I love those “heist” movies where a criminal mastermind assembles a team of experts to pull off a brilliant caper (generally for a noble and ultimately legal cause). But it is somewhat reassuring to hear about what happens when a really dumb criminal gets caught attempting a crime so idiotic, you shake your head in wonder.
Take Zack Lee Smith, a 20-year-old from Sioux City. Who knows what he had in mind when he decided to lure his ex-girlfriend to his apartment by posing as his father, emailing her that he (Zack) had committed suicide and she needed to pick up her stuff? Was it some desperate plan to win her back? Was he hoping she would be so relieved to see him alive that she would instantly forgive him for tricking her and whatever other offenses she dumped him for in the first place?
Regardless, his 18-year-old ex believed the bogus email and showed up at Zack’s apartment along with her 15-year-old friend. Needless to say, when they saw him, the girls were surprised to discover that reports of Zack’s death were greatly exaggerated. Having sprung the trap in his masterplan, Zack locked them in, threatening them with a BB gun designed to look like a real gun. So there he was, holding two frightened teenage girls hostage in his apartment with a toy pistol. What could go wrong?
It turns out, the younger girl’s brother knew about the meeting, thought it sounded suspicious and called the cops. When the authorities arrived, Zack released the girls and, thinking fast, ducked into the bathroom to hide. Having failed to win back his former girlfriend by pretending to be dead, Zack had no more luck pretending to be invisible. The police found him cowering by the commode with his BB gun. Lucky for him, they noticed the gun was fake and declined to shoot him and ironically add an element of authenticity to the claim that he was, in fact, deceased after all.
Mr. Smith was charged with two felony counts of false imprisonment (as opposed to “true” imprisonment?). He was booked into the Woodbury County jail and remarkably released the same day on a bond of $7,500. Maybe the judge figured Smith was just too dumb to get into any more trouble.
In a more sinister case in Pensacola, Fla., a knife-wielding creep attempted to kidnap an 11-year-old girl waiting for the school bus who happened to be playing with a large quantity of homemade blue slime, a thick, sticky, gross-looking semi-liquid all children love. When the creep grabbed her, she punched him, kicked him and before she escaped, covered him in the blue slime, made from water, food coloring, borax and glue. This made it easy for the police to identify him and for the charges to stick to him like, well, like glue.
And so, to paraphrase the 70’s TV detective, Tony Baretta, if you can’t do the slime, don’t do the crime.
Note: faking your death won’t win back your ex-girlfriend
May 27, 2021