You know what - before we start reading about perfect crimes that failed literally at the last moment due to the slightest accident or because the criminals didn't take something into account, let's do one very important thing, as it seems to me: let's make a reservation.
'Perfect crimes' undoubtedly exist, but they aren't on this list. Do you know why? Because a truly perfect crime is one that neither we nor the police know about. Ideally, even the victim shouldn't know about the fact of the crime - if it was, let's say, a theft. Otherwise, it would be as perfect a crime as the Patriots' 2007 season was perfect. The same one with only one defeat. In the Super Bowl. Okay, now let's read on.
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Ariel Castro gained international attention for abducting, brutalizing and keeping three girls in his house for over 11 years. This was before he forgot the door unlocked *one* time when he left the house, and Amanda Berry was finally able to run out and use a strangers phone to dial 911.
That's quite a bad enough story, and I could have easily stopped there and still had one of the most disturbing posts on this submission... but the investigation also found that his *next door neighbor* had abducted a girl back in the early '90s, and he still had her remains buried in his basement. He might have *never* been caught, and that girl would have still been a Missing Person cold case, if Amanda Berry was never able to make that phone call.
The United California Bank robbery of 1972. The six perpetrators had rented a vacation home to use as a base and cleaned it top to bottom before leaving.
Except they forgot to start the dishwasher before they left, and police were able to match all of their fingerprints off the dirty dishes.
Joseph James DeAngelo - otherwise known as the Golden State Killer, the East Area Rapist, and the Visalia Ransacker.
The guy was a one-man crime wave. In a 12-year period, he committed at least 13 murders, 51 rapes and 120 burglaries. As the East Area Rapist, he would often select his targets months in advance, conduct extensive reconnaissance, learning the routines of the occupants, and sometimes break in in advance of his attack to plant his weapons and ligatures, and he would make threatening/hang-up calls in advance to create a sense of fear. I won’t go into details about his attacks, but he had a whole routine and everything that he would go through. And even though the sketches of him were near enough accurate, and the criminal profile of him was dead on accurate (for example, they correctly identified the attacker as working or having worked in law enforcement and the military, and JJD was a police officer at the time of his crime spree), they never even came close to finding him. When he was arrested, it was the first time he had ever come to the attention of the police. He didn’t even have any DNA on file for them to match when that became a thing. That was how good he was at staying off the radar.
The reason he got caught? Genealogical testing. You know those test kits that people get from services such as 23andMe, and Ancestry? Well, the police ran the DNA samples through a database used by those services and identified his relatives. They eventually found someone closely related enough to him that they could identify him. So he hadn’t even submitted his DNA for testing - one of his relatives did.
The guy must’ve been so f*****g shocked when the police showed up at his door.
One of the so-called 'Murphy’s Laws' says “If everything is going well for you, it means you haven’t taken something into account.” And indeed, sometimes literally the smallest mistake by one of the performers of a brilliant plan, or some tiny grain of sand in an impeccable mechanism, leads to complete confusion. And then the 'domino effect' starts and literally everything collapses.
Robert Durst.
He was caught while being interviewed for an HBO series, to which he initially agreed on to clear his name. Went to bathroom and mumbled to microphone (which he thought was off) "What the hell did I do? Kill all of them of course."
This was later presented to the court as evidence.
You can still watch it on HBO.
The Indiana fertility specialist who was using his own sperm to fertilize the eggs of his patients in the 1980s.
He was part of the “Quiverfull” cult and fathered a confirmed 94 children in his home area, but it’s estimated there could be over 200 half-siblings.
He was found out decades later when one of his patient’s children took a DNA test and found seven half-siblings matches.
He absolutely would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
That one dude who robbed a bank by hiring a bunch of people from Craigslist to show up wearing the same outfit he was and wait outside he would’ve gotten away but a homeless man saw him do a practice run the day before and after the robbery told the police
In fact, it's impossible to predict absolutely everything, and even if you have a plan A, plan B, plan C, and so on, completely unforeseen circumstances can still happen that your plan does not take into account. For example, the disposition of the Allied troops at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 was a weighty volume, prescribing many options for action on seemingly any movement of Napoleon Bonaparte's troops. As you probably know, that battle ended in one of the most brilliant victories of the French emperor... Simply because the plan is one thing, but the reality is something completely different.
Wolfgang Beltracchi, he made millions with forged paintings he painted all himself. He was ultimately caught because he once accidentally used paint that contained a very slight amount of a substance that wasn't used in the days of the "original" painter
Reminds me of the Sherlock episode with the fake painting (I don't wanna do any spoilers incase someone hasn't seen it).
