Case in point – a series of robberies that took place in the city many
years ago. A group of young men hit a number of businesses – pizza restaurants, grocery stores and other retail establishments. I had just moved back into the criminal investigations division when the case was solved
and five young men were picked up in connection with the chain of robberies. Now, one of the odd things about these robberies was that every time one went down, a different number of robbers were involved. And
witnesses would describe different men. Sometimes the same guy would pop up in a grocery store and pizza robbery, but be missing during the next job. The cast of characters kept changing.
That made the case a
tough one to resolve, but eventually there was enough probable cause to pick these five guys up. They waived their rights and agreed to talk with us and we had them all in the detective's division squad room, sitting at
our desks for processing.
Bill Deaton was one of the detectives involved in the case. Deaton was an old hand at investigations. He'd been with the military criminal investigations division and, after retirement,
moved to the Onslow County Sheriff's Department, working for the late Sheriff Billy Woodward. After he left there, he went to work for the police department.
I was processing one of the arrestees when Deaton
sauntered into the squad room and asked for everyone's attention.
"Guys, we have a problem here," Deaton said. "We need some help matching you fellows up with the right robbery. Tell you what. I'll name the
robberies and if you were one of the robbers, you just hold up your hand. Okay?"
Deaton looked at his clipboard, then called out the first place to be robbed – a pizza restaurant. Four of the guys raised their
hands.
"Nah, you weren't at that one," said one of the suspects to another one.
"I was, too," the other fellow said.
"Uh-uh. Remember? That was the night you and your lady had the fight and you
had a migraine. You stayed home," the other one said.
"Yeah. I remember," the second fellow said. "You're right. I hit the grocery store and the second pizza place."
"No, man," piped up a third
robber. "You didn't come in on the second pizza place. It was the two grocery stores."
"Man, I'm sure I did at least one of the pizza robberies."
"No, man. It was the fried chicken place."
"Oh yeah," Einstein said, slapping his forehead. "You're right, man."
And they all had a good laugh…but not nearly as good a laugh as we did after Deaton finished polling the robbers as to which robbery
they participated in and matched up each robbery with the appropriate robbers.
As I said, not all criminals are dumb. But it sure doesn't hurt that the majority of them won't ever appear on Jeopardy.
