12) Robber covered in blue paint like Smurf: police arrested only blue man in town
13) Whipped cream on face
14) Leprechaun suit
15) Cartoon dog suit
16) Darth Vader costume
17) Cross-dressing
18) Santa Claus outfit
19) Switching ethnicity
20) What the burglar did: took shower and meal, used computer
21) Charlotte North Carolina: church-going gift-giving John Zoran revealed as escaped convict Geoffrey Manchester who set up home in a toy store
22) Intruder fell asleep in house
23) Intruder tickles sleeping victim’s feet
24) Intruder acts like a dog
25) Intruder solves maths puzzle
26) Intruder cooks pizza
27) Intruder does housework
28) Intruder watches porn
29) Intruder gets drunk
30) Intruder redecorates
31) The Getaway: D C Cooper
32) Two Cambodian burglars known for stripping to underwear and covering themselves in oil
33) Daring bid for freedom on garden lawn-mower
34) Daring bid on steamroller
35) Daring bid on roller-skates
36) Daring bid in pizza van
37) Daring bid on bicycle
38) Daring bid on motorised bar stool
39) Daring bid in stretched Limo
40) Daring bid in horse and buggy
41) Escapee crashes into store’s stands
42) Cross-dressing escapee loses underwear and runs into police car
43) Plain Crazy: bloke in pulled-over car goes crazy
44) Ditto
45) Bizarre police chase
46) Runs out of petrol and pushes car
47) Lady whose car being robbed lets down robbers’ tyres
48) Women bumps car from parking space
49) Excuses: My parakeet was sick
50) Speeding to dry wet clothes
51) Teddy bear was driving
52) Father tries to persuade sleeping son to murder brother by playing voice command on cassette tape: ‘Tommy, kill David’
53) Bloke robs petrol station in woman’s bra
54) Robber uses turtle as weapon
55) Robber sprays manure on bank
56) Robber smears toilets with glue
57) Machete attack on cop car
58) Robber poses naked as the Devil
59) Erie Pennsylvania: pizza delivery man Brian Wells forced to rob bank by being wired with collar and bomb which explodes
60) Burglar tries to rob electrical shop with plastic bag over head but with no slits for eyes
61) Not the Smartest Idea: Robber takes customer’s wallet in store but leaves gun on counter for shop-keeper
62) Burglar gets stuck in vent
63) Ditto in pizza restaurant
64) Robber writes demand for cash on envelope, but with name and address on reverse
65) Hold-up note: ‘This Is A Rubbery’
66) Robber knocks himself out by throwing block at window which rebounds and hits him on head
67) Man bangs head repeatedly to escape nagging wife & Man mugs self after losing at black-jack
68) Man accused of robbing vending machine pays bail with small change
69) Man robs firework warehouse with acetylene torch
70) Tries to cut into safe with harmless laser tag gun
71) Handing out business cards advertising trade as drug dealer
72) Dog farms
73) Syphoning petrol from motor home but sucking on sewage pipe
74) Stealing aircraft location transmitter from airfield: cops follow signal
75) Taking cocaine to police station to complain it’s sub-standard
76) Trying to pass off two sixteen-dollar bills
77) Thieves steal police decoy 4-x-4
78) Thieves steal police dog
79) Offer drugs to cops
80) Pickpocket Olympic sprinter
81) Internet: man composes multiple personalities and believes them real. One persuades another to kill. Convicted of incitement to own murder
82) Man disguises face with traffic cone
83) Man does somersaults to prove sobriety
84) Woman lifts dress to prove sobriety
85) Women strip when stopped by police
86) Man angered when stopped by police
87) Strange thefts: garden gnomes
88) Garden wall
89) Sheep
90) Bus shelter
91) Cougar mascot
92) Traffic lights
93) Beware Thieves’ sign
94) Toilet tissue
95) Woman’s hair
96) World Cup
97) Baby alligators
98) Giant sculpture
99) The Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short: Body tortured, cleaned, cut in half and dumped. Killer taunts police with notes. Man discovers photos of surgical father and investigates case of own father with two corrupt cops. 99 Most Bizarre Crimes
When I started studying crime in the early 1990s it was roughly at its peak, the highest it had ever been in the United States. And all the experts expected it would go higher and higher; the warnings were everywhere. And then much to everyone’s surprise something happened. Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics, caption, Sky Atlantic, 2010; viz also novel
Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his sin.
The culprit was crime. It had been rising relentlessly – a graph plotting the crime rate in any American city over recent decades looked like a ski slope in profile – and it seemed now to herald the end of the world as we knew it. Death by gunfire, intentional and otherwise, had become commonplace. Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics introduction
And then, instead of going up and up and up, crime began to fall … The magnitude of the reversal was astounding. ibid.
Not all children are born equal. Not even close. Decades of studies have shown that a child born into an adverse family environment is far more likely than other children to become a criminal. ibid.