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They come in all shapes, sizes, races and genders, but they have one thing in common - a propensity for crime inevitably derailed by an appalling lack of good old common sense.
They are the dumbest of crooks, the miscreants whose actions during crimes - so inane, so utterly stupid - lead them directly to jail without even a possibility of passing "Go."
Cops love them, and why not? Just think how bad things would be if all crimes were committed by master criminals using their brain power to elude the cleverest of detectives.
No, these guys and gals don't resemble Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Moriarity; Moe, Larry and Curly are more like it.
Herewith, some of the tales of the criminally challenged: The invisible man
At 5 feet 6 inches and about 270 pounds, McArthur Wheeler is an easily recognizable man - even when wearing lemon juice on his face.
That certainly came as a surprise to Wheeler, 45, of Versailles Street, McKeesport. He was incredulous in April when Pittsburgh robbery detectives told him that he had been identified in surveillance photographs as one of the two men who robbed two banks in Brighton Heights and Swissvale on Jan. 6.
"But I wore the lemon juice. I wore the lemon juice," a puzzled Wheeler told the even more puzzled detectives.
The detectives' confusion turned to incredulity as Wheeler explained about his would-be lemon aid.
"Someone told him that if you put lemon juice on your face it makes you invisible to the surveillance camera," recounted a still chuckling Cmdr. Ronald Freeman of the investigations branch. "He was skeptical at first but not so much as to not try it himself."
"He said the lemon juice was burning his face and his eyes, and he was having trouble (seeing) and had to squint," said Sgt. Wally Long of the robbery squad.
But the pain was worth the pleasure Wheeler felt when he snapped a Polaroid picture of himself and he wasn't anywhere to be seen.
"When the Polaroid didn't show him, he thought it worked," Long said.
All that detectives could figure was that either the film was bad, Wheeler hadn't adjusted the camera correctly or he had pointed the camera away from his face...