America's Dumbest Criminals,
we see all kinds of crooks using all kinds of methods to conceal their identities, but it takes extra creativity
to come up with a disguise the really surprises us. This one is almost as much fun as, well, a day at the beach.
NARRATOR: Does this look like a disguise to you? This beach ball with eyeholes the size of sand dollars
was the get up a robber used to deflate the till at a Florida bank. And on his second strike, he even
added the unusual handwear shown here. Amazingly, he pulled this stunt twice. -We kind of thought, this is early for Halloween,
or is this a gag, or a joke? When he did his second robbery again, he came in with the hands covered,
and this time he used a garbage bag. NARRATOR: Police, unwilling to bury their heads in the sand,
dug up enough evidence to capture this beach ball bandit soon after his second robbery.
-OK. Police in Henderson, North Carolina were having a hard time catching up a woman who had a wealth of warrants out there.
Then they came up with a bright idea. If they couldn't get to her, maybe they could convince her to come to them.
All they needed was the right incentive, so they devised a plan that was music to her ears.
-One of our jobs were to serve high risk warrants, or warrants that no one else was able to serve
on the people around here. So I was looking through the drawer, and I found a stack of warrants that were unserved, and was
on a female. And I told the guys, I said, well, before we go out to this house to start searching for her,
I said, let me just call this number. This is her home address. So I called the number, and a female answered the phone.
And I gave her the name on the warrant, I said, does such and such still stay here?
She said no, she moved. She used to stay here, but she moved. I said, well, that's a shame, I said,
because she-- a good friend of hers just entered her into a contest, and she's won a beautiful stereo system from one
of the local radio stations. Now we're gonna have to return the radio, the stereo,
because we don't have anyone to give it to. Oh, oh, oh, that's me. That's me. I'm just playing with you.
That's me. So I said, I tell you what. I said, I need your identification. I said, we got a little paperwork to do.
I said, we'll bring the stereo right over if you could just give us that address you're at.
So she gave me the address, I got one of the guys to rent a marked cruiser. We go around the block, take my shirt off,
pull a regular pullover shirt off, got my gun and equipment under the clothes, and I walk up to this lady's house.
Now, the cruiser's about 30 to 40 feet away from this lady on the corner. I mean, anyone could see-- I mean,
people were slowing up to see what we're doing. So while I'm walking up to this house,
this woman almost tackled me. She's running up, is that my stereo? Is that my stereo?
And I said, no, 'am. I said, but you're under arrest, and I put the handcuffs on her.
Put it in front of her. I was walking her back to the car. Now, she has a stack of warrants.
Her bond is going to be unbelievably high, especially failure to appear, a lot of them.
And the only thing she's telling me and my partner on the way back is hey, that's still my stereo, isn't it?
That's my stereo. That's still mine, isn't it? That's still mine. So we served the warrants, and the arrest
was made without complications. And we were surprised it worked, but we tried it,
and everything worked out well. -OK, get your dictionary ready, because later on, we're
gonna tell the onerous and odoriferous tale of a guy whose MO spells trouble. Or should it be his BO smells trouble?
But now with news that's does for mankind with the iceberg did to the Titanic, oh, great.
Here's Daniel with ADC Headlines. -Sure, we all enjoy a hot meal, but get this. A Massachusetts police officer pulled over a man
for driving his car at 120 miles an hour. His defense? He'd just bought a roast beef sandwich,
and he had to get home to eat it before it got cold. OK. A woman tried to pass a one million
dollar bill in New York City at a department store, but she ran into problems. One, federal agents were not amused when the woman claimed
that making money was her hobby, and two, the US Treasury Department does not make one million dollar
bills, so it's a dead giveaway. Finally, two men were caught red handed and red faced as they
tried to smuggle snakes from Mexico into Texas by tying the critters into pantyhose
and stuffing them into their trousers. Whoa-kay! Customs inspectors noticed the unsightly bulges wiggling,
and ordered the men to drop their pants. Their total menagerie was 14 snakes, including a boa constrictor.
Wow. It was an exciting trip for them. A crafty inspector commented that the men were first
suspected of packing narcotics, but, quote, drugs don't move around like that. Well, that closes the file on ADC headline news,
ripped from somewhere near the back of your local newspaper. Debbie? There was definitely trouble in the air
when our next criminal came along. In fact, his personal hygiene, or lack thereof
earned him the title of the Stinky Bandit. Take a look. NARRATOR: For a brief time, this man's picture
was flooding the airways in south Florida, just as his presence tightened the air passages.
The Stinky Bandit, a man whose reputation and body odor preceded him. Lost in a funk of crack addiction,
he stuck up and stunk up 12 banks and stores before hitting the showers when police
closed in on him and his girlfriend. -He has a very bad crack cocaine habit. In fact, when he was arrested today,
we had crack cocaine on his person, and he readily admits that he has a very bad crack cocaine habit.
-To the best of our knowledge, all the money, with the exception of about $200 that
was recovered as a result of the arrest today is gone. NARRATOR: Well, if success smells sweet,
imagine this odor of being one of America's dumbest criminals. -Oh. Gee, whiz. Let's let the air clear for a minute, there.
