America's Dumbest Criminals Read Online Free PDF Page A

Hide, but He Can’t Run
    T erry Jarnigan was a troublemaker. He was always having brushes with the law, and he was especially well known for starting fights and somehow managing to get away just before the police arrived.
    One Friday night Terry tried to pick up another man’s wife in a local tavern in a Midwest town, and a fight ensued. Soon the whole place was involved in an old-fashioned barroom brawl, with chairs and glasses being thrown and broken amidst a frenzied free-for-all.
    Then someone yelled “Cops!” The crowd broke for the door, and Jarnigan was one of the first ones out. But the squad car pulled in, lights flashing, just as he was making his way across the parking lot. With no time to think and few places to run, Jarnigan opened the door of a brown Pontiac Bonneville and stretched out along the back floorboard.
    In a matter of minutes, more officers and squad cars had pulled into the parking lot. Jarnigan would have to sit tight for a while. He just lay there in the back of the Pontiac, watching the shadows of the flashing lights and listening to the voices outside. He couldn’t hear everything that was said as the police began arresting the people involved in the donnybrook. But he did hear his own name over and over as bar patrons explained the origins of the fight.
    Then Terry Jarnigan heard voices coming closer to his hiding place.
    â€œIt’s not fair to arrest me!” a man was protesting in a shrill voice. “I didn’t start the fight. Some jerk was hitting on my wife, and she didn’t like it. Well, I didn’t like it either, so I just . . . ”
    â€œYes, sir,” another voice answered calmly. “We’ll get all of that sorted out down at the police station. But we don’t have any more room in the cruisers, so you’ll have to follow me downtown in your own vehicle.”
    â€œHe’s the one you ought to be arresting . . . ” The man was still muttering as he swung open the door of his brown Pontiac Bonneville. Terry Jarnigan blinked as the dome light came on, and the car’s owner jumped back and yelled.
    â€œHey! Here he is—here’s the punk that started the whole thing! You just wait till I get my . . . ”
    The officer stopped the furious husband just before he took hold of the cowering troublemaker. Jarnigan was duly booked for inciting a riot and for committing illegal trespass in entering the man’s car. And then he was thrown into the same holding tank with the people he had provoked into fighting in the bar only an hour earlier, including the enraged husband of the woman he had flirted with.
    They were all very glad to see him.

21
    Lovin’ in Fifteen Minutes
    I s speeding a crime of passion? Officer Rusty Martin remembers a time when the label could have applied.
    â€œI was a rookie stationed in a little town called Duncan, Mississippi,” Martin says. “Now, nothing much ever happened in Duncan. The nights were even quieter than the days, and I was working the 6:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. shift. So I was always looking for ways to liven up those long hours.”
    One night Martin, who lived about thirty miles on the other end of the county, was headed home down the dark, quiet country lanes. He was in a hurry to get home and had already exceeded the speed limit when he noticed headlights in the distance behind him, closing in fast. Martin didn’t have radar at that time, so he tried to pace the car behind him.
    â€œI clicked it up to about eighty in order to get an indication of how fast he was going. Sure enough, he caught up with me easily. Then he saw the bar lights on my squad car and slammed on his brakes.”
    The late-night speedster climbed out of his car and read the officer’s badge. “Please Officer Martin!” he begged. “You can’t write me a ticket. I can’t afford it—I just can’t afford the ticket. Please just let me off with a