Episode 7 Bizarre Crime

Britain's bobbies see bizarre things in the line of duty.

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

And 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. It's 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 Crime don't pay. #

Coming up, a bizarre criminal obsession

terrorises a seaside town.

It was an extremely weird thing to do,

to go out and basically

bring the whole of Bournemouth to a standstill.

And possibly the world's stupidest crime is caught on camera.

How stupid can one be?

There's cameras absolutely everywhere! Idiots!

But for our first case we're heading to Nottingham.

Not only the stomping ground of Robin Hood...

# Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen. #

..but also home to another not-so-famous modern day outlaw,

who's not so much Robin Hood...

-Nottingham aka Shottingham.

-..as robbing the hood.

In 2009 Daniel Ryan committed the perfect burglary

until that is, he followed it up with a bizarre bird-brain blunder

all because of his love of chips.

It was the most ridiculous thing I've done in my life.

The night of fast food folly began in the usual style for Dan...

..smoking weed at his mate's flat

and necking his own unique brand of cocktail.

Drinking vodka and Lambrini together

and just neck it back.

I was steaming.

The drink quickly dried up so Daniel and his band of boozing buddies

set out for the local offie, but there was one small problem,

they were all skint.

We went to the offie, the off licence,

to get some tick on drink, but he wouldn't let us.

With his credit crunched, Daniel thought about calling time

on the evening, but then decided he wasn't going to let

a lack of lolly halt his night of fun.

I'm not going to bed until I've had another drink.

And that was to be his undoing.

Alcohol can affect people in many different ways.

It can release the inner party animal

or put us in a romantic mood.

But unfortunately, in Daniel's case,

booze unleashes his inner burglar.

I've done loads of stuff since I've been drunk.

Drunk and desperate for cash, Daniel went on the prowl

and soon found the perfect easy target.

He spotted a house with the back door unlocked

and while the owners were inside, Daniel crept into the kitchen

and helped himself to a mobile phone,

a watch and the princely sum of £12 in cash.

And then...

Went to the chip shop and bought some chips.

Can I have a big bag of chips, please, mate?

I get hungry when I'm drunk like everybody else does

when they're drunk, get hungry.

So do you like gravy with your chips, Dan?

No, just chips.

-Curry sauce?

-No, just chips.

Chips and cheese?

-HE LAUGHS:

-Just chips!

Just chips! Chips are filling man!

And it was while chowing down on his chips

that Daniel embarked on a course of action

that earned him the title of Bizarre Crime's most clueless crim.

Sorry I can't be here to accept this trophy.

Remembering that he left the back door of the house he'd robbed open,

Daniel decided to return to the scene of the crime

and cover his tracks.

But he wasn't going anywhere without his chips.

But there was a surprise in store for Daniel's second visit,

the family dog.

Daniel and dogs have history.

He'd once been savaged by a police dog while making his escape

from a previous crime

and he didn't much fancy a matching set of scars.

When I heard the dog barking I thought, "Shit!"

Petrified by the pooch, Daniel bolted.

Chips went everywhere.

Not long after, the police arrived.

They were initially concerned about catching the crook.

Ryan had actually committed the perfect burglary

and left the scene without leaving any forensics and no witnesses.

But then they discovered the trail of tatties.

Officers saw scattered chips on the patio.

They also saw a chip fork.

This item was sent off for forensic analysis.

If you don't know how DNA testing works,

meet someone who does.

DNA is a molecule that essentially makes us what we are. DANIEL LAUGHS

DNA is contained in every single cell

and we're shedding cells all the time.

Any item you've touched, such as a chip fork,

that will contain your DNA.

The police forensics team swab Daniel's fork for a sample

before singling out the unique parts of his DNA molecule

and comparing that to samples on the national database.

Tests were done which came back to a person called Daniel Ryan.

Yes, Daniel and Nottingham Police were already acquainted.

It turns out Daniel has a habit of turning burglaries into buffets.

