Uncle John’s True Crime (15 page)

They headed across Ontario and straight into the United States. There was no cross-Canada train yet, so this police force, created in no small part to repel American incursions, headed for Chicago, where they transferred to a train that would drop them off in Fargo, North Dakota. After that, they boarded another train that took them to Fort Dufferin, Manitoba, the last outpost of civilization. From there, they marched 800 miles through plains, woods, rivers, and swamps on their way to Fort Whoop-Up in Alberta. Their mission: to clean out the whiskey sellers and horse thieves, keep peace between the Europeans and the people of the First Nations, combat general lawlessness, and enforce a firm border with the United States...by force if necessary.

TAMPING DOWN WHOOP-UP

It took three months for the Mounties to arrive at the fort. By then, the whiskey sellers, having heard the Mounties were coming, had cleared out. There was also no evidence of hostile natives or a gathering storm along the American border. It was an anticlimactic start for the NWMP, but for many, the best sort of anticlimax. Peace was established without a shot, and for their first few years, the Mounties had to deal with few crimes worse than horse theft. Since there was no judicial system set up, the commander at Fort Whoop-Up got himself sworn in as a justice of the peace so that he could judge civil and criminal cases there.

In 1876 the Mounties got their first real taste of combat when they
defused a tense situation after 5,000 Sioux, led by Sitting Bull and pursued by the U.S. Army, fled over the Canadian border. The Americans were seeking revenge for the bloody defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Mountie commander James Morrow Walsh was assigned to deal with the situation. He organized an ad hoc NWMP headquarters at Wood Mountain, where the Sioux had set up camp, initiated a close friendship with Sitting Bull, and managed to keep the peace.

Bad car-ma? 40% of car-theft victims admit they left their keys in the ignition
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GOLDEN AGE

Keeping peace in Canada’s Wild West continued to be the Mounties’ primary mission. In 1895, they headed over the Rockies for the first time to regulate the influx of Americans crossing the Alaskan border during the Klondike gold rush. They collected customs duties, confiscated guns, and required that each miner be equipped with at least a ton of food and survivor gear to prevent mass numbers of needy people overunning Canada. During this time, the Mounties managed to maintain a reasonable amount of order in a chaotic situation, expelling troublemakers while sensibly not making an issue of popular illegalities like prostitution and gambling. Prospectors, not necessarily a law-and-order bunch, were impressed by the Mounties’ conduct, and their reputation spread across the world.

Around this same time, though, Canada’s government started talking about dissolving the NWMP. Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier thought the Mounties’ golden age had passed; they’d done a good job of keeping order on the frontier, but Canada was moving into the 20th century and needed smaller, regional police forces. Despite discussions in Parliament and Laurier’s push, the Mounties were popular, especially in the west, and the measure never caught on. Instead, the Mounties became the country’s official police force in 1920 and got a name change to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They also were becoming the stuff of pop-culture legend.

THEY ALWAYS GET THEIR MAN

Today, the Mounties are one of Canada’s best-known symbols, but it wasn’t just their crime-fighting ways that made it so. The chief culprit behind the Mounties image in pop culture was a Winnipeg writer named Charles William Gordon, who wrote uplifting frontier
adventures under the pen name Ralph Connor. In 1912, he wrote a novel called
Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police: A Tale of the MacLeod Trail
. It sold like hotcakes...in Canada and abroad. The book starred an uncorruptible Mountie hero, some satisfying fisticuffs, and the rescue of a pretty girl. It also launched a whole line of Mountie adventures.

America’s population behind bars has increased 1,000% since 1980
.

Where books went, Hollywood followed. By the 1950s, America’s entertainment capital had made a total of 575 films set in Canada, and many of those—including the musical
Rose-Marie
, involved the Mounties. Hollywood’s love did not go unrequited; from the early days, the Mounties cheerfully supplied technical advice to filmmakers, and even officers in active service. There were Mounties on the radio—including the popular 1930s show
Challenge of the Yukon
—and when television arrived, heroes like Sgt. Preston made a seamless transition to the new medium (though its snowy outdoor shots were filmed in Colorado and California, not Canada).

