Uncle John’s True Crime (3 page)

“Alferd G. Packer, you no good sonofabitch, there wasn’t but seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you done et five of ’um,” he thundered. “You’re gonna hang by the neck until dead!”

SAVED BY A TECHNICALITY

His lawyer appealed the decision, citing a legal loophole. The crime was committed in 1873, in the
territory
of Colorado. The trial began in 1884, in the new
state
of Colorado. The state constitution, adopted in 1876, did not address such a heinous crime, so the charge was reduced to manslaughter and Packer was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was a model prisoner and was paroled after 16 years. Freed in 1901, he found work as a wrangler on a ranch near Denver.

On April 21, 1907, Alferd G. Packer, horse wrangler and cannibal, died quietly in his sleep.

Murders claimed more American lives during the 20th century than wars did
.

When it comes to disguises, crooks can be very creative. We once read about a guy who smeared his face with Vaseline before he robbed a bank, figuring the security cameras couldn’t photograph him through the hazy goop (they could; he was arrested). Yes, there are some odd and outlandish thieves out there. Like the ones dressed up
...

...AS UTILITY WORKERS:
In 2005 the Associated Press reported that in Baltimore a group of thieves disguised as city utility workers had stolen more than 120 street light poles. They said the thieves put up orange traffic cones around their “work area” while they dismantled and made away with the 30-foot-tall, 250-pound aluminum poles. (Why would anyone steal a light pole? Police theorize that they were stealing them to sell as scrap metal.)

...AS PRIESTS:
Police in Serbia said three men disguised as Orthodox Christian priests, complete with fake beards and ankle-length cossacks, entered a bank in Serbia, gave the traditional “Christ is born” greeting, then pulled shotguns out of their robes. Within minutes they had made off with more than $300,000.

...AS A CHIMPANZEE:
A man walked into an EZ Mart in Garland, Texas, with a gun in his hand and a chimpanzee mask over his face. He fired one shot, took the money from the register, and fled. TV news programs in the area tried to help police by airing the surveillance video of the robbery, which clearly shows... a man in a chimpanzee mask robbing the store.

...AS SUPERHEROES:
A group of young “activists” in Hamburg, Germany, showed up at a high-priced food store in April 2006. They were dressed as comic book superheroes, and they made off with several cartloads of expensive food. Police said similar robberies had taken place at other high-end supermarkets over the years, and believed they were intended as protests against inequitable income distribution. Police also
reported that the superhero robbers gave the cashier a bouquet of flowers and posed for a photograph before fleeing. Although 14 police cars and a helicopter were involved in the search, the bandits got away.

Originally, the Italian word
mafioso
had no criminal ties. It simply meant “suspicious of authority.”

...AS COPS:
At 1:30 a.m. on the night of March 18, 1990, two men disguised as cops knocked on the door of the prestigious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The security guards on duty let them in and were immediately overpowered by the thieves. The not-cops made off with several paintings—a Vermeer, a Manet, and three Rembrandts, among other masterpieces—worth about $300 million. It still ranks as the largest art theft in U.S. history and has never been solved.

...AS A PAIR OF UNDERWEAR:
Police in Calgary, Alberta, announced in June 2004 that they had finally caught the “Black Panties Bandit,” who had robbed at least five convenience stores while wearing a black pair of women’s underwear over his face as a disguise.

MORE MASKED ADVENTURERS

• In February 2006, a man in a tiger suit climbed to the top of the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida. Frank Feldmann, 35, an author of children’s books, was protesting against child pornography on the Internet. But police couldn’t understand him—the tiger suit muffled his voice. He eventually came down and was arrested.

• In December 2004, Lionel Arias, 47, of San Jose, Costa Rica, was “playing a practical joke” by wearing an Osama bin Laden mask, carrying a pellet rifle in his hand, and jumping out and scaring drivers on a narrow street near his home. He was shot twice in the stomach by a startled taxi driver. Arias recovered from his wounds; the taxi driver was not charged.

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Myth:
If you think someone is an undercover cop, ask them. If they are, they have to tell you.

