Insane Coincidences That Solved 'Unsolvable' Crimes
In the real world, crimes are solved with a lot of tedious investigation by professional detectives sitting at a desk, filling out paperwork and poring through reams of witness reports. It doesn't make for compelling TV. That's how it goes down most of the time, anyway. But occasionally all of that painstaking legwork counts for nothing, and a serious crime can be solved by a series of coincidences so implausible that they'd be cut from the first draft of a CSI episode.
5. A Woman's Murder Is Solved By The General Lack Of All-Wheel Drive
In 2000, a woman named Betty Lee was found murdered in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Police didn't have a lot to go on -- just a cellphone, discarded in the dirt near a web of tire tracks. The phone was traced to a tow truck driver named Charley Bergin, and this one piece of evidencecracked the case wide open. But Charley Bergin was not the killer. This story is a lot dumber than that.
The real killer was a guy named Robert Fry. With the help of an accomplice, Fry abducted the victim from a parking lot and drove her out into the desert to kill her. Unfortunately for them, Fry's car got stuck in the dirt on the way back from the crime scene. Ah, so he called Charley Bergin to help him out, right?
No. He called his father, James Fry, to bring his pickup to help wrench them out. But just to prove that stupidity is hereditary, the elder Fry's pickup also got stuck in the dirt during the rescue mission, stranding all of them. Now they were forced to call a tow truck to pull both vehicles to safety. So they called Charley Bergin, right?
No. They called Floyd Robinson. Robinson drove out in his tow truck to give the hapless Fry the professional assistance he should have sought in the first place. Naturally, Robinson managed to get his truck stuck in the dirt as well. The comedy of errors continued as the steadily increasing pile of stranded vehicles had to call another tow truck. So they called ... Charley ... Bergin?
This time, yes, they called Bergin. He was already having a bad night, which wasn't improved by getting called out to the middle of nowhere to pull three idiots out of the dirt. Shortly after arriving,Bergin's wife called him to nag about something, but due to the shitty phone reception, he couldn't hear what she was saying, so he got super pissed off and threw his phone into the sand, to later be discovered by police.
When Bergin recounted the unlikely story to police, they weren't sure whether or not Bergin was the world's most needlessly convoluted liar, so they traced the chain of unlucky motorists back to Robert Fry. Forensic evidence connected him to the body, and also to a bunch of other bodies, enough to get him the death penalty. "I didn't murder all of them," Fry should have said, "I just murdered the last one, who murdered the one before that, who murdered the one before that ..."
4. A Murder Is Solved Because The Cops Are Lazy
In June 2011, a young Macon, Georgia, woman named Lauren Giddings was reported missing, so a pair of detectives went to check her apartment. They found no trace of Giddings, but that was fine -- they'd already solved the case accidentally, by parking their patrol car in front of a row of trash cans. When the garbage man arrived, he was unable to collect the trash, so he just kept on driving. Her corpse was found in one of the uncollected cans later that day. Had those cops been willing to walk just a little farther, they may never have found her killer. Yes, a murder case solved by the laziness of police.
That's not the only lucky coincidence that led police to Giddings' murderer. Later the same day, local media conducted a bizarre interview with one of her neighbors, Stephen McDaniel. This guy:
