Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (38 page)

What makes the
urban legends about crime interesting is not so much the depictions of actual crimes themselves. The daily news gives you enough of that—muggings, assaults, thefts, burglary, murders, bombings, graft, scams, etc.—the whole gamut of criminal activity in rich detail. What the legends give us instead is some insight into the minds of the “perps,” as law-enforcement officers like to call crooks. We gain these insights from allegedly true reports of the ongoing battle of wits between criminals and their victims.

Take, for example, the story of a minor crime that Ann Landers published back in 1989 from a reader’s letter:

Although that episode may have been true, it echoes a much older theme in rural legendry. Likely the pie-protection gambit-that-failed—whether actual or mere hearsay—was based on someone’s memory of a story like this:

For an update on the theme of supposedly “foolproof” schemes to avoid theft see “The Unstealable Car” legend in this chapter.

Lists of tips to avoid theft often seem to echo legends. A
New York Times
article of May 19, 1992, had these examples, along with advice about home alarm systems, deadbolt locks, and the like:

The
Times
article opened with a capsule summary of “The Attempted Abduction” legend found below in this chapter, plus two other unverified “nightmare” scenarios, then added “Some of these stories may be true. It doesn’t really matter.” (The article did not mention another piece of anti-crime advice: “If you want to drive off a would-be mugger, just start picking your nose.” I do hope I’ll never have to try this one, though!)

Legends illustrating the workings of the criminal mind are usually based on the relatively minor bad guys. Notice in this chapter that except for one reference to an organized crime family the rest of the stories deal with people scheming to steal a few groceries, some car parts, a Christmas tree, luggage, or the like. Typically, too, in the legends the baddies are nearly always caught, often nabbed in the very act of stealing. These details, of course, are what make the legends believable as well as gratifying to the law-abiding folk who want justice to prevail.

Another theme in crime legends is that even the most innocent-seeming act by a trusted person may be an actual scam. Herrick Jeffers of Melbourne Village, Florida, sent me an example of this kind of story a few years ago:

You have to wonder why none of the ushers ever suggested that the man just stop at an ATM on the way home from church.

“Is nothing sacred to the scam artist?” I wondered when I read an article a few years ago in one of my hometown newspapers, the
Salt Lake Tribune
. The headline was “LDS Scriptures Are Hot Items for Shoplifters.” The term “LDS,” for you outsiders, refers to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the Mormons—and the scriptures alluded to are four volumes collectively referred to as “The Quads,” consisting of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, “all standard scriptures for Mormons—in a single uncondensed volume.”

According to the
Tribune
article, people were shoplifting these $100 leather-bound Quads, sometimes justifying their actions by saying that they were teaching religion courses and could not afford to purchase the set. Some thieves even had the nerve to return the book to a different LDS bookstore and ask to get it engraved for someone’s birthday. The article included this revealing passage:

Indeed! The way I heard it, the girlfriend of an LDS missionary had shoplifted the Quad as a consolation gift to accompany her “Dear John” letter to the absent lad. (Note to my friends at BYU: I
know
this is only a legend, except for the part about “Dear John” letters, which are a well-known fact of missionary life. At least so I’ve been told….)

“The Colander Copier Caper”

W
e don’t know if this qualifies to be included in our dumb crook series, but you would think by now that anyone over 12 would know the difference between a Xerox machine and a lie detector.

This is the scenario as it unfolded recently in the courtroom of Bucks County Court Judge Isaac Garb.

A small police department in the county took a man into custody on suspicion of a crime, and police asked the suspect if he was willing to take a lie detector test. The suspect agreed, and the police led him to a Xerox machine in which the police had already inserted a typewritten card that read, “He’s lying.” After seating the man next to the machine, the police placed a metal colander on his head and attached some wires to it. Then he was interrogated. Whenever the suspect gave an answer the police didn’t like, they pushed the copy button on the Xerox and (cunkaching) out would come the message, “He’s lying.”

Finally, the police got a full confession from the suspect, who obviously believed that he couldn’t beat the machine.

Judge Garb, of course, suppressed the confession because of the manner in which it was obtained, but he did get a good laugh out of it. “It’s the sort of comic relief you need around here once in awhile,” he says.

That police department will no doubt abandon its practice of using a Xerox machine to extract confessions. However, there’s always the Mr. Coffee machine.

M
ay 10, 1993

Dear Mr. Brunvand: I am pleased to report that I am alive and extant in continuing to strive to be a legend in my own time.