You know, usually it's the crook who catches the victim off guard, right? But not in this story.
When this car burglar makes his moves, things go off with a bang, and then get even more complicated.
It's yet another surprising chapter in the feature we call I'm Where? You're Who?
-This guy tried to break into a van, but little did he know it was occupied by the owner.
He woke up to the owner of the van sleeping inside, who happened to have a gun. The owner came out, said to the bad guy, stop, or I'll shoot.
Well, the guy ran away, scared to death, and ran straight to a gas station, yelling, call the police!
Call the police! So the attendant there did, and we arrived, and put that call together with the burglary.
Got the owner of the van over there to make the identification, and took that burglar to jail.
You know, Debbie, we don't make this stuff up. In this case, the dumb crook ended up
being the reporting party. Called the police on himself. -We love it when they help out.
While the beach ball bandit you saw earlier showed originality in the get up for his hold up, this next guy
went something very basic-- a bed sheet. Watch as this New Orleans Police officer
becomes a real Ghostbuster. -We're here in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the world famous Brennan's Restaurant.
We're world famous for breakfast at Brennan's, and we do a wonderful dinner, also.
My grandfather started the restaurant in 1946, and even at a restaurant of this caliber, things can go wrong.
-Hi. My name is David Sledd, and I've been associated with Brennan's for 22 years.
And this is a wonderful story that happened many years ago. It was in the fall of our year, and we
had been very, very busy. And one of our busboys that night decided that he was going to rob the restaurant.
While everyone had punched out, the maitre d' was the only one he thought that was still in the house.
And he had counted the money while the busboy had slipped back into the area, where the maitre d' had to pass through
to take the money to the safe. That was also the area where we can kept our linen.
Well, Earl decided to take a sheet and pull it over himself, and play a ghost to scare the money out of the maitre d'.
Well, when the maitre d' passed through the area, Earl jumped up and said, boo! Give me your money, or I'll kill you.
Well, of course the maitre d' recognized Earl's voice, and questioned Earl. He said, Earl, why are you behind that sheet?
Well, it scared Earl so bad that Earl dropped the sheet, ran back through the restaurant, bolted out the front doors,
and Earl was gone from the restaurant. Boo! -The details on this edition of We're Not Making This Up
were absolutely unspeakable. So I'll let Daniel give them to you. -Oh, thanks a lot.
Yeah. OK. All right. Well, it's a known fact that people do dumb things when they're drunk, right?
And when they're really drunk, they do really dumb things. And this guy may break all existing world records, kids.
Watch the screen, and prepare to wince. -One story that comes to mind is one night, Scott Thurber
and myself were on a eight to midnight shift. -Look what we got here. -A guy was in the parking lot across from the police
department, and we look, and he's defecated in the parking lot. So we pulled up, and we told him that that wasn't quite
the thing to do there, and that he could get arrested for that. -Oh, man, don't take me to jail, man.
I can clean it up. -He reaches down and scoops it up, and he put it back in his pickup.
At this point, we didn't want anything to do with him, so we told him that he'd been drinking too much, and not to drive.
He said no, officer, I'll stay right here. Went by later on that night, and he was sleeping in the back of his pick up.
I went by again to check on him, and he saw us, and he looked out of the bed of his pick
up, and wiped his face, rolled over, and went back to sleep. -Oh! -Oh, that's disgusting!
That is disgusting! -We're not making this up, kids. We wouldn't dare! Well, we're going to go away and just try and scrub
this whole incident from our minds. But we'll be back next week with more stories of incredibly
dumb, gross criminals doing incredibly dumb, gross things. -If you've got a lead on a story better than that one,
or you just can't wait till next week for more state of the art stupidity, visit our website at www.dumbcrimes.com.
-Yeah. And even though our stories are about dumb crimes, they're really a reminder of the debt
that we owe to the men and women of law enforcement. They're on the line every day to keep
us safe from the stupidity of would be criminals. We owe them our thanks for making this show possible,
and we thank you for joining us tonight. -As always, we hope that we've all learned from others' mistakes.
-But if you haven't, you might look like that last guy, and we might see you next week on America's Dumbest Criminals.
-Bye, bye.

In this episode of “America’s Dumbest Criminals,” we’ll witness a man who broke into a van and got more than he bargained for, a robber who could use a pale and shovel for his disguise and a guy who literally reeks of guilt.

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 absurd criminal antics, including a thief stealing from police and the Stinky Bandit robbing banks.

Key points

The Beach Ball Bandit. A robber used a beach ball as a disguise for his heists.
The Paperwork Trap. Police trick a woman with a fake stereo contest to arrest her.
Drunk Driving Defense. A man claimed he was speeding home to eat a roast beef sandwich.
The Stinky Bandit. A man known for his terrible body odor robbed 12 banks before being caught.
The Ghostly Robbery Attempt. A busboy tried to scare a maitre d' for money but failed hilariously.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You won't believe how many ways that people can run afoul with the law.

NARRATOR introduces the show.

0:24WatchMar 3, 2022

Tension

45/ 100Some tension

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