I've done another burglary

and left my can of beer on the window sill.

HE GRUNTS A LAUGH

Daniel may have left DNA on a lager can at a previous crime scene

and on the chip fork at his new burglary,

but that didn't mean the police had him bang to rights

Forensic evidence alone in this particular case,

saliva on a fork, wouldn't be enough to convict Ryan so we needed more.

Police brought Daniel in for questioning.

Ryan had a number of options. One would be to go, "No comment",

the other would be to deny the offence.

He knew the system well. To my surprise, he confessed.

I admitted it all.

It was clear to us he wanted to clear his conscience.

When the copper said it was an old couple I just didn't like it.

I thought I'd admit it, get it out the way. Do my punishment.

Without Ryan's account,

it would've been very unlikely that he would've been convicted.

So how much did that bag of chips actually cost him?

Two and a half year.

Nottinghamshire Police treat burglaries very seriously.

He's since been released

and fortunately for us we've not heard anything from him.

so hopefully he's turned over a new leaf.

A dose of life behind bars was a real wake-up call for Daniel

and it seems he's learned his lesson.

I feel horrible about everything I've done in the past.

Trying to get a job just for obviously my son and his mum

cos that's all I want,

I want a family with them two, that's it, no-one else.

She's the love of my life... Shit, what have I just said?

Having served his time and finally seen the error of his ways,

Daniel's determined to stay on the straight and narrow, swapping Lambrini for bambini

and looking forward to life as a doting dad.

A bag of chips might seem like the most bizarre thing

you could possibly drop at the scene of a crime,

but it's small fry compared to the other curious calling cards

that've led to the capture of crooks across the world.

One incompetent crim left a line of cornflakes behind

when she made a mad dash from the florist she'd robbed

in East Sussex in 2007.

The tasty trail led cops straight to her hotel room

where the "cereal" offender was hiding out

with a stash of cash from three other robberies.

You'll be swapping cornflakes for porridge!

It wasn't food, but a phone that did for one hopeless housebreaker.

This dim crim dropped his mobile at a home he'd raided.

Complete with a screensaver which was,

conveniently enough, a mugshot of himself.

And in 2002 a bumbling burglar was collared by his own dog...

-WOOF!

-..when he abandoned his pet pooch at the house he'd robbed.

All police had to do was slip a lead on poor Roxy, take him walkies

and the dirty mongrel led the boys in blue straight home to his master.

Down, boy!

As stupendously stupid as it is surreal, is the case of the clueless crook

who left his own name scrawled across the wall

after a drunken raid on a campsite for underprivileged kids in 2007.

More bizarre still are the body parts left behind.

A raider in Warrington fled not just empty-handed,

but also missing a finger

after a mishap with an anvil grinder he was using

to unsuccessfully crank open a supermarket ATM.

Police to checkout, please. Police to checkout.

And after attempting to nab two grand from a shopkeeper

one heister hobbled off at speed leaving the store owner

not only still in possession of his takings,

but also clutching the would-be thief's prosthetic limb.

I told him to hop it!

But sitting not so pretty at the top of this week's Criminal Countdown

are the foolish felons who managed to leave THEMSELVES at the scene of the crime.

One morning in 2010 a would-be robber

was found half-in and half-out of a bathroom window in East London.

BOTH SCREAM

The felon had been trapped for six hours

until he was freed by firefighters

-and handed over to the police.

-I've come unstuck!

Believe it or not he's not the dumbest dangling delinquent of them all.

That accolade goes to the Cleveland crook

who slipped while scaling the fence of a scrapyard he'd robbed in 2011.

Swinging by his shoelaces, his head hovering above the ground,

the dozy dangler had no choice...

-I've got no choice!

-..but to dial 999

Er... Hello, I'd like to report a robbery.

SWITCHBOARD: Is the intruder still at the property?

Er, I still am.

In Bizarre Crime, we're treating you

to some of the most calamitous criminal acts caught on CCTV

and first up...

