Beware Of What You Wear
When the Kentucky State Police arrived on the scene to investigate the death of James Tipton Phillips’s 24-year-old son, he was quick to come up with an excuse. He was allegedly just shooting at an emblem on his boy’s cowboy hat when James Marvin Tipton took a .38 slug in the forehead.
“He was about four inches too low,” commented Lt. Don Gill. The cops were doubtful of the accidental status but figured whether homicidal or just plain stupid and inaccurate, the senior James needed quiet attention in a secure environment.
Armed Robbery Rules
Some simple rules for armed robbers:
1) Never try to pay your bail with stolen loot
2) Never wear stuff you’ve stolen to court
3) If you do, at least don’t wear stolen stuff to court when you’re appearing on the case in which you stole that particular stuff.
Charles Taylor dropped two out of three points on this little test, showing up for trial wearing a pair of tan hiking boots. He was charged with robbing a shoe store, getting away with $69 and a pair of tan hiking boots. As a store clerk ID’d him as the suspect and described the loss, Judge James Fleetwood couldn’t help checking out Taylor’s footwear.
“I leaned over and stared,” said His Honor. “I said, ‘Surely nobody would be so stupid as to wear the boots he stole to his trial.’”
We can only guess the judge is unfamiliar with the Immutable Cosmic Law of Idiocy that says: “The instant you say, ‘Nobody would be so stupid as to …’ 13 people will do it.”
Court officials called the store and confirmed the stolen boots were size 10 1/2 from Lot No. 1046 — a perfect match for Taylor’s tan boots.
The bailiff confiscated the boots after the jury came back with a guilty verdict. And, gee whiz, it only took an hour of deliberation!
FedEx Fed Guns
Agents of the Salt Lake City office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were very proud of the briefcase-machinegun they had seized from a crook. So proud, in fact, they Federal Expressed it ot their San Francisco office to be included in a reference library as an example of criminal ingenuity.
Well, at least that’s where they addressed it. Some other crook, whose whereabouts are unknown, seized the piece from the FedEx truck.
If you happen to run across a briefcase-machinegun at a garage sale, the one they’re looking for is described as a brown satchel that puts out full-auto fire by pressing a button on the exterior. Of course, that describes most briefcase-machineguns. Except the black ones, anyway.
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Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs last issue to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gunwriters whom he had lampooned in “Friendly Fire” for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
