9 ms·

In the end he was caught because his van was identified and because "One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb in Ha

In the end he was caught because his van was identified and because "One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb in Harvey's." I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. You would think if you are going to bomb a place, the first thing would be to not talk about it to anyone outside those that are directly involved. But criminals that have executed the "perfect crime" get caught driving over the speed limit, with expired license, spending money too lavishly... I suppose he would have been caught some other way if not for this, but it almost seems like a comical trope to me. Maybe you are the best bomb maker around, but you weren't that good at the simpler things.

syntheticnature 5y ago
A big part of it is the same asymmetry you see with security. All the other side needs is one mistake that leaves an opening.
tyingq 5y ago
>I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. I think the same when you watch TV shows like Dateline. Yet the clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60%. And I doubt that 40% are all master minds.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  that's because there are very few masterminds on the other side of the fence. The idea of a detective as per cop movies are romanticised, a lot of them are doing bare minimum and are as dumb as the criminals.
  - silexia 5y ago
    I had the misfortune of seeing this first hand. I caught an employee who embezzled $19,000 from my company red handed. The police refused to help even after I reported it until I called the mayor's office and complained.
    - me_me_me 5y ago
      But if you caught them red handed why are their hands not red? Case closed.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Now that's going all the way to the top!
- erdos4d 5y ago
  > Yet the clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60% The war on drugs helped a lot with this.
  - 55555 5y ago
    I assume you mean because LE is splitting resources and also dealing with drug cases. I think it wouldn't be unrealistic to have the drug cases fund themselves through seizures. I wonder how bad of an ROI our LE gets on drug investigations.
    - Clewza313 5y ago
      Drug prohibition also drives up murder rates massively. For your typical turf war murder, even the victims' side has little incentive to talk to the cops.
kumarvvr 5y ago
As always, with any crime, the more people involved, the greater the possibility that human factors will sabotage the operation. The perfect crime has one perpetrator. It is also why its fascinating that people will believe in conspiracy theories that supposedly involve tens / hundreds / thousands of people. Theories that we faked the moon landing always intrigue me. Or that the earth is flat.
- 55555 5y ago
  I see your point! I totally do. I also used to hold this belief. But then the Snowden revelations came out and it was revealed that probably 10,000 people in government were aware of a system that was sucking up all of our data for warrantless search and they had successfully kept the secret for something like 10 years (or more?). For sure it's true that a secret can be kept by three people if two of them are dead. But there are clear cases where large groups of people have been able to keep secrets as well, or at least keep them from spilling out into public awareness. I'd bet that for most crimes, the secret isn't kept, and there is someone else out there that knows who did it, who simply doesn't tell law enforcement. And yet most serious crimes aren't solved. Humans have a real need to tell other people personal things, even to their own detriment. But sometimes things stay secrets even if tons of people know about them.
  - kumarvvr 5y ago
    Eventually, Snowden came out with the truth isn't it. Also, not all of those 10k people might not be knowing what they are doing or don't care. You can cloak a lot of espionage activity with forms, sheets, memos, brainwashing and what not.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > But then the Snowden revelations came out and it was revealed that probably 10,000 people in government were aware of a system that was sucking up all of our data for warrantless search and they had successfully kept the secret for something like 10 years (or more?). Illegal domestic electronic espionage/surveillance wasn't a vast secret. It was widely known that the Feds were making every effort they could to push down that road, and the Feds had a very long history of illegal domestic espionage. Frankly, it was obvious that it was going on. A lot of people I know in tech had crossed paths with other people that knew pieces of the puzzle, that some domestic espionage programs were going on (particularly supercharged after 9/11). You'd get snippets of it in discussions. Snowden's revelations were not the first, it was the bombshell that was comprehensive (and only for a small part of what they were doing). It wasn't yet proven, and the full extent wasn't yet known, there wasn't enough credible public evidence to demonstrate exactly what they were doing. There's a huge difference between something not being secret, and being proven, and that's what Snowden's actions helped to correct. While it's in the not-yet-proven stage, the malevolent skeptics in particular will all sandbag any attempt to reveal it, by burying discussions under conspiracy tags and swat away any attempts to dig into what's really going on. Some skeptics do that on purpose because they have a vested interest in doing so, some do that because they're cowards (which is what is represented by the common statement: "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to fear" - it's cowardly people hiding from a moment of confrontation). Ready for another one? They're still performing illegal domestic electronic surveillance. That too isn't some vast secret. Oh I know, but but but they're not supposed to be doing that! Golly.
the-dude 5y ago
It is because you don't hear about the cases which don't slip up.
- dogorman 5y ago
  Selection bias is a cheap canned answer, but it doesn't make any sense here. Sensational unsolved crimes make the news. The public hearing about crimes isn't conditional on those crimes being solves. Arguably some of the most enduringly notorious crimes are the ones that go unsolved. The Zodiac Killer; never been caught. "D.B. Cooper", never caught. The presumed murder of Jimmy Hoffa, unsolved.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    The best crimes do not look like crimes. The police does not put out press releases repeatedly with 'we got no leads'. Such cases fade fast.
    - dogorman 5y ago
      > The best crimes do not look like crimes. Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved crimes. > The police does not put out press releases repeatedly with 'we got no leads'. They do, in all the cases I listed they've asked the public for help for years. Certainly they don't do that for crimes they don't know occurred, but there is no shortage of known crimes that are very publicly unsolved. For that matter, there are also a whole lot of missing person bulletins soliciting information from the public. Many of them might be murder victims, but it isn't known whether they are really alive or dead, let alone murdered. The public is nonetheless asked for information.
      - adventured 5y ago
        > Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved crimes. That's certainly the nice way to put it - "If you're murdered in America, there's a 1 in 3 chance that the police won't identify your killer. To use the FBI's terminology, the national "clearance rate" for homicide today is 64.1 percent. Fifty years ago, it was more than 90 percent." ... "Criminologists estimate that at least 200,000 murders have gone unsolved since the 1960s" https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-third-of-murders-in-america-go-unresolved https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-...
giarc 5y ago
Funny you should mention 'get caught driving over the speed limit'.... from another link in this thread that did happen. Like most plans, Birges’s fell apart rather early on. One of his sons got a speeding ticket, placing him near the ransom drop point. His girlfriend drove off the road, resulting in her hospitalization. https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-looks-like/ https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-loo...
Apocryphon 5y ago
That's how they got the Unabomber.
- moioci 5y ago
  I would say that wasn't a slip-up, like getting a parking ticket or something. Several newspapers published his manifesto at his insistence, and his brother recognized his writing style.
  - abz10 5y ago
    I presume he would have known his writing style was unique and expected people to figure it out once he got what he wanted. It’s an interesting read.
littlecranky67 5y ago
Posting this link (that somebody else posted in this thread) to an article with lot more coverage on the issue that wikipedia: https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ Eventually, the sons of "Big John" caved in to the FBI in interrogation. While the tip of the former girlfriend made the whole family prime suspects in the first place, they did not have anything on them until the sons decided to talk (and get immunity for their involvement in exchange).
- bityard 5y ago
  What a fascinating story. However, the two sons only decided to talk after the police made each one believe that the other was ratting him out. Classic interrogation technique that I've seen in countless procedural tv shows and movies.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nashashmi 5y ago
The book and movie the Irishman comes to mind when I think about people who got away. They never really can keep their mouth shut. It’s in our nature to tell others who we are and everything we do. It’s why we have social media. It’s our nature.
AceJohnny2 5y ago
The kind of decision-making that leads one to owing a shit-ton of money to a casino, and then deciding that the best solution is to bomb said casino, seems incompatible with covering your tracks well.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SLWW 5y ago
How does that one quote go?... "Two can keep a secret if one is dead"

