Episode 3 Bizarre Crime

Britain's bobbies see some bizarre things.

I think they'll think twice about stealing an owl in future.

For this series, with the help of victims, cops and crooks,

-we've unearthed the UK's most audacious...

-Go faster!

-..deviant...

-The guy's completely naked in the chimney.

..and downright daft acts of criminality.

Stealing from a CCTV shop is not ironic, it's moronic.

These odd offences all prove one thing -

crime doesn't pay

and the police won't rest until they get their man.

We had him bang to rights.

So observe your right to remain silent as we sentence you

to 30 minutes of guilty pleasure in the weird world of Bizarre Crime.

# Crime don't pay, crime don't pay!

# X and Y were the best of friends

# They stuck together round the awkward bends

# Since the killing Y tries to find

# A way to pay the guilty back in time

# Crime don't pay, crime don't pay!

Coming up: a law-breaking Lothario cons his way into not one

but three women's hearts...

I'd put my heart on the line, my soul on the line,

just to find out that nothing was real.

..and one man's potty and peculiar plan to dodge a speeding fine

leaves police utterly perplexed.

You almost question your own judgement,

that somebody would do something so stupid.

For our first case

we're heading to a picture-perfect Lincolnshire village,

a calm countryside oasis full of tea shops and neatly trimmed lawns.

It's also the scene of

one of Britain's most bizarre bank robberies.

-It was like an explosion.

-Total destruction.

-Why would we be targeted?

It was bizarre.

Welcome to Woodhall Spa.

It's a quiet, elegant little parish

and the residents like to keep it that way.

It's a very quaint, charming village.

Hi, Mike.

Here we have tea rooms, restaurants, quite a few curiosity shops.

This is the smallest shoe shop in Britain.

It's only three feet wide at one end.

If we were in a TV show, I suppose it would be Heartbeat.

Somewhere between Emmerdale and The Archers, I would suspect.

But one morning, in March 2010, shockwaves were sent through

this rural haven when a gang of armed robbers rolled into town.

But they didn't come armed with the usual swag bag or shotgun.

Bizarrely, these guys were wielding a mechanical digger.

In the dead of night, the crims rumbled up the high street

in the stolen digger,

using it to smash into the bank and rip the ATM from the wall.

-It looked like there'd been an explosion.

-Absolute destruction.

We're used to a hole in the wall, but not that big!

The crooks abandoned the monster machine before making off with

the cash dispenser and its contents - a tidy 33 grand.

Detective Sergeant Richard West of Lincolnshire Police

began the investigation.

A number of local residents did in fact witness

some or all of the offence.

It was obviously dark, the offenders were wearing balaclavas or masks.

It was really impossible to identify any of our offenders.

Although there was a gargantuan piece of evidence in the shape

of the digger ditched at the scene, police couldn't find prints,

fibres, hairs or anything else that might link a suspect to the crime.

It was quite apparent to the police

that this would in fact be a challenging investigation.

Detective Sergeant West had only one other lead.

# Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger... #

A few days before the bank blitz, another different digger

had been stolen from the farm of Will Nelstrop.

I got a phone call from a neighbour who said,

"Well, have you had a forklift stolen in the night?"

Sure enough, it was gone.

What the thieves didn't know

was that Farmer Nelstrop had taken out a lifting rod for repairs.

Unfortunately for the thieves, they got going up the road

and realised the forklift wasn't doing what it should do.

This old timer just couldn't get it up.

# And I gotta take all they bad ass to showbiz... #

Detective West suspected Farmer Nelstrop's digger

may have been the first one to catch the gang's eye.

The forklift was abandoned over here, facing the pole here,

and the forks were in the ground

somewhere in the area of this long grass here.

Convinced there was a link between Farmer Nelstrop's digger

and the one used to smash and grab the ATM,

police scoured the spot where this first stolen vehicle was dumped, and found a clue.

The location of the cigarette butt was wholly consistent with

someone getting out the cab and discarding it.

Forensic analysis showed the fag butt belonged to Lee Boydell,

a man with convictions for 193 previous offences.

At that point we had Boydell's DNA on a cigarette end in a field.

It was a significant breakthrough in the investigation

but it was far from conclusive and complete evidence.

