Uncle John’s True Crime (12 page)

T
he Contraband:
Chameleons

The Story:
Dragos Radovic, 25, was arrested in April 2007 after flying from Bangkok, Thailand, to Zagreb, Croatia, when customs guards noticed his carry-on bag was “moving.” A search turned up 175 chameleons stuffed into the parcel. Radovic told officials that the man who sold him the lizards told him they would change color and camouflage themselves...and would be invisible to border guards.

The Contraband:
$1 billion bills

The Story:
Customs agents in Los Angeles got a tip in early 2006 that Tekle Zigetta, a 45-year-old naturalized American citizen, was involved in some kind of currency smuggling. They got a warrant to search his West Hollywood apartment, where they were surprised to find $250,000,037,000 in cash. The $37,000 was real; the $250 billion was in the form of 250 billion-dollar notes. The bills were dated 1934, bore the likeness of President Grover Cleveland, and were stained yellowish to make them appear old. Zigetta said he found them in a cave in the Philippines. (There is, of course, no such thing as a billion-dollar bill.)

The Contraband:
Human bones

The Story:
In June 2007, Indian police announced that the discovery of a “bone warehouse” near the Bhutanese border had led to the uncovering of an extensive international bone-smuggling operation. The smugglers claimed that the bones had come from bodies meant for cremation in the Indian city of Varanasi. “During questioning they confessed that there is great demand for femurs that are hollow, to be used as musical instruments,” officer Ravinder Nalwa told Reuters, “and skulls as bowls for drinking during religious ceremonies.” He said the bones were headed to Buddhist monasteries in Bhutan and Japan.

The majority of home burglaries occur during the daytime
.

The Contraband:
Critters

The Story:
The smuggling of wildlife isn’t uncommon, but in March 2007, a woman attempting to travel from Egypt to Gaza was caught taking it to bizarre heights. “The woman looked strangely fat,” border spokes-woman Maria Telleria said, prompting guards to call for a strip search. According to Telleria, the female guard who performed the search “screamed and ran out of the room.” The woman had three 20-inch-long crocodiles taped to her torso. She said she planned to sell the crocs to a zoo.

The Contraband:
Cows

The Story:
In India the majority Hindu population considers the cow a sacred animal. In bordering Bangladesh, the majority Muslim population considers the cow a food source. That may explain the huge cow-smuggling trade between the two nations: In 2006 more than 400,000 cows made their way from Indian villages to Bangladeshi dinner tables. In 2007 the Indian government came up with a plan to stop the trade: All cows living in villages near the border are now required to get photo IDs. “A bit strange it may sound,” said Somesh Goyal, a top Indian Border Security Force officer, “but the photo identity cards of cows and their owners is helping.”

The Contraband:
Tobacco

The Story:
In 2001 Indiana State Police arrested John Hester, 51, for smuggling tobacco into Pendleton Correctional Facility. The operation was troubling for two reasons: 1) Hester worked at the prison slaughterhouse, where he was in charge of acquiring cattle to be consumed by inmates; 2) he smuggled the tobacco into the facility in plastic bags...in the cows’ rectums. “It was stuffed into the cow,” said Indiana State Police Detective Gregory Belt, “and then the cow was brought onto the floor and it was removed.”

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World’s most counterfeited items: Louis Vuitton purses. The company estimates that only 1 percent of “Louis Vuitton” purses are authentic.

According to insiders, some Mafia bosses are appointed through yearly elections
.

They don’t give judges awards for creativity—but maybe they should. Do these guys deserve a prize? You be the judge
.

