Criminally Moronic Tales

June 14, 1999

FLASH: CHEVY CHASE MOVIE GETS BIG LAFFS!
A pair of men held up a bank in Calgary, Canada and sped off the with the police in hot pursuit. The getaway car rounded a corner and skidded to a halt, slamming into a police van. Suddenly everywhere the thieves looked there seemed to be cops. Thinking They were absolutely surrounded, the men crawled out of their car and surrendered -- Not to police, but to a bunch of Hollywood actors. The men had accidently run up on the filming of Chevy Chase's new movie, "Snow Day." The police van they had crashed into was a fake, and the cops that were all over the street were all actors. The real cops, however, arrived a moment later and made a very real arrest.

WE'LL BREAK HIS LEG FOR A MARK MCGWIRE ROOKIE CARD
A Wellington, Kansas woman was charged with hiring two men to murder her common-law husband. The payment she offered was her husband's baseball card collection. The two men reported the woman to police and turned over 10 of the cards, which she had given them as a downpayment for the hit. Said one deputy sheriff: "That's about as mean as a wife can get. The only thing lower would have been if she offered his hunting and fishing gear."

BAD CAREER MOVE
A woman in Bethesda, Maryland, was arrested for leaving her 2-year-old son alone for 30 minutes in a van in the police station parking lot. Investigators say that while the woman was gone, the inside of the van reached 120 degrees. The woman was at the police station being fingerprinted so she could get a license to open a day-care center.

C'MON -- SING "KUMBAYA" OR I'LL BASH YOUR HEAD IN!
A Tustin, California woman, apparently angry that a truck was moving too slowly in traffic, pulled up alongside it in her car, held an aluminum baseball bat out the window, and took several swipes at the truck as both were moving down the highway. Police who arrested her noticed her personalized license plate read "PEACE 95." When one of the arresting oficers asked about the tag, she told him she got it because she thought there was so much violence going on in today's society.

BAD CAREER MOVES PART 2
In Little Rock, Arkansas, two suspects were arrested after allegedly stealing a pile of money from a local auto repair shop. After the thieves fled, the owner of the shop grabbed a gun and fired 11 shots at the door through which the robbers had just exited. Unfortunately for the suspects, both of them were wounded because they had apparently stopped just outside the door to count their money.

DUMB FUGITIVE NEWS
Police in Bethel Township, Pennsylvania took off after a man who allegedly fled the scene of a traffic accident. The suspect had run into the woods to escape and stripped off his bright red shirt to make it more difficult for police to see him. Unfortunately, it made it more difficult for everyone else to see him, too. A group of hunters, unaware of the police chase, heard the suspect running through the woods and thought he was a deer. The hunters opened fire on the suspect and sprayed him with a large dose of buckshot. He was arrested and taken to the hospital for treatment.

HANSEL AND GRETEL TURN TO CRIME
Dorothy's ruby slippers disappeared recently -- and there wan't anything magical about it. The glittery 5-foot high styrofoam slippers were stolen from the marquee of a Little Theatre hosting a production of the Wizard of Oz. But it didn't take long for Richmond police to figure out where the slippers had gone -- and it wasn't back to Kansas. The cops just followed the trail of red glitter from the theater to the apartment of one of the people charged in the case.

BAD CAREER MOVES PART 3
An Ontario, Canada man used a family hand-me-down Colt .45 in mint condition to rob a bank of $6,000. He was caught and sent to prison for six years. The police recovered both the money and the gun, and only after the gun was impounded for trial did a perspective officer take a close look at it. The Colt turned out to be one of only 100 Colt .45's made in Quebec City during World War I. Estimates of its collector value ranged from $12,000 to as much as $100,000. This means that even a lowball bid on the gun would have netted the man twice what he got from the bank job.

HEY HONEY -- DO YA MIND? WE'RE TRYIN' TO WORK IN HERE!
A Salt Lake City, Utah woman filed a lawsuit against the state Division of Wildlife for alienation of affection. The agency had assigned the woman's then-husband, a wildlife officer, to partner up with a female agent and pose as a married couple in order to infiltrate a poaching operation. Apparently, the two were so good at portraying a couple that the man divorced his wife after 23 years' marriage and married his female undercover partner. The officers say they slept together in their government-supplied trailer only to give their relationship greater authenticity.

AMERICA'S FUNNIEST RESCUE 911 BLOOPERS
A Chandler, Arizona man was fooling around with a pair of handcuffs when he realized he couldn't find the key to take them off. After a few anxious minutes, the man called 911. On the way to the scene, police did a routine check and found an outstanding arrest warrant for the man. he was taken into custody without incident -- and with the handcuffs still on. "We took them off like he asked," said Sgt. Ken Phillips, a police spokesman. "Only he was in jail at the time."

AMERICA'S FUNNIEST RESCUE 911 BLOOPERS II
A Georgia man attempted to burglarize a hardware store after hours recently. The man entered the store by cutting a hole in the roof. After entering, he realized he couldn't reach the hole to get back out. Panicked and Apparently Unable to think of anything better, he called 911 for help. Police who arrested the man say they're puzzled why he didn't try to use one of several ladders which were part of the hardware store's stock.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING
A suspect was arrested and charged with DUI in Pennsauken, New Jersey, at 3:45 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Two police officers who had been manning a sobriety checkpoint stopped nearly 600 drivers over a six-hour period, but had made no arrests. The officers had just closed the checkpoint and were driving away when the suspect's car rear-ended their police cruiser.

AND FINALLY...
Two animal rights activists holding a demonstration against pigs being sent to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany were rudely interrupted. During their protest, two thousand pigs burst through a barbed wire fence and trampled them to death.