10 Crazy Criminals Who Will Make Your Day

The following people are just a gift to the world. It’s amazing how many things—like alcohol, nudity, or even Mr. Whippy—criminals can use in a crazy way as a catalyst for crime and incompetence.

10Maybe He Should Have Led With Dinner

Thomas Edward of Seminole County, Florida really knows how to make a girl feel special. He showed up in the middle of the night at a house where his girlfriend said she was staying, knocked on the door, and began taking off his clothes on the patio so that he could propose in the buff. It was pretty clear what he was proposing, but his girlfriend wasn’t there.

The woman who lived in the house didn’t know him or his girlfriend. So Edward did what any spurned lover would do: He took his pants off anyway. This didn’t sit well with the man of the house, who called the police.

Up to that point, Edward had been pretty cool. But when the police arrived and asked him to put his clothes on, he spat on them. The police don’t like to get spat on, so they shocked him with a Taser and arrested him. Edward was charged with burglary, battery, and indecent exposure.

In the flurry of events, no one thought to ask the obvious question: How impressed could Ed’s girlfriend have been with his endowment if she gave him the wrong address?

9The Bible Belt

Carolyn Unfricht, 56, felt passionately about her religion, especially when she and her 35-year-old roommate, Daniel Camarda, were so drunk that they could barely walk.

They were in a Cartersville, Georgia motel around 1:00 AM around Christmas 2013, when Ms. Unfricht decided to impart her wisdom about the Ten Commandments to her young companion. Apparently not understanding the commandment that says “Thou shalt honor someone old enough to be thy mother,” young Daniel got a bit mouthy. So Ms. Unfricht did what any morally upstanding older woman would do. She belted him in the face with her Bible.

This broke young Daniel’s $150 glasses. But to his credit, he remembered the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” so he merely threw Ms. Unfricht across the room into a television. She cut her head and hurt her foot.

Although we don’t know exactly how they’re related, they were both arrested under the Family Violence Act and were booked into the Barstow County Jail.

8A Chainsaw, Fishnet Stockings, And Mr. Whippy

In New Zealand, Mr. Whippy is a soft-serve ice cream brand whose trucks sell frozen treats to kids on the street. So it might be a little unnerving to see a drunken man nude but for black fishnet stockings chasing a Mr. Whippy truck down the street with a running chainsaw. In the US, Mr. Fishnet would probably get tased. But this was New Zealand, so the police relaxed a bit, seeing it as the “drunken antic” that it was.

While attending a rowdy stag party in Rangiora, New Zealand, Mr. Fishnet apparently wanted more excitement. So he went outside, fired up a chainsaw, and—shaking and waving it—chased the aforementioned Mr. Whippy ice cream truck down the street. This scared the truck driver but not enough to floor it and outrun the guy. In short order, Mr. Fishnet caught up to the slow-moving vehicle. With a polite “hello,” he ditched the chainsaw and jumped into the front passenger’s seat of the moving truck.

While Mr. Whippy called the police, Mr. Fishnet returned to the party. Mr. Whippy’s description of the young man, a 20-something drunk wearing only black fishnet stockings while holding a chainsaw, “made him reasonably easy to identify,” as police sergeant Colin Stewart put it. At the party, Mr. Fishnet copped to the crime and politely apologized. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. But at the police station, Sergeant Stewart decided “it was more of a disorderly behavior thing than a direct threat” to Mr. Whippy. So the unidentified young man was released with a pre-charge warning.

7The Goods Were Not As Described

Police in Birmingham, England issued a warning to a man who called the emergency line to report a prostitute who “made out that she was better looking than she actually was,” wishing to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act. In the UK, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 requires goods to be “as described, of satisfactory quality, and fit for purpose.”

The two consenting adults met in a hotel car park. The man wasn’t disputing that she was fit for purpose—he just thought she was ugly. So he withdrew from the deal. When he explained himself to the hooker, she took his car keys, ran, and then threw the keys back at him. So he called police and complained that the hooker had falsely advertised herself and was acting like “I owe her a living or something.”

According to Sgt. Jerome Moran at the Solihull police station, the woman had done nothing wrong (prostitution is legal in the UK, though solicitation isn’t). But the john could be arrested for soliciting sex and wasting police time, the latter crime punishable by a maximum of six months in jail. “It was unbelievable,” Sgt. Moran said. “He genuinely believed he had done nothing wrong and that the woman should have been investigated by police for misrepresentation.”

6The Naked Cannonball

Tom Carideo was driving near the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood when he spotted a naked man running in circles on the street. Carideo thought it was funny until the naked man started running toward his car. As Carideo described it, “He looks at my car and goes into a full-out sprint and jumps, landing ass-first on the right side of my windshield and shatters it.”

Carideo had some hockey sticks in the car, but fortunately, he didn’t have to use them. As he called police, the naked man danced away, bleeding from the shards of glass stuck in his butt. When officers arrived, Carideo pointed out the man, who had dove into a puddle on the street and was drinking the dirty water.

The suspect was later identified as Sam Schauer, 22, of Auburndale, Massachusetts. He repeatedly resisted arrest, so police tased him. They transported him to a nearby hospital for observation and to treat his bleeding butt. Police believe he was drunk or high on a hallucinogenic drug. Schauer’s family had no comment.

