A TRUE BURGLAR STORY
From a 1985 Mexican newspaper.

Yesterday a burglar died from a heart attack when he entered a home
in the pedregal area (Upper class zone in Mexico city).  The owner of
the house, a middle age lady, was alone at the time.  She said she
had just applied a beauty treatment of yogurt, avocado and cucumbers
when she heard noises in the house.  Since she was alone, she became
terrorized when she realized that a stranger was in her home and she
tried to hide in her closet.  However, as she closed the door, she
hit her nose with the door, which started to bleed.  When the burglar
entered her room and opened the closet door, she started yelling.
Perhaps the sight of a person with a pale green face and bleeding
nose was too much for the burglar because he died instantly.


DON'T USE DYNAMITE

A burglar, needing money to pay his income taxes, decided to burgle
the safe in a store.  On the safe door he was very pleased to find a
note reading:  "Please don't use dynamite.  The safe is not locked.
Just turn the knob."

He did so.  Instantly a heavy sandbag fell on him, the entire
premises were floodlighted, and alarms started clanging.  As the
police carried him out on a stretcher, he was heard moaning:  "My
confidence in human nature has been rudely shaken."

CLERK HURLS SPAM, FOILS ROBBER WITH PANTIES ON HEAD

DENISON, Texas -- It must have been quite a scene.  A bandit trying
to disguise himself by wearing a pair of women's panties over his
head was foiled in his attempt to rob a convenience by a
Spam-slinging clerk.  Police said the bandit tried to rob the EZ Mart
store early Wednesday.  He struck the woman clerk over the head with
something while she had her back to the bandit.  The woman got back
up and began throwing cans of Spam at the bandit, who fled without
any loot.  Police said the clerk was not seriously hurt, but she had
a knot on the back of her head and was sent home early because she
was "pretty shaken up" by the incident.  Officers said the man was
wearing black sweat pants, tennis shoes, no shirt and the women's
panties when he fled from the store.  "I've never heard of a robber
using women's panties to disguise himself," said Mike Eppler,
community relations officer for the Denison Police Department.
"There have been no reports of a robber using panties in a robbery
attempt in Denison.  This is a new one."
From Associated Press, The Dallas Morning News 12/7/96

* Ronnie Darnell Bell, 30, was arrested in Dallas in February and
 charged with attempting to rob the Federal Reserve Bank.  (In the
 movie "Die Hard with a Vengeance," knocking off the New York
 FRB required a small army of men and truckloads of weapons.)
 According to police, Bell was initially confused because there are
 no tellers, so he handed a security guard his note, reading, "This is
 a bank robbery of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, of Dallas,
 Texas, give me all the money.  Thank you, Ronnie Darnell Bell."
 The guard pushed a silent alarm while an oblivious Bell chatted
 amiably, revealing to the guard that only minutes earlier he had
 tried to rob a nearby Postal Service office but that "they threw me
 out."

 * Richard W. Miller Jr., 35, wanted in Utica, N.Y., for arson, was
 captured by U.S. Marshals in Arizona in February.  According to
 one of the arresting Marshals, he asked the suspect if he was
 Richard Miller.  The suspect said no.  The Marshal said they would
 have to fingerprint him anyway, and they did, and at the bottom of
 the blank fingerprint card, on the signature line, the suspect very
 helpfully signed his real name, "Richard Miller."'

 * In January, Hipolito Vega, 30, was arrested in Holyoke, Mass.,
 and charged on a previous warrant for driving without a license.
 He asked to make his one phone call from the police station and
 spoke in Spanish, believing no one at the station could understood
 him and that he could tell his friend where to pick up a stash of
 cocaine he had just hidden.  However, Vega failed to notice Officer
 Manuel Rivera, who heard Vega talking and alerted officers, who
 were waiting by the stash when Vega's friend arrived.

 * Airport police in Sao Paulo, Brazil, arrested Gerardo Gallo in
 January after a search of his suitcase.  They had found packages
 totaling about 50 pounds of cheap cheese and had become
 suspicious when they saw Gallo's destination was Switzerland.
 Asked an inspector, "Why would anyone take so much third-rate
 Bolivian cheese to a country which is famous for its top quality
 cheese?"  Packaged inside the cheese was about 22 pounds of
 cocaine.

 * Kelvin Floyd received a modest two-month sentence and a fine in
 Aiken, S. C., in March for stealing a car.  Floyd had wisely known
 to obliterate the car's vehicle ID number and to replace it with a
 substitute number.  However, apparently the best he could come up
 with was his own Social Security number, which police
 immediately recognized was bogus.