Truth:
It’s a common scene in movies: The criminal asks a suspicious character if he’s a cop and avoids entrapment. No such law exists. Undercover cops are allowed to lie to protect themselves.

English lesson: In the United States, it’s “burglarize.” In the U.K., it’s “burgle.”

Here’s our tribute to some classic (and
not so classic) Hollywood movies
.

Burt Lancaster:
“Why did you bolt your cabin door last night?”

Eva Bartok:
“If you knew it was bolted, you must have tried it. If you tried it, you know why it was bolted.”

—
The Crimson Pirate (1952)

“My first wife was the second cook at a third-rate joint on Fourth Street.”

—
Eddie Marr,
The Glass Key
(1942)

“When I have nothing to do at night and can’t think, I always iron my money.”

—
Robert Mitchum,
His Kind of Woman
(1951)

Guy Pearce:
“All I ever wanted was to measure up to my father.”

Russell Crowe:
“Now’s your chance. He died in the line of duty, didn’t he?”

—
L.A. Confidential
(1997)

“I used to live in a sewer. Now I live in a swamp. I’ve come up in the world.”

—
Linda Darnell,
No Way Out
(1950)

“He was so crooked he could eat soup with a corkscrew.”

—
Annette Bening,
The Grifters
(1990)

“It looks like I’ll spend the rest of my life dead.”

—
Humphrey Bogart,
The Petrified Forest
(1936)

Rhonda Fleming:
“You drinkin’ that stuff so early?”

Bill Conrad:
“Listen, doll girl, when you drink as much as I do, you gotta start early.”

—
Cry Danger
(1951)

“You’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another.”

—
Robert Mitchum,
Out of the Past
(1947)

“I’ve got an honest man’s conscience...in a murderer’s body.”

—
DeForest Kelley,
Fear in the Night
(1947)

“I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

—
Burt Lancaster,
Sweet Smell of Success
(1957)

Fewer than 10% of criminals commit about 67% of all crimes
.

We recently read a newspaper story about an identical twin who switched places with his brother so that the brother could escape from prison. That got us wondering—how often does this happen? Answer: More often than you might think
.

T
WINS:
Bernic Lee and Breon Alston-Currie, 19, of Durham, North Carolina

BACKGROUND:
In May 2002, both brothers were being held at the Durham County jail. Bernic Lee was awaiting trial for murder, and Breon was being held on an unrelated robbery charge.

TWO-TIMING:
On the day that Breon was scheduled for release, the jail’s computer crashed. The guards, working from a handwritten list of inmates to be released, went to Bernic Lee’s cell and asked him if he was Breon. Bernic Lee said yes. His face matched the photo on the release form (they’re twins, remember) and he gave the right home address, but he didn’t know Breon’s Social Security number. No problem. It’s not uncommon for inmates to not know their own Social Security numbers, so the jailers released him anyway.

OUTCOME:
Bernic Lee spent about seven hours on the outside, then turned himself back in. He later pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 9 to 12 years in prison. County officials never figured out whether Breon played any part in the snafu. “I have no information to believe that,” says the jail’s director, Lt. Col. George Naylor. “I have no information not to believe it, either.”

TWINS:
Carey and David Moore, 27

BACKGROUND:
Both brothers were serving time in the Nebraska State Penitentiary in October 1984.

OUTCOME:
One afternoon they met up in a conference room in the prison and switched clothes when nobody was looking. Afterward Carey, posing as David, was released into the prison yard. David, posing as Carey, was escorted back to Carey’s cell. The ruse was exposed when Carey reported for David’s kitchen duty. The kitchen supervisor realized that “David” wasn’t really David and reported the incident to the guards.

Gaston Glock, who invented the Glock 17 handgun in 1982, wasn’t a gun expert—he was an expert in synthetic polymers
.

WHAT HAPPENED:
When confronted, the twins admitted the switch. It’s doubtful that it was anything more than a prank, though, and even less likely that the brothers would have kept it up much longer—David was serving 4 to 6 years for burglary; Carey was awaiting execution on death row.