syntheticnature 5y ago

A big part of it is the same asymmetry you see with security. All the other side needs is one mistake that leaves an opening.

tyingq 5y ago

>I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. I think the same when you watch TV shows like Dateline. Yet the clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60%. And I doubt that 40% are all master minds.

me_me_me 5y ago
that's because there are very few masterminds on the other side of the fence. The idea of a detective as per cop movies are romanticised, a lot of them are doing bare minimum and are as dumb as the criminals.
- silexia 5y ago
  I had the misfortune of seeing this first hand. I caught an employee who embezzled $19,000 from my company red handed. The police refused to help even after I reported it until I called the mayor's office and complained.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    But if you caught them red handed why are their hands not red? Case closed.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Now that's going all the way to the top!
erdos4d 5y ago
> Yet the clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60% The war on drugs helped a lot with this.
- 55555 5y ago
  I assume you mean because LE is splitting resources and also dealing with drug cases. I think it wouldn't be unrealistic to have the drug cases fund themselves through seizures. I wonder how bad of an ROI our LE gets on drug investigations.
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    Drug prohibition also drives up murder rates massively. For your typical turf war murder, even the victims' side has little incentive to talk to the cops.

kumarvvr 5y ago

As always, with any crime, the more people involved, the greater the possibility that human factors will sabotage the operation. The perfect crime has one perpetrator. It is also why its fascinating that people will believe in conspiracy theories that supposedly involve tens / hundreds / thousands of people. Theories that we faked the moon landing always intrigue me. Or that the earth is flat.

