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.
More info: Reddit
#1
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.
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195points
#2
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.
164points
#3
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.
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141points
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.
#4
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.
125points
#5
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.
125points
#6
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
121points
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.
#7
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
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119points
#8
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.
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107points
#9
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
94points
“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.
#10
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.
90points
#11
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.
85points
#12
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.
81points
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.
#13
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.
81points
#14
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.
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78points
#15
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.
76points
#16
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..
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75points
#17
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
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72points
#18
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.
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71points
#19
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.
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68points
#20
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.
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66points