Harold Shipman, seemingly a normal GP, turns out to be a prolific serial killer with maybe up to 250 victims over his career. Only discovered when a hospital worker was concerned about the number of cremation forms they had to process for his elderly patients, so very close to going undetected.
I was reading about him yesterday (20 years since his sui cide) his first known victim was killed in 1975! Should have been caught years before.
The serial arsonist that caused like 90% of LA counties fire. He worked for the fire dept. one of his fires were ruled as an accidental electrical fire and he insisted it wasn't
I heard about a guy who did this and was writing a book about a fireman who started fires. He was known as the best fireman in the state because he was so good at finding the place where the fire first started. Another piece of evidence against him was that the arson rates went up dramatically when he joined the fire service
“People are still not perfect, so even after the perfect implementation of some brilliant plan, one of the accomplices, or maybe the performer themselves, can spill the beans or boast,” says Valery Bolgan, a historian and editor-in-chief of the Intent news agency from Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here. “World history actually knows many similar cases.”
“This, by the way, is largely due to the fact that the implementation of some complex plan requires maximum nervous tension, and when everything ends successfully, the person, of course, relaxes - and in this state of relaxation they can make mistakes. Each of which may turn out to be critical. There are many books and studies describing in detail how this mechanism works," Valery summarizes.
That Australian kid who hacked the FBI and put his photos on their website. He scrubbed the metadata from the photo so it wouldn’t show the gps location, then he accidentally uploaded the original with that information still on it.
Knightsbridge Robbery. The boss of the gang cut himself while breaking into the lock boxes and -in the dark- found out too late, there was blood all around the place, too much to clean up.
He nevertheless managed to get away with $60M and hide somewhere in South America, but at some point decided to go back to England to retrieve his Ferrari, being arrested in the process.
Dam. He was like, "Wow! I got $60M! But wait... I forgot my ferrari! Oh no! The horror! I totally can't just buy another one. I need to go back to England where I could get caught. Yippee!"
The Antwerp Diamond Heist, the perfect heist-of-the-century where an Italian gang stole 100 million in gems.
While leaving Antwerp, they disposed of the disguises and the tools used, but one member of the gang was too lazy to burn everything as instructed.
Among the rubbish, the police found envelopes of the Antwerp Diamond Centre and a receipt for a sandwich bought at a store close to the Centre.
They recovered video footage of the sandwich store and busted the mastermind of the heist, who didn't give up his mates (but some were later identified). Some of the stolen diamonds are still unaccounted for.
One of them also went back to the diamond place after the heist because he thought it would be less suspicious but that was after they found the dumped evidence (barely off a main road BTW) and were waiting for him. Of course they didn't recover those diamond so maybe that was all part of the plan? They only got like 5 years for it.
Well, this collection is full of stories, both sad and funny - about how any, even the most well-developed plan misfired, and the criminal minds that developed it ended up behind bars. On the other hand, this is good for three reasons. Firstly, and this is the main thing - because it is disgraceful for anyone to break the law.
Secondly, because this is an extra reminder, even to the most entitled of us, that humans are still imperfect. And thirdly, because it provides us with at least three dozen thrilling detective stories here. So now please feel free to scroll this list to its very end and maybe add some stories you know or remember from world history in the comments below.
The real answer is that there are many perfect crimes, in the sense that no one is ever arrested for having committed them. In 1969 Ted Conrad walked out of a bank in Cleveland with $215,000 in cash (equivalent to $1,700,000 in 2021) and was never caught. He lived his life as a free person in Boston before confessing to his family just before he died.
Loeb and Leopold. 2 high IQ teenagers in Chicago in the 1920s committed a murder just because they thought they were too clever to be caught. One of them lost a lens from his glasses where they dropped the body. Very rare RX that led the police right to them.
The Friday night bank robber was the most prolific bank robber in US history. I believe he had a masters degree in something analytical like math. Was a martial arts instructor. He figured out there’s a time of the year in the northeast where it would be dark out just before the banks closed. He used motorcycles to drive through the woods to these banks and rode it back thru the woods to a u haul truck he had waiting and would put the bike into the truck and drive away calmly.
He did this for a long time kind of like the robbers in the movie point break, he would stop for the rest of the year which had the police really guessing. They couldn’t figure out patterns for a long time.
Years later the police started to catch on with his idea of doing it on Friday nights in the northeast, and from video knew he was probably into martial arts. But that doesn’t exactly narrow it down.
Dumb luck, some random kids stumbled upon his buried cache of things like a gun, gloves, mask, cash etc in the woods. They turn it over to the cops and that’s how they ended up finding out who he was.
The fbi gave him some deal where he worked with them and banks on telling them how to prevent bank robberies.
Oh, this guy was in a book I read, a collection of true crime stories or something. He was really interesting actually.
I work in downtown Chicago. Last year, one guy robbed the Fifth Third Bank across the street. He escaped into the Ogilvie Transportation Center and disappeared into the night despite it being so crowded and busy. Got away with the money and everything.
Until 3 weeks later, when a woman recognized him as having flirted with her RIGHT BEFORE he robbed the bank and had given her his PHONE NUMBER.. she handed that over to the authorities and he was successfully caught.
Bro he was SO CLOSE to getting away with it..
The Dunbar Armored robbery: the largest cash heist in US history
A 6 man inside job to rob an armoured cash depot.
They set up a house party as an alibi, used the keys to get into the cafeteria, and waited in there until all employees came in on break, then ambushed and subdued them without firing a shot or raising an alarm.
They then loaded the money bags (with over $18 million) into a u haul, destroyed the cctv tapes and returned to the party.
Then they sat on the money for 6 months before hiring a crooked lawyer to set up a real estate money laundering scheme to avoid suspicion.
2 years after the robbery, one of the men paid a real estate broker with a stack of money still wrapped in the original currency strap. The broker immediately reported it to the Police. After being arrested, he cracked under interrogation, confessed to the robbery, and ratted out his partners
Edit: All the men have since finished their prison sentences, and most of the money was never found, so there’s a chance they still won in the end
It's so funny to know they were smart enough to sit on it for 6 months but not to avoid using the money with the oringial strap.
The Oklahoma City bombing museum is fascinating and talks about how they were at a dead end essentially, but Timothy McVeigh screwed up just one time and used his real name instead of alias when ordering Chinese food one night and left the receipt in the hotel room where they were able to see a mismatch between the ordered name and hotel reservation name.
Kristian Bala Killed a man and got away with it...... Only to write a fictional book going into detail of what he did and sales of said book went up after he was convicted.
That seems very egotistic to say the least...I wonder if he got the money from the sales.
The Unabomber was the target of what is still the most expensive criminal investigation of all time, and they still had absolutely *nothing* on him. They were looking in the wrong part of the country, for a totally different profile of person, and the few leads they were actually working on were red herrings.
He got his manifesto published, and used the phrase "eat your cake and still have it" rather than the more commonly-known version. His brother David just so happened to read that manifesto and remember how Ted used that phrase. David decides, on a lark, to go through some of the stuff Ted had left at their mom's house and finds an early draft of the manifesto. David, after much soul-searching, decides to report this to the FBI and they almost throw the lead out before deciding to actually investigate it.
Anything at all in that chain doesn't happen, Ted uses a different phrase, David doesn't read the manifesto or doesn't bother investigating Ted's old stuff, or Ted doesn't leave the draft in Mom's house, or David doesn't tell the FBI, or the FBI toss the lead entirely, and The Unabomber probably stays active to this day.
I always remember the scene in the bar from Good Will Hunting when I hear about this.
Someone robbed a bank a few minutes from my house and fled on a bicycle. He was in and out quickly enough that cops weren't on the scene until he had ditched the bike in the neighborhood. He had concealed his identity enough during the robbery that all the police had to go on is "a male riding a bicycle carrying a parcel in the vicinity of this neighborhood."
He had made it to a truck he had parked in the neighborhood without being noticed by anyone. The police had little idea what to look for and by all measure he had made the perfect getaway. All he had to do was drive home.
While attempting to leave the neighborhood in his truck he saw a police vehicle making a patrol, and in a panic he drove his truck straight into a utility pole. The patrolling officer saw this, went to check on him and found the stolen money in his truck.
If I've learned anything by watching reality cop-type shows on TV, it's that low level criminals will almost always give themselves away. There are officers at airports who do nothing but people watch to identify who might be doing something suspicious. Here's a hint - if you've got cocaine in your suitcase or shoved up your bum don't avoid eye contact or act like you're doing something wrong. It's going to give you away 100% of the time!
Salim Kara, who single-handedly stole 2.3 million in coins, one by one. He kept a low profile for 13 years, but blew it by buying a 1 million dollar house in the early 90s.
I hope he didn't try to buy the house with all those coins he stole, even I would have picked up that it seemed a bit dodgy
Susan Smith, the one who drowned her kids in her car. She claimed it was a carjacking by a black man. No weapon or witnesses. The cops had nothing but her word. It was a simple traffic light that got her. She claimed that her light was red and there were no other cars at the light. That couldn’t be true with a controlled signal. If there was no cross traffic, her light would not have been red.
