10 Weirdest Criminals In History
A selection of the saddest, silliest, strangest and most unsettling crimes ever committed.
In a sense, all crime is supposed to be weird: its the deliberate breaking of the social contract, a stepping outside of the pattern of behaviour we set up for ourselves as a society. That applies to some crimes more than others, obviously no ones suggesting that shoplifting has any kind of moral parity with genocide, for example. But were a murky society, and weve all broken the law at some time or another. Criminals arent really weird, crime isnt weird: its just us, on a bad day. And thats part of why television shows like Cops, Americas Dumbest Criminals, procedurals like CSI and Criminal Minds and serial killer shows like Dexter, Hannibal and The Following tend to be popular: they present the criminal as someone different from us, someone other. The criminal is uneducated or stupid, a redneck, on drugs or an alcoholic. We couldnt possibly sink that low. The criminal is psychotic but exotic, flamboyant, pretentious: an artist. We couldnt possibly soar that high. We love reading about stupid criminals as much as we do criminal masterminds and serial killers, because we like to pretend that crime is something other people do; maybe better people, probably worse people, but definitely different people. With that in mind, weve dug around the lint-lined folds of the news to bring you a representative selection of the weirdest stories of crime we could find. These are the dumbest, the saddest, the most unsettling and the most horrifying, and above all: the weirdest damn criminals out there.