Foiled again
(blame it on the sheep)
By Tara Flanagan |
| Map by Greg Wright |
1. A slice of life behind bars
Court records show it’s best not to use the telephone as a means to do something really stupid. An 86- year-old North Carolina woman spent two days in the Mecklenburg County jail after calling 911 more than 20 times in less than 30 minutes in attempts to get a single slice of pizza delivered to her apartment. She also wanted one of the employees at the pizza joint arrested for calling her a “crazy old coot.” When the cops showed up at her house, she bit, kicked and scratched one of the officers, good enough for a little cool-down time. She also was charged with mis-using 911.
2. Crackdown
Maybe the aforementioned crazy old coot knows Julia Roberts, the 96-year-old North Carolina gal who may well be the country’s oldest crack dealer. A recent bust found the ballsy Roberts running a drug operation out of her home with a few younger (like they would be older) relatives. She was charged with felony distribution and a misdemeanor paraphernalia count.
3. Pants are good
If you look at national Web sites (the ATF site is a good place to get weirded out), you will notice that Kentucky has far more than its share of people getting busted for really stupid crimes – meth labs leading the pack. Here, it appears that a mix of fast police work and lousy criminal intuition put a registered sex offender back on the bad side of the law after he led a high-speed chase without any clothes on. The threecounty fracas ended in a crash – and the confirmation that the naked scumbag had just attempted to sexually assault a 10-yearold girl.
4. Dumb and Dumber Extreme
For some reason, Vail has a lot of bank robberies. You’d think criminals would get better at this particular heist over time, but a couple of morons who walked off with $130,000 from the WestStar Bank last year are likely the alltime criminal idiots of the spacetime continuum. It didn’t help that both employed their native Australian accents and wore their work badges from a nearby ski shop during the stickup, in which they used unloaded BB guns. It didn’t help, either, that they jumped on a nearby chairlift after the heist, using their Vail ski passes. And it really, really didn’t help their case when they took pictures of themselves holding the loot – photos that prosecutors found both useful and most likely highly amusing. The young men received sentences of five and four-and-a-half years, perhaps enough time to get a bit smarter.
5. Not as lucky as OJ
When an Aspen bartender was busted in the wee hours of the morning for driving erratically, he gave the officer a little more than the standard “couple of beers” excuse (incidentally, he blew a .112 in a Breathalyzer test; .08 is the Colorado limit). He explained that the esteemed OJ Simpson had been in the bar, causing him to stay on the premises/imbibe much later than he had planned. He said he was going to ask the former athlete/non-murderer to pay his fines. As far as we know, Johnny Cochran did not offer to take the case.
6. What the doctor ordered
Cops in Bozeman busted a creep from Florida for making overwhelmingly stupid and lewd phone calls to dozens of Montana women. While most of the intended victims hung up, a few stayed on to hear his schpiel. Posing as a doctor, he explained that they were in danger of having a certain disease, and that they were best to do things like slice their nipples in order to release the toxins from their bodies. A few of the women actually took Dr. Demento’s advice and disfigured themselves before contacting authorities.
7. Just not in the cards
A convicted felon who had been working as a painter at David Letterman’s 2,700-acre ranch in Choteau had the stellar idea of kidnapping Letterman’s young son and his nanny and getting a bunch of ransom money in the process. Teton County court records show a botched plan whereby the painter and an accomplice would snare $5 million. Instead, the painter snared a felony count of solicitation to kidnap, as well as a felony theft charge for overcharging Letterman for work on the ranch. Officials also threw in a misdemeanor charge of lying to an FBI agent. At the time of the foiled plot, our guy was on probation for felony intimidation.
8. Rattled
A man from Idaho Falls got busted after going to a bar with his mother and getting into an argument with her after having a few cold ones. The argument is not so much the point as what he did when he left the bar. Apparently he went home, grabbed his “pet” rattlesnake and returned to the watering hole, where he released the agitated reptile into the crowded barroom. The three-and-a-half-foot rattler coiled up and started shaking its tail, giving every indication it was going to strike. Whether the snake was directed at the man’s mother or someone else, we do not know. We do know, however, that our man was charged with attempted felony assault and illegally keeping a wild animal in a residential area. Evidently someone was able to safely corral the reptile, which our man allegedly raised from a pup.
9. You caught me
An Arizona man was caught with his pants down and a sheep in his clutches after trespassing onto a neighbor’s property and doing what came unnaturally. The Maricopa County resident was nabbed after his neighbor’s teenage daughter watched him drag the animal into the barn. The neighbor soon confronted him, at which time our man said, “You caught me… I tried to f**k your sheep.” Oddly enough, police records indicate that he had been drinking at the time of the incident. We have to give him credit, though, for not being too sheepish when confronted.
10. The pain of getting busted
We have a report out of Roy City, Utah, that a 30-year-old high school teacher was caught promising students better grades in exchange for providing her with prescription painkillers. Long story short, she was charged with burglary and drug possession.
