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watchMOJO.WORLD
  • 2 days ago
ometimes, criminals are their own worst enemies.
Welcome to WatchMojo.WORLD, where we’re counting down the 10 dumbest mistakes that got killers caught. From social media slip‑ups to careless evidence left behind, these blunders helped law enforcement bring some of the most dangerous criminals to justice.

Which of these mistakes shocked you the most? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Transcript
00:00Everybody had slept with their doors unlocked and the windows open and so forth.
00:05But things were starting to change dramatically.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the silliest slip-ups that led to murderers being apprehended.
00:14I was not really happy, but kind of relieved.
00:17Normally, I don't very often agree with the death penalty, but with him it was necessary.
00:24Neville Heath's hotel stay.
00:25She met Neville Heath, probably impressed by this military bearing, and he put himself over as a lieutenant colonel.
00:35He took her out to dinner and persuaded her to come back to the hotel room.
00:40This Brit's killing spree was cut short by one careless check-in.
00:44In 1946, Heath, a World War II veteran, developed a strange pattern of checking into hotels and picking up women, two of whom he murdered.
00:52And he might have gotten away with it, but for the critical mistake of using his real name when checking in with one of his conquests at a hotel.
00:59She was a pretty thing.
01:00Tall.
01:02Slender.
01:04I think London rather dazzled her.
01:06You know these small-town girls.
01:08Not quite as you do, I imagine.
01:11Though the other times he was careful enough to use pseudonyms,
01:14Heath apparently believed that simply adding the military title lieutenant colonel to his name would be enough to avoid suspicion.
01:19This misguided decision not only led directly to his arrest, but also secured his place among the most incompetent criminals of all time.
01:27If they could prove insanity in some form, then actually they stood a lot better chance of being reprieved.
01:37Joel Rifkin's missing license plate.
01:39Drug-addicted, disease-carrying vermin is the lie I told myself.
01:43This Long Island native is currently serving a 203-year sentence for the brutal deaths of at least nine women,
01:49though he actually confessed to several more.
01:51Rifkin targeted vulnerable females in the New York City area,
01:55typically dismembering them and scattering their remains in rivers, woodlands, and golf courses.
02:00There were mini-clusters.
02:04A little, you know, sets of three.
02:06In 1993, he was brought to justice during a routine traffic stop because he was driving without a license plate.
02:13When he attempted to flee, a high-speed chase ensued, ending with a collision.
02:17Upon inspecting his truck, officers discovered the decomposing body of Tiffany Bresciani.
02:22The moral of Rifkin's story?
02:24Never drive without a license plate.
02:26Or run from the police.
02:28Or, you know, murder people.
02:29Would you have killed again if you weren't caught?
02:31As much as they say I wanted to stop, it probably would have been others.
02:36Maury Travis's map.
02:38We had several theories developed as to why they stopped in October.
02:41Perhaps the 9-11 crisis that occurred.
02:45Perhaps this person was in the military.
02:47When you're this vocal about your crimes, should it really come as a shock when you end up in prison?
02:51This St. Louis waiter didn't seem to think so.
02:53In the early 2000s, Travis left a trail of victims and even created a torture chamber in his basement
02:59where he filmed grisly snuff films.
03:02There was a need, I felt, and some of the people at our paper felt also,
03:07to put faces and a humanity to these women.
03:13When a story about one of the slayings was published in the newspaper,
03:16Travis responded with what he thought was an anonymous letter,
03:19attaching a printed map that revealed the location of the body.
03:22What Travis failed to realize was that the map contained a URL identifier,
03:26which gave investigators the evidence they needed to apprehend Travis.
03:31We could tell it was computer-generated, though he had cut off the borders,
03:35and we didn't know what website it came from.
03:38Between this and the lovely videos, Travis had a lot of explaining to do.
03:42David Berkowitz's parking ticket
03:44David Berkowitz, 24 years old, a postal worker, walked out of his Yonkers apartment last night,
03:49turned the ignition key in his car, and found himself surrounded by police.
03:53Well, he said, you got me."
03:55Better known as the Son of Sam,
03:57Berkowitz tormented New York City in the 1970s with a series of random shootings.
04:01Claiming to be in cahoots with a demonic dog,
04:04he taunted the police and media with handwritten letters that fueled public fear.
04:08One night, Berkowitz parked near a fire hydrant in Brooklyn,
04:11which any experienced driver knows is a parking no-no.
04:14The detectives of the Brooklyn Omega Squad, part of that 300-cop-44 killer manhunt,
04:19captured the man they say is Son of Sam.
04:22A witness later reported a suspicious figure near the scene,
04:25and police began combing through traffic tickets issued in the area that night.
04:29Upon further investigation,
04:30they found a rifle and a bag filled with ammunition in Berkowitz's vehicle,
04:34leading to his swift arrest and an alarmingly proud confession.
04:38Son of Sam killed six and wounded seven.
04:40How many people do you know, your neighbors, people who might fit that description?
04:45Nice, quiet, a little moody, kept to himself.
04:49Charles Ng's stolen fish.
04:51They combust the fantasy because they start saying to each other,
04:55what we need is to have lots of children to repopulate the world and make better citizens,
05:00a kind of a social engineering project.
05:03Imagine nearly getting away with multiple gruesome murders,
05:06and then sacrificing it all for a can of salmon.