-50 dollar!

-What?

-50 dollar!

Possibly the world's weirdest hold-up.

-Do it!

-What?

-50 dollar!

-Whoa, hello...

Yes, this man's attempting to rob a cashier using a palm frond.

He's also adopted that sophisticated disguise known in criminal circles

as pulling your T-shirt over your face!

-50 dollar.

-What?

-50 dollar.

-Sorry, how much would you like to steal?

-Hey!

-50 dollar.

-Sorry, I didn't quite catch that.

-50 dollar.

-Whoa, hello...

He's seen off with a weapon you'd naturally adopt

to take on a man brandishing a tree.

Yes, a stool!

Maybe this bloke's a lion tamer in his spare time.

Go, go, go, go, go!

LAID-BACK CONTINENTAL MUSIC

For our next case we're heading to Bournemouth

where the sort of weather you'd expect

at the great British seaside

was weirdly responsible for one man becoming caught in the grip

of a criminal obsession that brought terror to the town.

Nobody knew who it was or why it was being done.

The damage that he'd caused could've caused a death.

MENACING MUSIC AND SCREAMS

The seaside - it's where most of us go for our holidays,

but if you live at the seaside you still have to go to work,

like Nick Bolger here.

One morning in 2003, his daily commute

left him feeling more than a little deflated.

I left for work about 6:20 in the morning

and I looked over at my neighbour's car

and I thought his tyres looked a bit flat.

I didn't think any more about it.

By the time I got to work, I noticed all my tyres were flat.

I phoned my wife and she had the same thing.

A crazed slasher had struck

attacking over 100 tyres in the suburb of Boscombe.

Tyre technician Paul Spicer was one of the first on the scene

after the night of carnage.

I got a call at half past six

then within 15 minutes I got another call - same thing in the same area.

Within the hour, the phone was going off the hook.

It just went on through the day.

At first, the police suspected overzealous pranksters

and looked to the usual suspects.

Was it a few groups of lads

going round, maybe drunk, after a good night out

or a prankster that was going through, just on a one-off occasion?

But this was not an isolated night of attacks.

This was just the start.

Within one to two days,

50, 60 or maybe 70 vehicles a night were being attacked.

To commit this number of offences

over this short space of time was incredible.

We had various theories as to who was committing these crimes.

We did think about environmentalists.

Is this an individual that had a grudge against cars generally?

We couldn't rule out the fact that,

is there a tyre company that was struggling with business?

That's a bit silly, cos you couldn't pin a card

to a tyre that you'll let down.

Even if you did let all the tyres down, there's no guarantee they'll phone you.

Over the next four nights, no tyre felt safe.

The attacks continued claiming more victims in and around Bournemouth.

It got to the stage whereby we had staff just purely taking calls

from members of the public wanting to report their tyres had been damaged.

Five days in, the body count had risen to a shocking 500 tyres.

The psycho slasher was prowling the streets for hours every night

possessed by an obsession to inflict as much tyre torture as possible.

The attacks were skidding out of control.

The chaos that it caused to members of the public was unbelievable.

Because the hole was so tiny,

it wasn't immediately apparent the damage that'd been caused.

We had people stranded on motorways.

We're not just talking about one tyre you could then change using a spare,

you're talking about two, three maybe, or even all four tyres.

This person had to be caught cos the damage he'd caused

could have caused a death or a very serious accident.

But at this point in the investigation

the police had little to go on.

We had no suspects, we had no motives.

No way of knowing who this person was, no leads whatsoever.

Faced with an escalating number of victims,

the police launched an appeal.

No-one came forward to say they'd witnessed

the offender committing this criminal damage.

Police didn't have any more success in their search

for forensic evidence.

From the 700 incidents that were reported,

not a single fingerprint was recovered from the scene.

The frenzied attacks continued and in ten days of tyre terror,

there had been a staggering 700 attacks

with 2,000 victims fatally slashed.

And then suddenly, the attacks stopped.