Police might have had a clue linking Boydell to one stolen digger,

but they had nothing to connect him to the digger left at the bank or the robbery itself.

It looked like the thieves would be living it up with their loot.

But two weeks later, Lincolnshire Police made a breakthrough.

By sheer chance, someone taking photos

to oppose a planning application on a disused poultry farm

found a truck with the sorry looking remains of an ATM.

# Go to a cash machine

# To get a ticket here... #

The ATM was essentially completely wrecked.

There was a reel of receipts bearing the HSBC logo

which quickly identified the ATM taken from the bank in Woodhall.

In this old chicken farm, Detective West and his team

found a smoking gun, or should that be a smoking man?

The DNA profile was in fact recovered from a cigarette end

which once again was the DNA of Lee Boydell.

A decision was taken at that point that he should be arrested

and interviewed about the matter.

Lee Boydell was in fact in prison serving a separate, unconnected sentence.

Yes, unbelievably, just five days after the ATM theft,

Boydell had been locked up for another offence.

So what exactly happens when the bloke you want to nick

is already in the nick?

We took him out of prison, interviewed him, took him back to prison, went to CPS

who eventually agreed that we had a case to charge him,

and he was arrested on his release from prison and charged,

and went straight back to prison.

The short sentence he'd just served was merely an appetiser

for the main course of porridge he was now facing.

Thanks to the diligence of Lincolnshire Police,

Lee Boydell was sentenced to five years for his fag-fuelled felony.

I can only hope this serves as a lesson to both Boydell

and to others that choose to engage in this type of crime.

As for the residents of Woodhall Spa,

their ATM is happily churning out cash

to keep the tea shops and shoe shops in business.

A forklift truck is undoubtedly an odd accessory for a heist,

but is by no means the most bizarre thing that robbers have used in raids.

# I'm sticking with you...

Take this confused crook, for example.

He seems to think a stick-up should actually involve... well, a stick!

# Anything that you might do...

And it can't be easy wielding wood with carrier bags on your feet...

# I'm gonna do too...

..as well as contending with the world's most surreal stand-off.

# Anything that you might do

# I'm gonna do too. #

Remember, it's not the size of your stick but how you use it.

And if you think a six-foot stick is strange,

wait until you witness the oddities in this week's Criminal Countdown,

which presents the weird weapons used by robbers around the world.

Do not adjust your sets, this is indeed a man trying to rob a restaurant with a remote control.

One foolish felon pretended it was a gun as he attempted to hold up

-a Chinese takeaway in Stirling...

-Don't shoot.

..maybe hoping that hitting the pause button might stop staff in their tracks.

The plot was plain prawn crackers

and workers refused to hand over so much as a bean sprout.

And on the subject of food,

what do a courgette, a can of tuna and a Twiglet have in common?

No, they're not ingredients for a surreal episode of Ready Steady Cook.

Tickle our taste buds.

They've all been brandished in raids on a booze store, a betting shop and a bank.

# Get yourself an egg and beat it...

And our list of culinary crooks wouldn't be complete

without the American outlaw who used a banana

to hold up an internet cafe in Colorado, and then ate the evidence before police arrived.

This guy's bananas.

But it's not just the pantry that robbers raid

in their search for fake firearms.

In Glasgow in 2007, a hopeless heister went from the bathroom to the bookies

with a bog roll up his sleeve, claiming it was a gun.

Unconvinced, staff overpowered the not-so-canny crim,

but not before he managed to bite the boss!

More bizarre still was Chicago's swine flu bandit,

who pulled off a staggering nine heists.

His criminal cry wasn't, "Give me the money or I'll shoot,"

but, "Give me the money or I'll sneeze,"

as he threatened to expose staff to the nasty H1N1 virus.

# I got her disease...

And if you can't rely on the power of the cough,

how about the power of the mind?

One Russian woman used her hypnotic abilities to rake in more than

2.6 million roubles - that's nearly £60,000...

# Sometimes your words just hypnotise me...

..after she mesmerised a bank teller into handing over the dosh.

But the number one spot in this week's Criminal Countdown

has to go to the randy raider who, in 2007,

caused a buzz in a betting office after he terrorised staff with his girlfriend's vibrator.

Talk about perverting the cause of justice.

-# I'm not your toy...

