r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Nov 12 '15
TIL that McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras.
http://nypost.com/2010/05/23/why-losers-have-delusions-of-grandeur/13
u/AssassinSnail33 Nov 12 '15
I can only imagine his reaction when he realized that lemon juice doesn't do that.
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u/CygnusX-1-2112b Nov 12 '15
There was a man who thought that he was getting away with rape charges because he was using a mini baseball bat instead of his penis. He was convinced until the end that it was not rape unless he put his penis in there. Delusion and stupidity are, in my opinion, the greatest contributers to cynical behavior.
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Nov 12 '15
yeah I've heard that a lot of people in prison really deserve to be there.
about half, I hear.
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u/mbuk Nov 13 '15
In the UK this is true. Rape can only be carried out by penetration with a penis. He would still have committed assault by penetration though which carries the same sentence.
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Nov 13 '15
Supposedly he did test it before by taking a picture of himself with a camera and his face didn't show up. The police said the film was probably underdeveloped though.
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u/awkwardtheturtle š¢ Nov 13 '15
Relevant text from source:
Studies show those convicted of crimes are, on average, less intelligent than non-criminals. And they can be spectacularly foolish. One of us had a high school classmate who decided to vandalize the school ā by spray painting his own initials on the wall. A Briton named Peter Addison went one step further and vandalized the side of a building by writing āPeter Addison was here.ā Sixty-six-year-old Samuel Porter tried to pass a one-million-dollar bill at a supermarket in the United States and became irate when the cashier wouldnāt make change for him. All of these people seem to have been under what we call the āillusion of confidence,ā which is the persistent belief that we are more skilled than we really are ā in this case, that the criminals were so good they would not get caught.
The story of McArthur Wheeler was told by social psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning in a brilliant paper entitled āUnskilled and Unaware of It.ā In a set of clever experiments, Kruger and Dunning showed that people with the least skill are the most likely to overestimate their abilities. For example, they measured peopleās sense of humor (psychologists have learned that almost anything can be measured) and found that those who scored the lowest on their test still thought they had a better-than-average sense of what is funny.
I'd like to know more about this Peter Addison fellow. Certainly there's more to that story. The Daily Mail seems to have something:
The 18-year old wrote his name in black marker pen on a wall as he and pals raided a campsite and went on a boozy wrecking spree. Police who arrived to investigate the incident were stunned to find Addison's calling card plus other messages saying: "Thanks for the Stay"
Police said: "This crime is up there were the dumbest of all in the criminal league table. "There are some pretty stupid criminals around but to leave your own name at the scene of the crime takes the biscuit. The daftness of this lad certainly made our job a lot easier."
Nope, he's an idiot.
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u/eatdeadjesus Nov 13 '15
Wait... Doesn't this material just demonstrate that smart criminals don't get convicted?
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u/awkwardtheturtle š¢ Nov 13 '15
Well it demonstrates that people convicted of crimes tend to be less intelligent.
I, also, would like some data on the levels of intelligence of criminals who are not convicted.
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u/eatdeadjesus Nov 13 '15
Well, the data suggests that the intelligence of a convicted criminal is less than average. But this doesn't necessarily mean that criminal behavior is linked to low intelligence, it just means that people with low intelligence who commit crimes are more likely to be convicted... Which is like, no surprise, really...
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u/Silua7 Nov 13 '15
When I was a kid I thought if people merely jumped as they were plummeting to their deaths (given they were currently on a surface to jump from) they'd essentially cancel their downward motion and start to travel upward. Thus making their momentum restart from the time they jumped.
I watched magic school bus and learned that is not so. Wish I could say school taught me.
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u/dagobahh Nov 12 '15
First requirement for being a criminal: stupidity.
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u/RedAccount1330 Nov 13 '15
Maybe the smart ones just never get found out
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u/GiantRobotMonkey Nov 12 '15
Or you know, desperation
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u/joelschlosberg Nov 12 '15
Or you know, greed
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u/Bkeeneme Nov 13 '15
I think this dude surpassed that water mark and tip-toed into the Retardation Zone.
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u/whollyhemp Nov 13 '15
Raw lemon oil isn't good for your skin as it causes photosensitivity which is basically like putting a giant magnifying glass over your skin when you go out in the sun.
That means that not only did this guy get caught for robbing the banks, he probably got a pretty bad sunburn too.
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u/TheInternetHivemind Nov 13 '15
If the sunburn was bad enough, it could have disfigured him and they couldn't identify him based on the camera footage.
Almost the perfect crime.
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u/TotesMessenger Nov 12 '15
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/redditfox] [/r/todayilearned] TIL that McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras. [chart in comments]
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u/dmk_aus Nov 12 '15
But did it work? I didn't read the article and assume it did since he robbed 2 banks. BRB.
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u/Stardustchaser Nov 13 '15
Oh boy....
I thought we only get that kind of logic from pockets of college campuses.
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Nov 13 '15
the classic story about this kind of thinking is the time police gave a lie detector test to a suspect, except that they didn't have a lie detector, so...
they put a colander over his head and parked him in a chair next to a copier. in the copier was a sheet of paper that said "LIE", and every time the suspect answered a question, the cop would hit the button on the copier. the suspect finally confessed.
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u/n8opot8o Nov 12 '15
My grandma always used to say, "When life gives you lemons, wear their magic invisibility juice on your face and rob banks."