Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site bbnccv.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!bbnccv!jlowry From: jlowry@bbnccv.UUCP (John Lowry) Newsgroups: net.bizarre Subject: Heavens to murgatroids ! Foiled again ! Message-ID: <60@bbnccv.UUCP> Date: Wed, 25-Sep-85 17:07:55 EDT Article-I.D.: bbnccv.60 Posted: Wed Sep 25 17:07:55 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 27-Sep-85 04:06:51 EDT Reply-To: jlowry@bbnccv.UUCP (John Lowry) Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA Lines: 138 From _The_Berkshire_Eagle_ 9/16/85, without permission. _Goofed-up_getaways_foil_crimes_ by Stephen Fay On the night of Nov. 24, 1974, a 26-year-old Lee man fleeing from the police facilitated his own capture by crashing into a tree. And though there's nothing so unusual about people fleeing from the police crashing into trees, most of them do so while in cars. This particular man had been on foot when he ran into the tree and knocked himself cock-eyed. Ignominious as his capture was, he at least has the consolation of knowing he is not alone. For Berkshire County appears to be something of a capital of goofed-up getaways. From the killer who telephoned the Pittsfield Fire Department (which records all calls) and pounded on the doors of sleeping neighbors asking directions to the home of his victim to the bank robbers who got caught when they got snarled in North Adams's rush-hour traffic to the lady who robbed a liquor store and fled in a taxi, Berkshire County malefactors - homegrown as well as transplants - have much to learn in the getaway department. A little research into criminal activities in the Berkshires turns up a whole gang of crooks who blew their getaways. _Stuck_in_snowbank Take the case of the 40-year-old multimillionaire who was convicted of torching his Richmond summer home one snowy, cold morning in January 1983. Not only did he increase the insurance on his $200,000 house to $400,000 shortly before the fire, but while setting a blaze in the rear bedroom he managed to touch off the fire alarm, not once but twice. At getaway time, he did not get far. His car got stuck in a snowbank near his Woodlot Road home. Firefighters responding to the alarm saw him as they rushed to the fire scene. He was charged shortly after the event. The most quickly solved bank robbery in Pittsfield's history occurred Dec. 3, 1974. A 33-year-old city resident forced his way into the West Housatonic Street branch of City Savings Bank at 9:40, 20 minutes before the bank was to open. An alert teller observed two of her colleagues approaching the door and asked the robber if she could tell the approaching "customers" that the bank wasn't open yet. The teller went to the front door and, using a codeword that meant a robbery was in progress, sent her two co-workers dashing for a phone to call police. In the meantime, the robber had gathered up $9,600 and, discovering he hadn't thought of transportation, asked one of the tellers inside the bank for the loan of a car. When police arrived, shortly after the robber departed, the teller was able to provide an exact description of the vehicle. Meanwhile, two detectives investigating a burglary at Crystal Creamery a mile away, heard the description of the car and driver and, a minute later, watched in awe as the very same car went right by them. The bank robber still had the money bag in his hand when they nabbed him a few blocks later. It was only last January that a 25-year-old North Adams woman pointed a gun at the owner of the Liquor Mart at the Artery Arcade in North Adams and scooped $320 from the cash register, half of which she dropped on the ground while leaving the store. Then she used a taxi as a getaway car. The ower of the store took down the cab's number and police quickly found the driver, who knew nothing of what his passenger was up to. Twenty minutes after the robbery, the robber was arrested at her home. _Caught_in_traffic_ "You gotta know the territory," said the man in Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man." It is advice that would have spared a visitor from Waltham considerable grief on the afteroon of - when else? - April Fools' Day, 1982. The 32-year-old bandit stuck up the South Adams Savings Bank on Route 8 in Cheshire at about 4:30 p.m. With $635 in cash stuffed into bank bags and a .22-caliber pistol in his hand, the robber roared away in his black Ford Mustang. He made the big mistake of heading north, however. A half-hour later, he got snarled in a 5 p.m. rush-hour traffic jam on State Street in North Adams. The police closed in and he gave in. The Indiana Jones award goes to the 25-year-old North Adams man who broke into a woman's apartment in March 1983. The woman kicked him and ran shouting out the door. The attacker jumped out the window, perhaps forgetting he was on the second floor. He broke his left ankle, which was still in its cast during the trial three months later. Then there were the two men charged with the Feb. 13, 1979, killing of a Pittsfield man. The victim lived on Hungerford Street, a rather hard-to-find road off West Housatonic Street. At their trial, it bacame evident that the two defendants were themselves victims - of a profound lack of planning. It seems, first of all, that they did not know where Hungerford Street was. So one of them called the Pittsfield Fire Department to ask directions, unaware that his call, like all calls to the department, was recorded. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the two wandered around West Pittsfield, banging on the doors of sleepers, asking where Hungerford Street was. The fire dispatcher and several of the awakened neighbors were to testify at the trial. One of the men - the gunman - was found guilty of the killing, the other was let off. _Dropped_money_ That North Adams liquor store bandit who dropped half her take brings to mind the case of the unluck crook who didn't get what he ordered at the old Majestic Restaurant in Pittsfield. The case goes back to Jan. 22, 1974. An armed robber wearing a ski mask grabbed the cash box from behind the bar of a North Street eatery. But the gray metal box wasn't latched. It fell open and all the money fell on the floor behind the bar. The crook headed for the door, still hanging onto the empty money box, and took a blast of tear gas in the face from a little aerosol can brandished by the owner. Perhaps the most inept attempt to commit a crime was illustrated by one Adams man. The individual in question, age 23, tried to extort exactly $7,045 from A.H. Rice Co. of Pittsfield. The money demand, written on a piece of Howard Johnson's guest stationery, was accompanied by a bomb threat. The extortionist demanded that the sum be sent to his home on Burt Street in Adams. Cleverly, he thought, in order to throw authorities off, the extortionist said the people at that address knew nothing of the plot. "It reminds me," his lawyer, George B. Crane, told the judge, "of the old saw about the kidnapper sending the kid home with the ransom note." Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com