These days, the Mounties still appear in entertainment, but they’re also a legitimate police force; they act as Canada’s federal police as well as the provincial police for everyone except Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador. (Those have their own provincial forces.) Not bad for a ragtag frontier police department whose first job was cleaning up a little fort called Whoop-Up.

MOUNTIE FACTS

• In popular culture, the Mounties’ motto is “They always get their man,” but that’s actually a Hollywood creation. That phrase comes from an 1877 newspaper story in the
Fort Benton
(Montana)
Record
in which the reporter wrote, “They fetch their man every time.” Hollywood producers read the story, jumped on the phrasing, and created the Mounties’ “motto.”

• The Mounties’ distinctive outfit—wide-brimmed hat, red jacket, black riding pants, etc.—is called the Red Serge because the red jackets were originally made from a type of English twill called “serge.” The Red Serge is only for special ceremonies and events, like the Musical Ride.

• Women became Mounties for the first time in 1974.

First use of ballistics evidence—matching a bullet to a gun to solve a crime: 1835, in England
.

.
We first collected these tales of not-so-wise guys for our book
, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Ohio

M
AN OF STEAL

The Crook:
Matthew Binegar of Dayton

The Crime:
The Ohio teenager decided to shoplift from a Kmart in Fairborn, so he shoved a DVD movie and a video game into his clothing and fled the scene. Binegar might have gotten away if not for his work “uniform.” He was a street performer for a local apartment complex, and was wearing a Superman costume when he tried to fly, er...flee. After a brief chase, the police nabbed Binegar. Why so brief of a chase? Because several Kmart employees had watched Superman steal the merchandise and called the cops. Binegar was found guilty of one count of criminal theft, served 52 days in jail, and was fined $200. (According to reports, he also faced a lot of criticism from his older sister Michelle, who called him “America’s Dumbest Criminal.”)

IF YOU DON’T KNOW, JUST ASK

The Crook:
Adam Brown of Columbus

The Crime:
Brown, 17, broke into an elderly woman’s home and ordered her to hand over the keys to her car. He would have succeeded in driving away...had he been able to open the garage door. He went back into the house and asked the lady how to get the garage door open. She told him; he went back and tried again, but couldn’t get it open. So he went back inside and asked for a more detailed explanation. She slowly explained the procedure. Finally, on the third try, Brown got the garage door open. But then he realized he couldn’t drive a car with a manual transmission. So he went inside the house
again
and asked the lady how to drive a stick shift. She slowly explained it to him—slowly, because 1) he wasn’t that bright, and 2) the police were on their way. When they arrived, Brown was trying to back out of the driveway. He was arrested on the spot.

Every 30 seconds, a lawsuit is filed in the United States
.

LEAVING THE SCENE

The Crook:
Darren Wallace of Columbus

The Crime:
Wallace thought he had what it takes to be a bank robber: a bank to rob, and a getaway driver. The only hang-up? His getaway driver was his mother...and she had no idea she was going to be used for that purpose. All Mrs. Wallace did was agree to drive him to the bank. After she dropped Darren off, she decided to run a few quick errands while he was inside. A short time later, Darren ran outside with his bag of money, but his mother was nowhere to be found. (She was actually two blocks away at the grocery store.) When she drove back up to the bank to retrieve her son, he was already in handcuffs.

GARBAGE COLLECTORS

The Crooks:
An unidentified group of burglars from Fostoria

The Crime:
The thieves broke into the Fostoria Bureau of Concern, an agency that serves the poor and needy and keeps little cash on hand. Apparently not knowing that, they stole a safe from the administrator’s office. What happened to the thieves is unknown; they were never caught. But Susan Simpkins, the bureau’s director, was thankful that the crooks took the old, empty safe that had no money in it, and left the new safe there that did contain cash. She’d hadn’t got around to throwing out the old one. Simpkins told police, “They did us a favor by taking it.”