05:09With his accomplice Leonard Lake,
05:11Ng subjected people of various ages to horrific abuse before taking their lives.
05:16They had even created a horrendous dungeon on a property they used in Calaveras County, California.
05:21Ng was a very shy person who himself could not have done this,
05:25but happily joined the venture so that he would have a chance of the kind of sexuality
05:30his shyness made impossible.
05:32While on the lam in Canada, Ng, who suffers from kleptomania,
05:36shoplifted some canned fish from a department store.
05:39His arrest for this offense eventually revealed him to be wanted in the United States.
05:43That small theft set off a chain of events that ended his deadly spree and landed Ng on death row.
05:49The evidence was so overwhelming.
05:51When you consider the fact that you had him on film
05:53with a number of the victims telling them that he was going to kill them,
05:59along with all of the other evidence that was found, it was a pretty rock-solid case.
06:04Albert Fish's Watermark
06:05Known as the Werewolf of Wisteria, the Boogeyman, and the Grayman, Fish was infamous for his carnage.
06:12However, his reign of terror over New York City came to an end with a careless mistake involving a single piece of paper.
06:19After kidnapping and cannibalizing young Grace Budd in 1928,
06:22he sent a gruesome letter to her family, filled with chilling details of the crime and erratic psychological ramblings.
06:28Unbeknownst to Fish, the envelope containing the letter bore a distinctive watermark reading
06:33New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association.
06:36This small clue led the police directly to the rooming house where he was staying, resulting in his arrest.
06:42The so-called Leinz Angels of Death consisted of four Austrian nurses' aides who preyed upon the elderly.
06:49The women would forcibly cause patients to overdose on morphine and tranquilizers.
06:53Other times, they drowned patients by filling their lungs with water.
06:57Although the Angels claimed they simply wanted to put people out of their misery,
07:01it's largely believed they acted out of sadism rather than mercy.
07:05To add another layer of disturbing to the story,
07:07the Angels would likely have gotten away with countless more murders
07:10had they not been overheard arrogantly discussing their secret out loud at a tavern.
07:15Charles Schmitt's show-and-tell
07:16Everybody had slept with their doors unlocked and the windows open and so forth.
07:22But things were starting to change dramatically.
07:25Time for a serial killer pro tip.
07:28After you've killed someone, it's generally not a great idea to show off the body.
07:32Schmitt, also known as the Pied Piper of Tucson,
07:35strangled his girlfriend Gretchen Fritz, as well as her younger sister Wendy, in 1965.
07:41This was more than a year after he had bludgeoned another young woman named Aline Rowe to death with a rock.
07:46Had a fake bridge on his nose where he said it was broken.
07:51It wasn't, but it looked good.
07:53Apparently unable to resist bragging about his exploits,
07:56Schmitt showed his best friend Richard Bruns where he had buried the sisters' bodies.
08:00Bruns became frightened and alerted the authorities, bringing Schmitt's spree to a close.
08:05Reportedly, his mother chose to bury him here in the prison cemetery,
08:08thinking that if she buried him on a public site, his tombstone would be vandalized.
08:14Ted Bundy's stolen car.
08:15One of his interviews, the interviewer asked him point-blank, he said,
08:20Ted, why did you kill?
08:22And Ted kind of raised one eyebrow and kind of smiled and says,
08:26because I liked it.
08:27Bundy is often considered one of the slickest and most cunning serial killers in history,
08:31but this story doesn't exactly support that idea.
08:34You're likely familiar with Bundy's dark deeds.
08:37He used his good looks and charisma to gain the trust of dozens of women,
08:40whom he then proceeded to murder in cold blood.
08:42Just barely 20 years of age, I had a one-month-old little girl at home.
08:49This proud, pompous psychopath managed to escape police custody several times before finally being
08:54caught in Florida, where he was driving a stolen vehicle, which eventually turned out to have
08:59evidence of his misdeeds. Though he attempted to flee once more, this encounter resulted in his
09:04capture and, ultimately, execution.
09:07I was not really happy, but kind of relieved.
09:10Normally, I don't very often agree with the death penalty, but with him it was necessary.
09:15Dennis Rader's floppy disk
09:32The infamous BTK killer eluded capture for three decades until a foolish lapse of judgment cost
09:48him his freedom. Beginning in the 1970s, Rader terrorized the Midwest with the vicious and
09:53slaying of numerous citizens. Like many of his kind, he enjoyed taunting detectives with letters
09:59and clues.
10:00This letter is very clear to tell us you have the wrong people. You need to stop looking at them.
10:06You need to come back and focus your attention on me. I am the important one.
10:10In 2004, after years of silence, Rader asked in one of his notes whether he could safely send a
10:15floppy disk without being traced. The police, playing along, assured him it was fine,
10:20and he naively believed them. This, of course, proved to be the rookie mistake that finally
10:25did Rader in. Police used information on the disk to gain his identity.
10:29Sure.
10:35Because I was trying to catch you.
10:36I lied to you because I was trying to catch you.
10:39And he was incredulous to the fact that I wanted this to end.
10:42Which of these incriminating blunders do you find the most ridiculous?
10:46Let's talk about it in the comments.
10:47Monsters don't always look like monsters. Sometimes they look like the guy next door.