I can confirm the veracity of the colander polygraph (lie detector). It occurred in Warminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the police had arrested an individual suspected of a crime. When he denied his culpability, he was offered the opportunity of a polygraph examination. He accepted, but they did not have a lie detector machine. Not lacking in ingenuity, they then caused the legend “you lied” on a piece of Xerox paper and put it into the Xerox machine, unbeknownst to the accused. They then placed a colander on his head and attached it to the Xerox machine by cable and alligator clamps. They then asked him an incriminating question to which he responded in such a way as to exculpate himself. They then activated the machine and the paper came out with the legend “you lied.” When confronted with that, the accused confessed all.

The matter came before me in court on a motion to suppress the confession.

I hope the foregoing satisfies your curiosity and quiets the skeptics among us.

Very truly yours,
Isaac S. Garb

First is the earliest published account of this incident that I have found; it comes from a column by Clark DeLeon of the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
July 27, 1977. Judge Garb’s letter was sent from the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County, Seventh Judicial District, Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Well might the good judge feel like a legend in his own time, since this is one of the most-often-repeated stories from the world of law enforcement. In my 1993 book
The Baby Train,
I quote or summarize versions of “The Colander Copier Caper” from four individuals and from seven published sources dated from 1977 to 1992. Most accounts do not name Judge Garb specifically, and many of them claim that the incident happened in the town of Radnor in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The Chief of Police in Radnor Township denied the incident in a 1990 letter quoted in my earlier book. I regard this “caper” as a prank, well known to American policemen, which has made its way to a court of law at least once. For those wishing to pursue the story, here are five further references I have found to it: Chic magazine, June 1978; “A cop’s-eye view of ‘Barney Miller,’”
TV Guide,
March 21, 1981;
Glimpse: A brief look at things for members of the International Society for General Semantics,
no. 38 (1986); Paul Levine,
Night Vision,
1992; and
Michigan Law Review,
March 1995, p. 857, n. 59. In his 1983 book
Sez Who? Sez Me,
Mike Royko reprinted a column of 1978 in which he described a “bowl-like gadget they had taken off a lamp” used by police in Chicago as part of a faked electrocution of a disorderly prisoner. I have also heard of police wrapping the spiral cord of the squad car microphone around a suspect’s arm while questioning him; then they randomly key in the microphone, causing a red light to blink on the console, telling the suspect that these flashes indicate when he is lying. Most of the police officers who sent me these stories insisted that some of the people they have had to arrest were actually dumb enough to fall for such tricks; none of the writers claimed that they themselves had ever used them.

“A Friend of the Family”

A
n upwardly-mobile couple moved into an expensive suburb of a big eastern city next door to a quiet family who were rumored to have ties to the Mafia. One Sunday night, returning from a weekend away from home, the couple were shocked to find that their home had been burglarized. After assessing the damage, the couple told their neighbors what had happened, asking if they had observed anything suspicious over the weekend.

The neighbors, puzzlingly, told them just to go to bed for now and not to notify the police right away. They would make a few phone calls and see what could be done.

The couple woke up the next morning to find all of their missing property piled neatly on the front porch.

T
here is an international physics institute in Erice, Sicily, which holds regular summer schools for graduate students and young researchers. I was told this story by a fellow graduate student before attending a session this past summer.

A few years ago, according to the story, a student at the institute had his car stolen while attending. He told the director about it, and the director asked him to wait a day before calling the police. The next morning the car was parked outside the school, intact and freshly washed.

I mentioned this story to a few other students when I arrived at Erice, and three or four others had heard variations, one involving a purse instead of a car.

I heard the first version in Washington, D.C., in 1984 and subsequently received it from several other locations. The second is from Steven Carlip of Austin, Texas, who sent it to me in September 1986. The stolen-car version is also told in the United States, as well as various stories about Mafia members offering someone a free hit job in return for a favor. I referred to this story as “The Helpful Mafia Neighbor” in my book
The Mexican Pet;
in the Italian translation of the book the title was “I favori del vicino mafioso,” which seems to have an authentic gangland accent. However, the background of the story may be American gangster folklore rather than traditions about the Mafia. An older story tells of a distinguished foreign scholar visiting MIT many years ago who had some valuable equipment and an expensive overcoat stolen from his rental car. Since his host was on familiar terms with Al Capone, the stolen goods were promptly returned. A similar incident is reported in
The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
(1931); Steffens, a muckraking journalist, supposedly had his pocket picked in New York City and mentioned it to his acquaintance, the head of the police detective bureau. Two days later, everything stolen was returned.