5The La-Z-Boy Lounge Chair DWI

Dennis LeRoy Anderson, in his early sixties, converted a La-Z-Boy lounge chair into a motorized vehicle complete with steering wheel, stereo, cup holders, and headlights. He even slapped on a power antenna and a “Hell Yeah It’s Fast” bumper sticker. The 8-horsepower Kohler lawnmower engine gave it a top speed of 30 kilometers (20 mi) per hour, just fast enough to make it a menace when Anderson drove it drunk through Minneapolis one August night.

After drinking at home and in a bar until his blood alcohol content was 0.29 (more than three times the legal driving limit in Minnesota), Anderson crashed his decked-out La-Z-Boy into a parked car. He failed a field sobriety test, and police discovered that his license had been revoked for an earlier DWI conviction.

Anderson pleaded guilty in court to driving while intoxicated. The sentence: six months and a fine of $2,000. But the jail time and $1,000 of the fine were stayed upon Anderson’s successful completion of two years of supervised probation on certain conditions. The La-Z-Boy lounge chair was impounded and sold at police auction.

4New Meaning To ‘Anal-Retentive’

The night was going great in the Northern Territory of Australia when a prank went horribly wrong for a 23-year-old man trying to be the life of the party. He “decided to place a firework between the cheeks of his bottom and light it,” reported Senior Sergeant Garry Smith. “What must have seemed to be a great idea at the time has backfired, resulting in the male receiving quite severe and very painful burns to his cheeks, back, and private bits.”

Police believe that alcohol may have played a role in this painful prank. The man took himself to the hospital before paramedics arrived, but his burns were so severe that he may have needed treatment at a specialist burns unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

To add to his troubles, the young partygoer was also expected to be fined $282 for setting off fireworks outside of the only legally approved day, which is July 1, or Territory Day when the Northern Territory became self-governing.

3Maybe The Fireman Was Hot

A volunteer fireman in Ohio shed his uniform one night in July 2007 for a blonde woman’s wig and a striped string bikini with two tan water balloons for breasts. The 46-year-old firefighter, Steven Cole, was arrested in his truck while driving out of Heritage Oak Park in Mason, Ohio. But the arrest had nothing to do with his tasteless outfit. Some parents in the area had complained that Cole was fondling himself, and we don’t think they were referring to his water balloon breasts.

With his blood alcohol content at 0.174 (over twice the legal driving limit in Ohio), Cole was charged with drunken driving, disorderly conduct, and public indecency. In his truck, police discovered an open bottle of beer and a gym bag with other women’s clothing, including long, silver go-go boots. The firefighter told police he was going to a gay bar in Dayton to perform as a woman in a contest with a $10,000 prize. “He is obviously humiliated and embarrassed by the entire situation,” said Cole’s attorney.

2Three Men, A Woman, And A Can Of Bear Mace

It all started when Christopher Hall, 31, got involved with a 34-year-old woman he met in a hacky sack circle in San Francisco. After a two-week whirlwind romance, the young lovers got engaged and moved into the woman’s house. But things quickly went south, the couple broke up, and with nowhere to go, Hall moved into a tree in a nearby park. When he tried to sleep in the tree, he got cold and went back to his ex-fiance’s house. She wasn’t home, so he curled up under her backyard bushes to wait.

But his ex-fiance returned with a new male friend, a former Marine, who quickly put Hall in a headlock when they got into a scuffle over the woman. The woman ran to a nearby house and told a male neighbor that Hall was going to kill her new boyfriend. The shirtless neighbor ended up spraying Hall in the face with bear mace. Hall left but not before hurling a rock at the door of his ex-fiance’s home.

Then the night got really bad for Hall. He was arrested on felony charges of assault and breaking and entering, which together could have resulted in a seven-year term in state prison. Fortunately for Hall, the jury didn’t believe his former fiance was credible, so he was only convicted of misdemeanor vandalism. As Hall’s lawyer said, “There was no doubt Mr. Hall had a terrible night, but this case was grossly overcharged.” He should have stayed in the tree.

1The Perfect Crime

Here’s a brainteaser for you. If you’re a man who wants to flash your crown jewels at a woman in public without getting arrested for indecent exposure, where would you do it?

An unidentified thin black man, approximately 178 centimeters (5’10”) tall and between 35 and 45 years old, has given us his answer: the bookstore at the Bucks County Association for the Blind in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, we’ll never know the answers to our other burning question: How many times had he done this before?

Nevertheless, it takes a lot to put yourself out there, but this pervert had the misfortune to proffer his privates to the only sighted woman in the place. She reported to police that the man quickly fled. We can only speculate why. Was it her look of horror, her unexpected chuckle, or her squeal of “Ooh, how small?”

Under Pennsylvania’s indecent exposure law, this may turn out to be the perfect crime. A flasher may not expose his private parts any place where he “knows or should know that this conduct is likely to offend, affront, or alarm.” So this man may argue that he didn’t think he’d be offending blind people, getting him off on a technicality. But it’s all hypothetical for now. Although the police conducted an immediate search, the suspect eluded capture and remains at large.