-Oooh, you bad boy.

Our next case tonight involves police across the UK,

who were on the hunt for a callous conman and shameless love rat

who not only left a trail of broken laws throughout the country,

but also broken hearts.

I'd put my heart on the line, my soul on the line,

just to find out that nothing was real.

# Got me looking so crazy in love...

Paula Rushton is a nurse from Cardiff.

One evening in September 2007, her life was transformed

when she bought tickets to Disneyworld on eBay.

I put in a question to the seller and it just sort of went from there.

I chatted for an hour to him. What a lovely bloke.

The seller was Belfast-based John Cope.

They were both separated with children

and became very close, very quickly.

# I told her you are the love of my life...

Over the next week they spent hours chatting on the phone

and eventually arranged to meet, but when the big day came

the excitement of a first date soon turned sour when John dropped a bombshell.

His brother, he told her, had taken an overdose.

I just really wanted to put my arms around him

and give him a really big hug and say, "It's going to be all right".

What Paula didn't know

was that John's brother hadn't attempted suicide.

Cope was in fact a serial fraudster, and an arch manipulator

who was spinning Paula this horrifying yarn to win her trust.

For anybody, any common person, that would trigger sympathy,

empathy and a wish to help. That's exactly what he plays on.

Although she felt for Cope, Paula couldn't cancel the family holiday,

but while she was away the pair were in constant contact and Cope decided

to tug harder on her heartstrings, telling her his brother had died.

And although I was thousands of miles away,

I still felt this need to try and help him in anything I could.

When she landed back in the UK, Cope was waiting for her at the airport.

And I gave him that big hug that I'd wanted to give him all week.

Over the coming months, the romance blossomed

and Paula felt she had found her ideal man.

He was always wanting to treat me.

# Just the way you are...

He was fabulous. I thought, "What a gentleman."

At the start of their relationship, he would seem to be very charming

and with promises, there's dreams.

And the next dream Cope sold Paula was a family Christmas

with all the trimmings.

I had money for the children's presents,

I had the biggest Christmas tree, I had somebody who's telling me

he loved me and I was going to have such a fantastic Christmas.

All they had to do was pick John up from the airport.

Families were reunited in the airport,

I was waiting for my turn, I was waiting for him to come through

and waited and waited and waited.

A heartbroken Paula got home to an e-mail from an apologetic Cope,

explaining that his ex-wife in Belfast had asked him

to spend Christmas with his kids in Northern Ireland.

"I'm torn between you and I'm torn between my children."

The shocking truth, however, was that John was still happily married to the woman in Belfast

and he'd been planning all along to spend Christmas with her and their two children.

# Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?...

Cope tried to make amends by turning up at New Year with Champagne,

but just because it was a new year it didn't mean Cope wasn't soon up to his old tricks.

He'd gone up to Birmingham to visit his family

and they'd gone to the graveside of his recently deceased brother,

and at the graveside he had a breakdown.

When it comes to a point where he feels as if there's pressure,

he may present with manipulative tactics which are suggestive of emotional crisis,

and those are either to escape the relationship, or to give himself space.

Through a fictional secretary called Claire Thompson,

who was actually Cope himself,

Paula was told her boyfriend was out of contact until further notice.

That same secretary then began requesting money for Cope.

That totalled over £4,000.

After a miraculous recovery, Cope returned.

Got himself on his feet. Oh, he came round.

He promised Paula and her kids a dream holiday

but days before they were due to jet off, Cope sent Paula an e-mail

saying he was trying again with his wife, and disappeared for good.

And that's when the police came knocking.

He was wanted for fraud against a company in Ireland.

It was very upsetting

and of course, the questions that it left in my mind needed answering.

A devastated Paula looked into John's past

and each new discovery was a hammer blow.

It was as if somebody had literally pulled the rug from underneath you.

She found spyware installed on her computer.

Every keystroke, every e-mail logged and a report sent.

There was no holiday, no secretary, no dead brother.

It was all lies.

But the most shocking revelation was yet to come.

When Paula tracked down John's brother,

she discovered that the man of her dreams was married.

Not just to one woman, but two!

It was a good job I was sat down at the time, or I'd have fallen down.

In 1996, the philandering felon married a woman in Luton.