T
HE DEFENDANT:
Edward Bello, 60, a vending machine repairman and small-time crook

THE CRIME:
Conspiracy to use stolen credit cards, with which he racked up more than $26,000 in charges

THE PUNISHMENT:
Federal District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein sentenced Bello to 10 months of home detention...
with no TV
. The tube-free environment would “create a condition of silent introspection that I consider necessary to induce the defendant to change his behavior.” Despite a 30-year history of committing petty crimes, Bello has never spent a day in prison and says he’s grateful to the judge for sparing him from the slammer one more time. But he’s appealing the no-TV sentence anyway, claiming that it’s a form of censorship and violates his First Amendment rights. “Let’s face it,” he says, “a television is sort of like your umbilical cord to life.”

THE DEFENDANT:
Albert Brown, a repeat drug offender in San Francisco, California

THE CRIME:
Selling drugs to an undercover cop

A NOVEL APPROACH:
Rather than decide the sentence himself, Judge James Warren of San Francisco handed Brown one of his judicial robes and told him to put it on. “This is your life,” he told Brown. “You are your own judge. Sentence yourself.”

THE PUNISHMENT:
Brown, in tears, gave himself six months in jail. Then, according to news reports, he tacked on a “string of self-imposed conditions such as cleaning himself up for his kids, and steering clear of the neighborhood where he got busted.”

“The Probation Department recommended six months and a good lecturing,” Judge Warren told reporters. “But I figured, I’m not that good
at lecturing. He, on the other hand, was very good at lecturing himself. And maybe this time it will stick. I had the transcript typed up and sent over to him. Just in case he forgets.”

Butch Cassidy’s first offense: Taking a pair of pants and some pie, for which he left an IOU
.

THE DEFENDANT:
Alan Law, 19, of Derwent, Ohio

THE CRIME:
Disturbing the peace by driving through town with his truck windows rolled down and the stereo blasting

THE PUNISHMENT:
Municipal Court Judge John Nicholson gave Law a choice: pay a $100 fine or sit and listen to polka music for four hours. Law chose facing the music. A few days later, he reported to the police station and was locked in an interview room, where he listened to the “Blue Skirt Waltz,” “Who Stole the Kishka,” “Too Fat Polka,” and other hits by Cleveland polka artist Frankie Yankovic. Law managed to sit through it and has since abandoned his plans to buy an even louder stereo for his truck.

THE DEFENDANT:
A youth in the Wake County, North Carolina, Juvenile Court (names of juvenile offenders are sealed)

THE CRIME:
Burglary and theft

THE PUNISHMENT:
Judge Don Overby sent the miscreant home to get his most-prized possession. The kid returned with a remote-controlled car, which he handed over to the court. The judge then took a hammer and smashed it to smithereens. Judge Overby has done this with other first time offenders as well. He says he got the idea after someone broke into his house and stole his CD player, his VCR, and $300 in cash. “I remember wishing these folks could feel the same sense of loss as I did,” he says.

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In January 2004, three men in Spokane, Washington, decided to have a little fun by running through the local Denny’s at dawn, wearing just their shoes and hats. Their only mistake: leaving the car engine running. While they were streaking through the restaurant, someone stole their car and their clothes. The three naked pranksters had to hide behind parked cars until police arrived to take them to jail.

Most commonly requested item for death-row inmates’ “last meals”: French fries
.

Believe it or not, some lawyers are actually quite clever. Here are some quotes from the world’s most famous lawyers
.

“I bring out the worst in my enemies and that’s how I get them to defeat themselves.”

—Roy Cohn

“The court of last resort is no longer the Supreme Court. It’s
Nightline
.”

—Alan Dershowitz

“We lawyers shake papers at each other the way primitive tribes shake spears.”

—John Jay Osborn, Jr
.

“The ideal client is the very wealthy man in very great trouble.”

—John Sterling

“An incompetent lawyer can delay a trial for months or years. A competent lawyer can delay one even longer.”

—Evelle Younger

“I’ve never met a litigator who didn’t think he was winning... right up until the moment the guillotine dropped.”

—William F. Baxter

“I’m not an ambulance chaser. I’m usually there before the ambulance.”

—Melvin Belli

“This is New York, and there’s no law against being annoying.”

