Some Of The Dumbest Getaways In History

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Thieves are not usually renowned for their massive intellects, save for an elite few who will be the subject of a future post on my blog. Statistically about one third of bank robberies in the United States fail, with 15 percent of the robbers being arrested at the scene. Approximately fifty percent, or half, are solved within 30 days.

But the perception remains in the minds of the would-be robbers that they'll never be caught. Had they any sense at all they would figure out that getting away from the scene of their crime is every bit as important, if not more so, that getting to it in the first place. After all, if they get caught what was the point of the whole thing anyway?

Sometimes getaways can go just as planned. Sometimes, as illustrated by that excellent Steve McQueen movie “The Getaway”, they require a little bit of flexibility and adjustment. And sometimes, when little thought and planning has been done they turn into disasters.

Today’s selection is about six would-be robbers whose plans were, let’s just say, not as well thought out as they could have been had anyone with a brain been involved.

Enjoy.


1. Unarmed Robbery
A severely intellectually challenged gang that masterminded a £175,000 robbery in England made one huge blunder.
They used a getaway driver with no arms.
After they raided a jeweler’s shop in Essex, the four gang members jumped in John Smith's waiting car and took off as police gave chase.
Unfortunately things got complicated as eighteen year old Smith, who cannot dress himself and lives with his mother, had no arms below his elbows and, being Britain the land of the stick shift (why?), his gang members had to help change gears.
Remarkably they drove for 30 miles before crashing.
Smith was given a 12-month youth custody sentence, suspended for two years.



2. The Drug Mule
There are drug mules... and then there are drug mules.
A Romanian smuggler, Janos Jakab, took the term a bit too literally with this getaway vehicle.
He was caught while trying to outrun border police with a $500,000 load of cigarettes and tobacco on his horse and cart.
After police challenged him as he crossed Romania's northern border with the Ukraine there was what was described as 'a short chase', as police easily overtook Jakab, arrested him and confiscated his cart.
A spokesman for the local border police said: 'In general smugglers are becoming more and more sophisticated in their methods of getting contraband across borders.
'But this case proved the exception to the rule.
'We have a fleet of high-powered vehicles that can chase down the fastest cars,' he added.
'Outrunning our officers was never a possibility - even if he had a thoroughbred racehorse strapped to his cart.'


3. Panic In Houston
A Houston woman, identified only as Blanca, was cashing a check at the Chase bank in Uvalde, Texas, when armed bank robbers stormed in.
She was so frightened she ran out to the first car she saw and drove away.
She said the car was on, so she floored it, desperate to escape. She drove a few miles from the bank, pulled into a parking lot, fell out of the car and ran into a store, screaming for help.
But what she didn't know was, she'd just stolen the robbers' getaway car – which, police said, they had stolen from someone else.
“Then, they arrested me, and they said, ‘You're the one that stole a stolen car.' And I'm like, ‘Oh my God, it was their car,'” Blanca said.
The FBI cleared Blanca of car theft charges.
As for the robbers? They simply carjacked another vehicle and are still at large.


4. An Equal Opportunity Robbery
According to police in Palo Alto, CA, a bearded, grey-haired man in his sixties held up a branch of the Wachovia Bank with a handgun while in a wheelchair.
The man had bandages on his legs, and his right leg was held out straight during the robbery.
Having completed his heist, the man trundled off down the street.
Authorities are looking for a white Ford van that they suspect he may have been lifted into. Police also note that they're not sure if the man was genuinely disabled, or if the wheelchair was part of a cunning disguise.


5. Naked Stupidity
A man in Osceola County, Florida, tried to rob a Lowe's outlet.
Making his escape with his ill gotten gains he first, he tried to run across Pleasant Hill Road, but a white pickup truck was blocking his way. So he walked up to the driver and punched him in the face.
Deputies said Hodges then stole a golf cart from a nudist community near the Lowes store.
By that time, deputies were already at the scene to make the arrest.


6. Never Forget The First Law Of Bank Robbery
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia two stupid armed raiders could have escaped with more than $1million after hijacking a security van full of cash, if they hadn’t forgotten the first law of bank robbery, that is.
One of the dumb duo drove the hijacked van away while the other followed in a small car.
However when the time came to ditch the van and transfer the loot to their getaway car they discovered that they had to leave half the money behind - because their car was too small.
The van was later recovered with the remaining half of the money still inside.
"The bags are quite big. I consider them quite stupid. Their planning was very shortsighted," Police Chief Shakaruddin Che Mood said.


7. Failure Down Under
In Brisbane, Australia, a robber wearing a skull mask and carrying a gun entered a bak in the Grand Plaza Shopping Center at Browns Plains.
Unfortunately rather than holding up the staff at the bank, the unfortunate robber was held up himself when he ran smack bang into a set of glass doors.
The sound of his collision with the automatic sliding doors alerted bank staff to his presence and they sounded the alarms.
The robber fled empty handed.