There's nothing to say that it wasn't going to start up again.

Just cos there was a lull didn't mean that he'd stopped.

The police floated Operation Cloud.

As well as trawling though hundreds of hours of CCTV footage

they also enlisted a secret weapon -

a computer programme called Dragnet invented by Professor David Canter.

We used Dragnet to help identify the most likely areas

in which the offender had some sort of base.

The police uploaded the locations of the slasher crimes

into the Dragnet system and finally had a breakthrough.

The programme pinpointed an area for them to focus their attention on

and they soon spotted a suspect caught in the act.

The image of the CCTV at Christchurch capturing him,

that was our golden nugget.

The crime team grabbed an image from the CCTV footage

and sent it to the local paper.

By mid-morning we'd had three good sources tell us the same name.

The three callers all identified a local 37-year-old unemployed man

and police moved quickly to arrest him.

On being arrested he actually reached into his pockets

and amazingly he had the tool he was committing all the offences with

and he tried to dispose of this, but he was caught trying to throw it away.

It was very much a "got you" moment.

It was then the adrenalin starts rushing.

We knew that we'd actually got this individual

and we knew no more tyres were going to be damaged.

When he was questioned,

the pyscho slasher confessed to damaging thousands of tyres

and the reason he gave for setting out on his terrifying reign

was as jaw-droppingly bizarre as the crime itself.

He wasn't an eco-warrior on a misguided anti-car crusade.

Nor was his spree part of a masterplan

designed to make millions by holding Bournemouth to ransom.

He'd actually embarked on his frenzied campaign

cos a careless driver soaked him by driving through a puddle.

Unsurprisingly, the courts didn't think this was a good enough excuse

for causing an astonishing quarter of a million pounds' worth of damage.

It was the end of the road for the car-hating crook

and he was sentenced to 16 months.

It was an extremely weird thing to do,

to go out and bring the whole of Bournemouth to a standstill.

This was his own admission, that he wanted to wreck Bournemouth.

I've never heard anything like it, it's weird.

The Bournemouth Slasher was released from prison in 2004

and hasn't struck again.

For now at least, the town's tyres remain safe.

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.

THEY CLEAR THEIR THROATS IN TURN

Welcome to Bizarre Crime's Police Confessional.

Exhibit A - the priest.

Two druggies went to a Catholic priest's house to try

and blag money allegedly for a bus fare, but he was smarter than them.

When he became uncooperative, basically, they attacked him.

The girl pushed him and the lad made a grab for an iPod in his pocket.

We took the report and said, "What did you do?" he said,

"I punched the lad in the face,

"they turned and ran, I kicked the girl right up the arse,

"they ran up my path, I shouted after them, 'Fuck off or I'll break your legs'. "

We said, "Is this part of your training then?"

He said, "No, no. Before I got the call I was a Hell's Angel".

Exhibit B - the buttocks.

A lot of people make allegations against the police.

Many of these are false.

On one occasion I arrested a young man that said I'd beaten him up.

He didn't know the police surgeon would examine him.

The only injuries he'd got was a tiny bruise on his bottom

and when asked about this,

he said I'd punched him repeatedly in the buttocks.

HE LAUGHS

I am many things, but a buttock-puncher I am not.

Time for some more dim crims caught on camera.

And here's a clip we found online which looks like a wannabe robber

who's not going to be beaten.

Except that he is, right in the face by a bouncing brick.

SMACK! # Smack dat, gimme some more Smack dat... #

With a brick not working, maybe what's needed is some brute force.

Maybe not!

And if you think these half-witted hoodlums

are dim for getting caught on cameras

that they probably didn't realise were there,

then you're going to be outright amazed

by our next incompetent crook.

# When I grow up, I wanna be famous

# I wanna be a star I wanna be in movies. #

Straightaway I thought, "How stupid can one be?"

I thought, "idiot".

I just couldn't believe how many cameras he was on.

It was ridiculous.