THE SEQUINS OF EVENTS

The Crook:
Larry Edmonds of Barberton

The Crime:
Edmonds was under suspicion of burglarizing an Ohio home: The resident had caught him in her bedroom and gave his description to police. However, they found little tangible evidence that linked Edmonds to the crime. But he was acting suspicious, so the cops brought him in for questioning. During the interrogation, something sparkly caught an officer’s eye. Edmonds’s pants were hanging low, and sequins were showing around his waist. When the cop realized the sequins belonged to a pair of panties, he pressed Edmonds for an explanation. He admitted that the panties belonged to the victim...as well as the red string bikini he was wearing underneath the sequined panties. Officers then discovered he was wearing
seven more
pairs of underwear. Edmonds went to jail; the woman’s panties were returned. (No word on whether or not she kept them.)

On average, 80 people shoot at the Goodyear blimp each year
.

Here’s a classic scam from our archives
.

T
HE SIR FRANCIS DRAKE ASSOCIATION

Background:
In 1913 thousands of people with the last name Drake received a letter from the “Sir Francis Drake Association,” an organization founded for the purpose of settling the estate of the legendary British buccaneer who had died 300 years earlier. The letter claimed that the estate was still tied up in probate court, and that since Drake’s death in 1596 the value had grown to an estimated $22 billion. Any Drake descendant who wanted a share of the estate was welcome—all they had to do was contribute toward the $2,500-a-week “legal expenses” needed to pursue the case. When the estate was settled, each contributor would be entitled to a proportional share. There was no time to waste—the fight was underway and any Drake descendant who hesitated risked being cut out entirely.

Exposed:
The Sir Francis Drake Association was the work of Iowa farmer-turned-conman Oscar Merrill Hartzell. But he didn’t invent the hoax—the first of hundreds of similar swindles took place within months of Drake’s death in 1596. Hartzell got the idea for his version after his mother was conned out of several thousand dollars in another Drake estate scam. When he tracked down the crooks who had swindled her and realized how much money they were making, Hartzell decided that rather than call the police, he would keep quiet...and launch his own scam. Using the money he’d recovered for his mother, Hartzell promptly sent out letters to more than 20,000 Drakes. Thousands took the bait. Hartzell eventually expanded the scam to target people who weren’t even named Drake.

Final Note:
By the time the feds caught up with him 20 years later, Hartzell had swindled an estimated 70,000 people out of more than $2 million. Rather than admit they’d been duped, many of the victims donated an additional $350,000 toward his legal defense. Hartzell was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison; a few years later he was transferred to a mental institution, where he died in 1943.

Do you? 1 in 4 Facebook users leave themselves open to crime by revealing personal details
.

Don’t abuse your bathroom privileges...or you may wind up in Uncle John’s “Stall of Shame.”

H
onoree:
Joseph Carl Jones, Jr., an alleged burglar

Dubious Achievement:
Landing in the can after a trip to the can

True Story:
On the morning of February 7, 2003, Janie Sidener of Mineral Wells, Texas, arrived to open the store where she worked. She should have been the first one in the building that morning, but shortly after she entered she noticed something unusual, so she looked around. That’s when she saw Joseph Carl Jones, fast asleep on a bed that the store had for sale. “Apparently he needed to take a break,” said police spokesperson Mike McAllister.

Sidener quietly called her employer, who called the police. They woke the burglar, arrested him, and hauled him off to the slammer. So what was it that alerted Sidener to the fact that something was amiss? Before his nap, Jones had used the bathroom...and hadn’t flushed.

Adding Insult to Injury!
The store Jones had picked to rob was owned by the wife of the district attorney.

Honoree:
Jon Carl Petersen, 41, head of the Iowa office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)

Dubious Achievement:
Wrecking his own career with alcohol, toilet paper, and firearms (ATPF)

True Story:
During Homecoming Week 2002, a pickup truck full of Indianola high school sophomores decided to TP some houses in town, an unofficial Homecoming tradition for many years. Too bad they chose the street where Petersen lived. And too bad Petersen had been drinking.