—
William Kunstler

“I get paid for seeing that my clients have every break the law allows. I have knowingly defended a number of guilty men. But the guilty never escape unscathed. My fees are sufficient punishment for anyone.”

—F. Lee Bailey

“I don’t want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is.”

—Roy Cohn

“The ‘adversary system’ is based on the notion that if one side overstates his idea of the truth and the other side overstates his idea of the truth, then the truth will come out....Why can’t we all just tell the truth?”

—David Zapp

The CIA developed a listening device for use in Vietnam, disguised to look like tiger droppings
.

Four stories of dumb crooks who saved us all a lot of trouble
.

S
ELF HELP

“A 22-year-old Green Bay man led police on a chase that moved as slowly as 20 mph and ended in the Brown County Jail’s parking lot. The man parked his pickup in the jail’s lot, smoked a cigarette, got out of the truck, and lay face-down on the ground to be arrested, police said. He told the officers he knew he was drunk and was going to be sent to jail, so he just drove himself there.”

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS

“Sylvain Boucher of Quebec was spotted by prison guards standing between the prison wall and an outer fence. Assuming he was trying to escape, they grabbed him, but soon discovered he was not an inmate...and he was carrying a large amount of illegal drugs. Boucher was trying to break
in
, thinking the prison would be a good market for his drugs. He’ll get to find out. Before he had the supply, but no market. Now he has the market, but no supply.”

—Moreland’s Bozo of the Day

IS THIS WHY THEY CALL IT “DOPE”?

“Philomena A. Palestini, 18, of Portland, Maine, walked into Salem District Court to face one criminal charge, but walked out in handcuffs with two. Court Security Officer Ronald Lesperance found a hypodermic needle and two small bags of what police believe is heroin in her purse as she walked through the security checkpoint. ‘This doesn’t happen very often,’ said Lesperance.”

—Eagle Tribune

THE “IN” CROWD

“A man who tried to break
into
a Rideau correctional center with drugs and tobacco was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday. Shane Walker, 23, was believed to be bringing drugs to a jailed friend last week when he was foiled by corrections workers who heard bolt-cutters snapping the wire fence and apprehended him.”

—The National Post

Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis, Professor Moriarty, was based on real-life criminal Adam Worth
.

Most stories have the moral at the end. But we’ll put it right up front: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is
.

N
IGHT DEPOSIT

One evening in February 1871, George Roberts, a prominent San Francisco businessman, was working in his office when two men came to his door. One of them, Philip Arnold, had once worked for Roberts; the other was named John Slack. Arnold produced a small leather bag and explained that it contained something very valuable; as soon as the Bank of California opened in the morning, he was going to have them lock it in the vault for safekeeping.

Arnold and Slack made a show of not wanting to reveal what was in the bag, but eventually told Roberts that it contained “rough diamonds” they’d found while prospecting on a mesa somewhere in the West. They wouldn’t say where the mesa was, but they did say it was the richest mineral deposit they’d ever seen in their lives: The site was rich not only in diamonds, but also in sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and other precious stones.

The story sounded too good to be true, but when Arnold dumped the contents of the bag onto Roberts’s desk, out spilled dozens of uncut diamonds and other gems.

PAY DIRT

If somebody were to make such a claim today, they’d probably get laughed out of the room. But things were different in 1871. Only 20 years had passed since the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in California sparked the greatest gold rush in American history. Since then other huge gold deposits had been discovered in Colorado, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. A giant vein of silver had been found in the famous Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, and diamonds had been discovered in South Africa in 1867—just four years earlier. Gems and precious metals might be anywhere, lying just below the earth’s surface, waiting to be discovered
. People who’d missed out on the earlier bonanzas were hungry for word of new discoveries, and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 opened up the West and created the expectation that more valuable strikes were just around the corner. When Arnold and Slack rolled into town with their tale of gems on a mesa and a bag of precious stones to back it up, people were ready to believe them.