Few things p**s me off more than when a criminal tries to pass off their crimes by saying "there was this black guy".
Nuke Bizzle stole $700,000 in fradulent EDD claims, then released a song about it when someone saw the music video and tipped off the police in which he showed the actual documents here is the mirror of the video
To save you googling as I did… The EDD manages claims for Unemployment Insurance (UI) and State Disability Insurance (SDI) programs for the State of California
Charles Schmid. He murdered a teen girl for fun and got away with it, so he murdered some more. He murdered this teen girl and her little sister, who was only 13. He enlisted his best friend (I can't remember his name) to help him bury the bodies. I think they were buried for about 2 weeks before his friend cracked and told the police on him. I think Charles would have been caught sooner or later anyways, he was on his way to becoming a serial killer.
Al Capone was doing all the crimes… And it’s the tax evasion that got him.
Yes and no. It was kind of the only thing they had concrete evidence so any crime lock up is better than none
I worked in the federal prison system.
Met a Man in his mid 30's who was serving time for a series of bank robberies. His arrest was a complete surprise in his area. Model citizen. Married, young kids. Volunteered and gave generously to his kid's school.
His bank robberies were intricately planned and well timed.
One of his underlings decided to open up his own bank robbing business. He wasn't as smart and ratted out our man when he was caught, as part of his plea deal.
Probably the DC snipers. They couldn't convince the police to talk to them because they were swamped with fake callers, so the snipers told them to look into a murder in another state. This started the chain of events to them being found out, but before that the police had NOTHING. Nothing. The public was absolutely terrified and the police had no clue who was responsible. The You're Wrong About podcast did a fantastic job telling this story.
That was a wild time. Gas stations were hanging tarps off of the canopies over the pumps so they couldn't get a bead on you. Where they didn't, people would pace back and forth as they pumped the gas. I was at a gas station on the night of one of the shootings - I got to my friend's house 30 minutes later and the news said another person got shot at the station across the street from that one. Eish.
In 1995, Mark Winger of Springfield, IL wanted to kill his wife Donnah (iirc so he could carry on an affair), and the perfect scenario came. A week before her death, Roger Harrington was her shuttle driver on the way home from the St Louis airport, and he reportedly spoke about always getting high and having orgies. In turn, the Winger’s complained to the shuttle company. Then, Mark calls the police claiming that he shot Roger after he caught him attacking Donnah. Despite the contradiction of Roger being shot in a way that Mark did not claim happened, the case was shut, and Mark was viewed as a hero for killing the man who killed his wife.
However, in his infinite wisdom, Mark wouldn’t stop asking the police about the case, despite it being ruled as closed. Also, he tried to sue the shuttle company for Roger’s alleged action, to which the company started their own investigation which showed that the events couldn’t have gone the way Mark described. The final nail came when his affair partner came forward to the police and described their affair, which led to further re-examination of evidence that showed it was staged. Mark was later tried and convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life without parole.
In another derp moment from Mark, he was later given an extra 35 years for trying to solicit the murder of his affair partner and his rich friend who refused to bail him out from behind bars. The main piece of evidence being a 19 page handwritten plan for how he wanted the murders to be carried out.
Doesn't seem to fit the rest of the "nearly perfect crimes". This guy was just dumb and blew it.
Willie Sutton was one of the greatest bank robbers and never hurt anyone. He was caught when his car broke down and he bought a sandwich and was recognized.
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The really perfect crime is one nobody realizes has been committed. Murder that looks like natural causes. Theft covered up by a fake replica. Fraud where the victim never realizes they've been taken. Passing undetectable counterfeit money. How many times is this sort of perfect crime committed each year? By definition, no one knows.
That is pretty much how doctor and nurse serial killers operate
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Dennis Rader aka BTK was caught after he asked the police if they would be able to trace a computer disk. The police said no, of course, and promptly traced it to his church. Rader was shocked, shocked!, that the police had lied to him. He thought they had a good rapport going.
The really perfect crime is one nobody realizes has been committed. Murder that looks like natural causes. Theft covered up by a fake replica. Fraud where the victim never realizes they've been taken. Passing undetectable counterfeit money. How many times is this sort of perfect crime committed each year? By definition, no one knows.
That is pretty much how doctor and nurse serial killers operate
Load More Replies... Dennis Rader aka BTK was caught after he asked the police if they would be able to trace a computer disk. The police said no, of course, and promptly traced it to his church. Rader was shocked, shocked!, that the police had lied to him. He thought they had a good rapport going.