Nine years later, without divorcing, he married a woman in Ireland.

By 2007, he had started an affair with Paula in Cardiff.

As well as juggling wives and girlfriends, Cope was evading police

in England, Ireland and Wales on multiple fraud charges.

# All you ever told me are lies...

This stuff happens in newspapers and magazines,

this stuff happens on television to other people.

I'm far too ordinary for this to happen in my life,

but it was happening and it was very hard to cope with.

Paula took the brave step of forming an alliance with his wives.

# Shut up, just shut up, shut up...

His wife in Belfast found hidden papers that showed

he was still married and the police were called in.

The case of John Cope was reported to me by his wife.

She came across a divorce petition from a previous wife

from Luton Crown Court.

From there we investigated further and discovered that he indeed was married to a previous lady.

# Lies, you're living in a fantasy...

As well as being wanted for fraud, Cope was now facing bigamy charges.

Tracing John Cope was difficult. Through other colleagues he was located in the Birmingham area,

arrested, brought back to Northern Ireland,

interviewed about other matters and this matter and charged to court.

Once there, all the women in Cope's life turned up to see him sentenced.

# Sisters are doing it for themselves...

And we all sat on the front row, shoulder to shoulder.

His face went ashen to see who was there and who was side by side.

He must have known at that point that his world was about to collapse.

Cope got 18 months for the various fraud offences

and a further five for bigamy.

John Cope was a guy who habitually told lies,

lived on the edge of the law, lived on his wits,

appeared to believe he could be one step ahead of the law at all times,

but on this occasion the law caught up with him and he got his just rewards.

Despite this odd and horrifying experience, Paula hasn't given up hope of finding Mr Right.

If a relationship came along, I wouldn't say no

on the basis that I'd previously had a relationship with John Cope.

He hasn't put me off men for life.

Time for more clips featuring what looks like clumsy crooks in action.

This, taken from the net, seems to show a feller robbing a gun shop.

DOG BARKS

Looks like he's failed to spot the owner's secret weapon -

man's best friend at his very best.

At least that bloke kept a grip on the gun.

# Drop it like it's hot Drop it like it's hot...

Here's a YouTube gem, featuring what appears to be

a burglar with a bad case of butter fingers.

Looks like a very slippery character.

For Bizarre Crime, we've turned the spotlight on the cops,

asking serving and retired officers from across the country to recount

the funniest and freakiest things they've encountered.

What you're about to hear might sound far fetched,

but it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Welcome to Bizarre Crime's Police Confessional.

Exhibit G...

Dead Fred.

There used to be a gentleman called Fred who used to have a good

drink and ring the police feigning a burglary or another crime and

whenever you got there Fred would always be pretending to be dead.

We always had to respond, just in case.

On this occasion we were sent to Fred's.

As usual, his front door was open and when myself and the new recruit that was a bit of a clever dick,

and he wouldn't listen to any advice, walked in,

there was Fred laying on his living room carpet, seemingly not breathing.

The new recruit pushed past me and said, "Leave this to me."

Dropped to one knee and started to give Fred mouth to mouth resuscitation.

I knew I could have intervened... I didn't.

After a few seconds Fred couldn't hold his breath any longer and he burst into laughter and so did I.

It was very unprofessional but we've all got to learn.

For our final case we're heading to Manchester for a story

that's as baffling as it is bizarre.

It just stood out as being wrong.

It involves road signs that have appeared to have sprouted legs,

an expert in resurrecting the dead...

I was somewhat intrigued.

..and an understandably confused cop.

You question your own judgement, that somebody would do something so stupid.

The curious case began one evening in 2005

when this shadowy figure in a car was driving home from work.

He's asked to remain anonymous,

so for the purpose of this film, let's call him Lewis.

It was a journey like any other until Lewis was flashed.

But a few days later, rather than receiving the one speeding fine he was dreading,

Lewis was surprised to have two demands drop on his doormat.

After I received the two tickets, I was alarmed and quite shocked.

According to the police, 'Lewis' had exceeded a 30 mile per hour

speed limit on Princess Parkway, just south of Manchester,

and again on Albert Royds Street way over on the other side of the city.

But 'Lewis' was adamant though, on each occasion he'd been driving in a 40 zone.