TWINS:
Two 18-year-old twins living in Sweden in December 2004 (Their names were not released to the public.)

BACKGROUND:
One of the brothers was serving a 10-month sentence in the Kronoberg jail for assault and robbery. Then one day the other brother came to visit. The two were indistinguishable, except for a birthmark on the incarcerated twin’s body.

TWO-TIMING:
The brothers were allowed a 45-minute,
unsupervised
visit. Guess what happened! They switched clothes and the one without a birthmark used an ink pen to make a fake one. When the visit ended, the brother who was serving time walked out of the jail and disappeared.

OUTCOME:
For all we know, the innocent twin might have served the entire 10-month sentence for his brother, were it not for one thing: that night, he panicked at the thought of having to spend a night in jail, called for a guard, and confessed the deception. As of late December, the guilty brother was still loose, and the “innocent” one, temporarily out on bail, was facing the prospect of doing some time of his own. “He thinks he’s going to walk,” Warden Lars Aake Pettersson told reporters. “But that’s probably not going to happen.”

TWINS:
Tony and Terry Litton, 19, of Cardiff, Wales

BACKGROUND:
Tony was about a year into a two-year sentence for burglary when Terry came to visit him at the Cardiff prison in March 1990.

TWO-TIMING:
Somehow, the brothers managed to strip down to their underwear and switch clothes in the middle of a bustling visitors room without attracting the notice of the guards. When the visit was up, Terry went back to Tony’s cell and Tony walked out of the prison with the rest of the visitors.

A word of advice to identical twins: if you and your sibling plan to trade places, don’t have your names tattooed to the backs of your necks. Tony and Terry did; when an inmate noticed that Tony’s now read
“Terry,” he alerted a guard. The twins’ dad, Ken Litton, couldn’t figure out why they pulled the stunt, especially since Tony was about to come up for parole anyway. “This time they’ve gone too far,” he told reporters. “The police won’t see the funny side of it.”

OUTCOME:
Tony was caught three days later and returned to jail to serve out his
full
sentence (no parole this time), plus extra time for the escape. Terry served some time of his own for helping him. (No word on whether they were allowed to visit each other in prison.)

TWINS:
Ronald and Donald Anderson, 43, of Oxnard, California

BACKGROUND:
In July 1993, “Ronald” checked himself into the county jail and began serving a six-month sentence for assaulting his estranged wife. Four days later he was arrested again, for assaulting his wife a second time. But how could he have done it if he was still in jail?

TWO-TIMING:
Police checked the fingerprints of the man who’d checked himself into jail as Ronald; sure enough, it was Donald. When asked why he was serving his brother’s sentence for him, Donald explained that he was better suited for jail time than Ronald was.

Donald was speaking from experience—it was the
third
time he’d gone to jail for his brother. Years earlier he had served a two-month jail sentence for Ronald in Philadelphia, and when he moved to California he did time in the Ventura County Jail for traffic tickets that Ronald had run up using Donald’s driver’s license. In the 1970s, Donald even shipped off to Korea for Ronald after Ronald joined the Army, and then decided he didn’t want to go.

OUTCOME:
For the second assault on his wife, Ronald was convicted of spousal battery, attempted murder, and robbery (he stole his wife’s purse) and given the maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. He is now serving time for both of his convictions. Donald got off scot-free—apparently it’s not a crime in Oxnard to do someone else’s time. Today he lives in an apartment across the street from the jail. “If I could take my twin’s place now, I would do it,” he said.

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“The best car safety device is a rearview mirror with a cop in it.”

—
Dudley Moore

Odds of winning if you challenge a traffic ticket in court: about 1 in 3
.

Don’t have a lot of time but still want to read interesting little stories? Just check out the police blotter of your local paper
.

• “A man reported a burglary around 10 p.m. Thursday after he returned home and found his 36-inch Samsung TV missing. It had been replaced with an RCA TV. Decorative items were placed around the new TV in an apparent attempt to fool him.”