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The Burglar Who Fell Asleep

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

You know how I feel about thieves. I’ve made that quite clear already in a previous post. That’s not to say that I haven’t known one or two in my time. In fact one of my long time friends, way back from primary school days turned into a thief in later life.

His name was Terry. He was just a little guy, but reasonably bright. Not a star at school by any means but he did okay, passed all his exams and went on to a good quality high school.

That’s when it all started to go wrong for Terry. He was fond of a good time and did his share of parties and other social gatherings. That’s where he got introduced to and seduced by the drug scene. Like many people his addiction started out with smoking a little ‘pot’. A lot of people have done that, out of curiosity mainly just to see what it is like, and that’s as far as it goes. They do the same with cigarettes, try them, but again never get hooked on the habit.

But Terry wasn’t so lucky. His venture with ‘pot’ led him, as it has led many others, to experiment with stronger, and much more addictive drugs and eventually Terry developed a habit that needed a lot of money to support it.

That’s when the thieving started. All petty stuff. He was not prone to violence in any way, shape or form. It was all just opportunist crimes and most of the time he got away with it.

On one particular occasion, however, he was in a fairly bad way and desperately needed a ‘fix’. He could have gone his usual route and stolen something, or some money, but this time he thought he had a ‘better idea’, one that would short-circuit the normal ‘steal-sell-buy’ route that got him the money he needed to buy the drugs.

The ‘better idea’ was breaking into a pharmacy where he might find a little money, but he would definitely find some drugs. And that’s what he did. In the early hours one Sunday morning Terry broke into his local pharmacy. Sure enough he found what he was looking for and he loaded up his pockets with lots of different pills.

In normal circumstances, if he had just left it at that, he might have got away with it, for a while anyway. But, as I said earlier, he was in a fairly bad way and desperately needed a ‘fix’.

And that’s just what he did. He opened a box of pills that he had lifted and gulped a few down there and then.

You’ve probably guessed already that the pills he took were the wrong ones. In his haste to ‘get well’ Terry had mistakenly opened and swallowed a load of some kind of tranquilizer.

That’s why the police, who had been alerted by the silent alarm in the pharmacy, found Terry fast asleep on the floor behind the counter. He didn’t waken up for another fifteen hours! The medical report later said something like, “he had taken enough to down a thoroughbred stallion”, and as I mentioned Terry was a smallish bloke.

Of course, when he wakened up and was released from hospital he was duly charged with burglary. A while later he appeared in court and was sentenced to several months in jail. It should have bee a Godsend for him. Cut off from his supplies, and the money to buy them, he went ‘cold turkey’ and managed to get himself off the drugs. When he was released he was ‘clean’. It was the opportunity he needed to restart his life, the second chance that most of us never have.

For a while he did well, stayed ‘clean’ and even got himself a steady job. Now he had money in his pockets and, because every penny wasn’t being blown on drugs, he could rent a decent apartment, buy himself good clothes, eat well, get all the tv, radio, hi-fi, and other things that we all surround ourselves with.   

But the story for my friend Terry hasn’t got a happy ending I’m afraid. There must be a destructive gene in some people that makes them impossible to save. Despite the quality of his life being so much better without his drug habit, something happened – I don’t know what – and he started using again. Soon he was back to his old ways. He lost all his new found possessions, all sold to raise money to pay the drug dealers.

Eventually, maybe eighteen months or a couple of years later Terry was found dead in his apartment, the victim of a drug overdose.

I hadn’t seen him for a long time before his death, but I had kept a passing interest and heard about some of his activities from other friends who lived in his town. I was sorry when I eventually found out his fate. It was such a waste.

Maybe a warning to others? I hope so.

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Can’t leave my blog like that of course. Have to end on a lighter note.

How about this bunch of morons?

There was the guy who went into a drug store in Baltimore, pulled a gun, announced a robbery, and pulled a "Hefty-bag" face mask over his head. He then realized that he'd forgotten to cut eyeholes in the mask. He was arrested by security men.

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Or the Belgian genius who when questioned by police about robbing a jewellery store in Liege said he couldn't have done it because he was busy breaking into a school at the same time.
Police then arrested him for breaking into the school. Duhhh!

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Then there were the two men who tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck.

Scared, they left the scene and drove home... With the chain still attached to the machine... With their bumper still attached to the chain... With their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper. You couldn't make it up!

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On a Seattle street a man attempted to siphon petrol from a motor home parked there. But he got a lot more than he bargained for.

Police arrived at the scene to find an ill man curled up next to a motor home. Quickly following the scent of this crime, they discovered that in trying to steal gasoline from the Motor home’s gas tank, this idiot had actually plugged his hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake.

The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.

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And finally, while Investigating a purse snatching, police detectives picked up a man who fit the thief's description and drove him back to the scene. He was told to exit the car and face the victim for an ID. The suspect carefully eyed the victim, and shouted, 'Yeah, that's the woman I robbed.'

Have you had similar experiences? Send them along. Let the world know what is happening before it is too late.