55555 5y ago
I see your point! I totally do. I also used to hold this belief. But then the Snowden revelations came out and it was revealed that probably 10,000 people in government were aware of a system that was sucking up all of our data for warrantless search and they had successfully kept the secret for something like 10 years (or more?). For sure it's true that a secret can be kept by three people if two of them are dead. But there are clear cases where large groups of people have been able to keep secrets as well, or at least keep them from spilling out into public awareness. I'd bet that for most crimes, the secret isn't kept, and there is someone else out there that knows who did it, who simply doesn't tell law enforcement. And yet most serious crimes aren't solved. Humans have a real need to tell other people personal things, even to their own detriment. But sometimes things stay secrets even if tons of people know about them.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  Eventually, Snowden came out with the truth isn't it. Also, not all of those 10k people might not be knowing what they are doing or don't care. You can cloak a lot of espionage activity with forms, sheets, memos, brainwashing and what not.
- adventured 5y ago
  > But then the Snowden revelations came out and it was revealed that probably 10,000 people in government were aware of a system that was sucking up all of our data for warrantless search and they had successfully kept the secret for something like 10 years (or more?). Illegal domestic electronic espionage/surveillance wasn't a vast secret. It was widely known that the Feds were making every effort they could to push down that road, and the Feds had a very long history of illegal domestic espionage. Frankly, it was obvious that it was going on. A lot of people I know in tech had crossed paths with other people that knew pieces of the puzzle, that some domestic espionage programs were going on (particularly supercharged after 9/11). You'd get snippets of it in discussions. Snowden's revelations were not the first, it was the bombshell that was comprehensive (and only for a small part of what they were doing). It wasn't yet proven, and the full extent wasn't yet known, there wasn't enough credible public evidence to demonstrate exactly what they were doing. There's a huge difference between something not being secret, and being proven, and that's what Snowden's actions helped to correct. While it's in the not-yet-proven stage, the malevolent skeptics in particular will all sandbag any attempt to reveal it, by burying discussions under conspiracy tags and swat away any attempts to dig into what's really going on. Some skeptics do that on purpose because they have a vested interest in doing so, some do that because they're cowards (which is what is represented by the common statement: "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to fear" - it's cowardly people hiding from a moment of confrontation). Ready for another one? They're still performing illegal domestic electronic surveillance. That too isn't some vast secret. Oh I know, but but but they're not supposed to be doing that! Golly.

the-dude 5y ago

It is because you don't hear about the cases which don't slip up.

dogorman 5y ago
Selection bias is a cheap canned answer, but it doesn't make any sense here. Sensational unsolved crimes make the news. The public hearing about crimes isn't conditional on those crimes being solves. Arguably some of the most enduringly notorious crimes are the ones that go unsolved. The Zodiac Killer; never been caught. "D.B. Cooper", never caught. The presumed murder of Jimmy Hoffa, unsolved.
- the-dude 5y ago
  The best crimes do not look like crimes. The police does not put out press releases repeatedly with 'we got no leads'. Such cases fade fast.
  - dogorman 5y ago
    > The best crimes do not look like crimes. Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved crimes. > The police does not put out press releases repeatedly with 'we got no leads'. They do, in all the cases I listed they've asked the public for help for years. Certainly they don't do that for crimes they don't know occurred, but there is no shortage of known crimes that are very publicly unsolved. For that matter, there are also a whole lot of missing person bulletins soliciting information from the public. Many of them might be murder victims, but it isn't known whether they are really alive or dead, let alone murdered. The public is nonetheless asked for information.
    - adventured 5y ago
      > Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved crimes. That's certainly the nice way to put it - "If you're murdered in America, there's a 1 in 3 chance that the police won't identify your killer. To use the FBI's terminology, the national "clearance rate" for homicide today is 64.1 percent. Fifty years ago, it was more than 90 percent." ... "Criminologists estimate that at least 200,000 murders have gone unsolved since the 1960s" https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-third-of-murders-in-america-go-unresolved https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-...

giarc 5y ago

Funny you should mention 'get caught driving over the speed limit'.... from another link in this thread that did happen. Like most plans, Birges’s fell apart rather early on. One of his sons got a speeding ticket, placing him near the ransom drop point. His girlfriend drove off the road, resulting in her hospitalization. https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-looks-like/ https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-loo...

Apocryphon 5y ago

That's how they got the Unabomber.

moioci 5y ago
I would say that wasn't a slip-up, like getting a parking ticket or something. Several newspapers published his manifesto at his insistence, and his brother recognized his writing style.
- abz10 5y ago
  I presume he would have known his writing style was unique and expected people to figure it out once he got what he wanted. It’s an interesting read.

littlecranky67 5y ago

Posting this link (that somebody else posted in this thread) to an article with lot more coverage on the issue that wikipedia: https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ Eventually, the sons of "Big John" caved in to the FBI in interrogation. While the tip of the former girlfriend made the whole family prime suspects in the first place, they did not have anything on them until the sons decided to talk (and get immunity for their involvement in exchange).

bityard 5y ago
What a fascinating story. However, the two sons only decided to talk after the police made each one believe that the other was ratting him out. Classic interrogation technique that I've seen in countless procedural tv shows and movies.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nashashmi 5y ago

The book and movie the Irishman comes to mind when I think about people who got away. They never really can keep their mouth shut. It’s in our nature to tell others who we are and everything we do. It’s why we have social media. It’s our nature.

AceJohnny2 5y ago

The kind of decision-making that leads one to owing a shit-ton of money to a casino, and then deciding that the best solution is to bomb said casino, seems incompatible with covering your tracks well.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SLWW 5y ago

How does that one quote go?... "Two can keep a secret if one is dead"