Determined to prove his innocence he set about snapping some photographic evidence.

He sent the photographs off to Manchester Central Ticketing office

along with a letter contesting the fines.

When I sent the letters in I was hoping that the alleged speeding incidents would have been dropped.

The police received the letters and investigated.

Sure enough, the fine in the first street had been issued in error.

The second ticket, however, was sound.

'Lewis' had been speeding in a 30 zone and yet

bang in the middle of this 30 zone was a 40 mile an hour sign.

So how did it get there?

Staff at the Central Ticket Office were immediately suspicious.

There was something about the photographs which just didn't look right.

The sign wasn't in the right spot for the location and to me

it just stood out as being wrong.

The matter was passed to Sergeant Mark Beales, who started to suspect

that 'Lewis' was trying to pull a fast one.

It was like playing poker and he was hoping that we wouldn't be having a

look at his hand which unfortunately for him is what we did.

It very quickly became apparent that both the 40 mph signs

pictured were one and the same.

It begged the question... he's never moved the sign?

Yes, that's right.

Sgt Beales was convinced that 'Lewis'

had taken a few snaps of the 40 mph sign at the scene at the first fine,

before scaling a 14 foot pole and dismounting it.

He suspected that 'Lewis'

had then driven 25 miles to Albert Royds Street where he'd

attached the sign to a lamp post and taken a few more snaps.

Suddenly 'Lewis' was looking at a much more serious offence...

perverting the course of justice.

It's an offence for which you can quite simply

and quite easily end up with a custodial sentence.

Shocked...just couldn't believe it.

If I wasn't experiencing it all myself I would have thought it was a joke.

I was adamant I was innocent.

With 'Lewis' protesting his innocence it was down to Sgt Beales

to prove the signs were one and the same which is where this bizarre tale

takes an even more peculiar twist...

when police called in this man.

I reconstruct faces from bodies which have been

found in ditches or tombs.

Richard Neave is best known for his work modelling

the face of Lindow Man whose preserved remains lay

undiscovered in a peat bog for nearly two thousand years

before he was dug up and restored to his former glory.

But instead of studying faces of the dead, Sgt Beales had

asked Richard to scrutinise a couple of speed signs.

They're quite sophisticated things,

they're on the side of the road and naturally

they get damaged a little bit. And so by looking at these little features,

you can get a pretty good idea of individual characteristics.

Richard Neave carefully analysed the images side by side

and spotted significant similarities between the two.

There was, just at the bottom end of the 4, quite a big mark.

It's this kind of thing that one's picking up on.

There really wasn't much doubt that they were the same on both sites.

With expert proof that the signs were one and the same,

the police charged 'Lewis' with perverting the course of justice.

I felt like I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me, basically.

It was just so surreal, I couldn't believe it was happening.

I did not believe I had done anything wrong.

Despite the mounting evidence, 'Lewis'

insisted he was innocent right up until the first day of the trial when he made a dramatic U-turn.

I got told that I could be looking at six to nine months in prison,

you know, it would have affected my family, I would have lost my home.

It was mortgaged, so obviously I could not be working.

Therefore I pleaded guilty under duress for those reasons.

In court, 'Lewis' was given a punishment

almost as odd as the crime...

an intermittent jail sentence of 56 days which would mean that

he'd be locked up, but only at the weekend.

Every Friday for the following six months 'Lewis' would wave goodbye

to his family before checking into a secure unit where he was held

until Sunday and then released ready for work on Monday morning.

In the cold light of day and on reflection you think to yourself,

"How on Earth could he have ever expected to get away with it?"

To even think we wouldn't spot it is astonishing really.

To this day, 'Lewis' denies the offence

but there are no doubts in Sgt Beales' mind.

The fact is, the evidence was overwhelming he wasn't truthful,

and he went to prison.

Next time on Bizarre Crime, an odd airport terror alert sparked

-not by bombshells but eggshells.

-I thought, "What's this?"

Officers are used to dealing with terrorism... the last thing we expect is someone trying to do this.

And police are baffled by a bogus blueblood whose true identity

remained a mystery even to his own family.

We asked our mum, "Was Dad ever a Lord?"

I went, "Yeah, your dad's no more a Lord than I'm Queen Elizabeth."

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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