It was August, 2005 in Manchester.

Michael was an habitual criminal.

He was mainly known for breaking into vehicles at the time.

But today Michael fancied a change.

Although he didn't snatch a purse,

rob a bank or hold up the local bookies.

Oh, no. In an astonishing act of criminal stupidity,

he decided to target the one place on earth

any self-respecting raider would avoid.

A CCTV shop.

Yes, that's right. A known criminal whose face was more than familiar

to Greater Manchester Police decided to rob a store

called CCTV Surveillance Solutions which was run by David Arathoon.

I've run a CCTV shop for 16 years now.

CCTV in my shop should've been a deterrent,

but you can't get away from the idiots of the world.

The store was fitted with a dozen cameras

meaning the dim crim was caught from every angle as he cased the joint.

# Look at me. #

And as he crept up to the door,

knocking over a pot plant with his stealthy cat-like approach.

All the time oblivious to the numerous signs

warning him he had a starring role

in the world's daftest criminal caper.

# Come on and look at me. #

I didn't like it when he came into the shop because he was a youth.

That's not the type of customer you'd normally get in

and I showed him a couple of cameras.

At this point he just made a lunge to the right hand side,

grabbed the laptop and made a dash for the exit,

closely followed by me.

I'd got a camera in my hand and I tried to hit him with it

and all I happened to do is hit myself

on the back of my head because it was on a cord.

I then decided, "Hang on, let him go now, he might have a knife."

DC Paul Smethurst was the officer tasked

with tracking down Manchester's newest reality TV star.

Never in my 26 years of service have I come across anything

where there's as much CCTV evidence as this. There were cameras everywhere.

I just couldn't believe how many cameras he was on,

and for the past hour on so many cameras. It was ridiculous.

Jumping up at the window.

You see, at first, his hands come up on the windowsill

and then he just pulls his face up on the windowsill

and a nice big stare right in front of the camera.

Absolutely fantastic, it was a great mugshot.

My feelings towards this culprit

is of sheer anger at the audacity of walking in there.

Absolutely amazed me, but little by little

as I'm reviewing the images, the many images,

I'm starting to like this guy.

I'm thinking, "I can't believe it, he's so stupid."

But the CCTV star's fame was about to reach new heights

as he made the leap from David's in-store monitors

to television screens across the North West.

Police are trying to trace a man who was caught on ten different CCTV cameras.

# Notorious. #

The police say they're investigating the theft of a laptop computer

and want to trace the man in the pictures.

# Notorious. #

It appeared that night on BBC North West and Granada

and I must've been interviewed by eight different radio companies

because everybody was interested.

A media frenzy ensued as the story was picked up across the country.

In terms of publicity,

I don't think Max Clifford could've done any better for me.

With eight other offences under his belt,

he was well-known to officers.

We knew where he lived,

there was no way that he could say, "Well, it wasn't me,"

because we had him, what we call in the job, as "bang to rights".

The not-so-camera-shy crim was picked up at a local bus stop

and thrown in a cell.

Given the wealth of footage, he had little option but to confess all.

He was bailed and released, but in one final astonishing twist

he decided to return to the CCTV store, this time with some mates

to attempt to intimidate David into withdrawing his statement.

They don't learn, they're all thick.

They came wandering in knowing it's still a CCTV shop.

It's not changed, I'm not a fruit and veg shop now, I'm still CCTV!

So why have you come back?

On the second visit it wasn't just his mugshot,

but also his mates that were caught on camera

and the lot of them were banged up for the night.

Pleading guilty to theft at Manchester Magistrates Court

he was given a community supervision order for 12 months

and instructed to pay £650 in compensation to Mr Arathoon

and £70 towards court costs.

# Caught by the fuzz. #

I think it was a bit bizarre that someone should choose

to break into a CCTV shop,

not trying to disguise their identity whatsoever.

How foolish could you be?

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

My advice - get a job and certainly don't target a CCTV shop.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd