Bumbling Burglars and Dimwitted Dopers

All crooks are created dumb, with some clearly klutzier than others.

So concludes “The World’s Stupidest Criminals,” an Anglo-American paperback, published by Cader Books of New York and compiled by editors of Fortean Times, an international chronicle of record for all the wackiness that makes our lives bearable.

These 120 pages are devoted to the ungodly who couldn’t think straight, to real-world bumblers and bunglers, ditherers and dummkopfs, buffoons, bizarros and the walking witless. To the Swiss miss who passed out from the cold of a purloined frozen chicken stuffed in her bra; the hostage-taker who demanded to hear Kermit the Frog’s record played for 12 hours straight; the car thief who went job-hunting in a stolen vehicle--and left his resume under the seat.

Some anecdotes come with quotes that are eye-rollers.

A master pickpocket, arrested for attempting to dip the chief of Milan’s anti-pickpocket squad, bemoans: “When they hear of this in Naples, I will die of shame.”

“A do-it-yourself vasectomy”: A doctor’s description of the private parts of a Boston man who had stuffed a brace of stolen lobsters down his pants.

It is a book quick to sympathize with victims of crimes, but fast to decide lighter sides, while suggesting that not even a messy felony should get in the way of a good giggle.

* Watch the birdie, and the bad guy. A petty thief, well known to Brooklyn detectives, stole two security cameras from the lobby of a bank. The last pictures on the tape were of the man unscrewing the cameras from the wall.

* The patient Englishman. His note said: “I have a gun in my pocket and I’ll shoot it off unless you hand over the money.” At a drugstore, an assistant gave the note back because she thought it was an obscene suggestion. At a hardware store, a salesclerk said he couldn’t read English. And at a takeout restaurant, the cashier couldn’t make out the message without his glasses.

* Clean getaway. Burglars broke into an apartment in Niagara Falls and took absolutely nothing. Except the kitchen sink.

* Bad habits are hard to break. Two Florida teenagers were released on bail after being charged with stealing 25 cars. Minutes after leaving the court, they were picked up driving home in their 26th stolen car.

* Fore, duh. Robert Ventham took golf clubs as camouflage for a cannabis pickup on Gibraltar. He stuffed two kilos of dope into the bag, but was arrested the moment he crossed back into Spain. There are no golf courses on Gibraltar.

Between the chuckles in this little book lies a subtlety proving what bandits from Barabbas to Willie Sutton have known all along:

To blunder may be the worst crime of all.