By Tim Binnall
Miscreants, crooks, and other assorted criminals were up to their usual tricks in 2022 as various ne'er-do-wells were busted for all manner of strange, unusual, and illegal misadventures. A dead body scheme resembling the film Weekend at Bernie's, a security guard who drew eyes on a painting worth $1 million, and a smuggling bust featuring 230 pounds of contraband bologna were among the incredibly odd crimes which came to light this past year along with the shocking destruction of the Georgia Guidestones and a cavalcade of cases involving creepy clowns making mischief. With that in mind, here is this year's installment of C2C's proverbial police log that we've come to call the Bizarre Blotter:
- Assault: An angry man in California put an end to a drummer's early morning jam session by smashing his set with an ax, a Massachusetts woman unleashed a swarm of bees (seen above) upon police while protesting an eviction notice, and a scuffle broke out between a Flat Earth enthusiast and a skeptic at Kent State.
- Burglary: Cops in China found the culprit behind a series of break-ins by extracting his DNA from a mosquito that he had killed at one of the crime scenes.
- Creepy Clown Cases: Haunting harlequins terrorized teens at a British beach as well as a neighborhood in England by driving around in a van playing creepy music. In Brazil, cops busted a clown who had been frightening residents of a town, and grease-painted rascals allegedly pilfered a puppy in Australia and stole candy from a church in New Jersey.
- Destruction of Artwork: Following a fight with his girlfriend, a Texas man burst into a museum and proceeded to destroy a staggering $5 million in ancient artifacts. A tourist visiting the Vatican smashed a pair of 2,000-year-old busts after his request to meet the Pope was denied.
- Dangerous Driving: A misguided motorist in Rome drove his Maserati down the city's famed Spanish Steps. A Canadian woman took her car onto the top of a frozen lake and then snapped a selfie atop her vehicle after it broke through the ice and began sinking. In Indiana, a man was busted for driving a motorized Walmart cart down the highway. An Israeli man was caught letting a dog drive his car, and a Las Vegas motorist in a wrong-way crash blamed the incident on the ghost of Dale Earnhardt Sr.
- Fraud: Two men in Ireland were accused of trying to pass off their dead uncle as still being alive so that they could collect his pension check, and a Japanese woman was bilked out of $30,000 after falling victim to an online scammer who claimed to be a Russian cosmonaut in love with her.
- Grand Theft Auto: A Florida man was arrested for allegedly stealing a truck and then driving it to a United States Space Force base in what he explained was an attempt to warn the government about aliens.
- Identity Theft: Federal authorities arrested a couple who had been inexplicably living under stolen identities for decades and some suspect they could be Russian spies.
- Murder: An Oklahoma man told police that he was forced to murder his fishing buddy after the victim had attempted to summon Sasquatch to attack him.
- Reckless Endangerment: Fearing this his neighbor's home was occupied by telepathic aliens that were tormenting him, a Tennessee man fired his shotgun at the residence and, understandably, wound up behind bars.
- Psychic Swindling: A 'spiritual healer' was sued for allegedly conning a New York City man out of $1 million, a 'faith healer' was wanted after hammering nails into a woman's head to influence the gender of her next baby, a Canadian woman warned the word about phony TikTok 'clairvoyants' after giving one such individual $10,000, and a wild scheme hatched by a woman in Brazil saw a psychic enlisted to help bilk her mother out of a massive $139 million art fortune.
- Smuggling: Cops in California busted a man trying to sneak over the border with 52 snakes, while police in Texas caught a couple who were trying to enter the country with 230 pounds of contraband bologna. A whopping 109 wild animals, including two armadillos, two white hedgehogs, 20 snakes, and 35 turtles, were found in the luggage of two women at an airport in Thailand, and police in Spain uncovered an incredible menagerie of taxidermied endangered animals hidden in a warehouse.
- Theft: An Arizona man was arrested for allegedly stealing a dinosaur claw worth $25,000, thieves in India somehow made off with a 60-foot-long bridge, and a confused museum patron thought a jacket in an art exhibition was someone's forgotten coat, so she took it home and had it altered to fit her. A burglar in Texas cut the grass outside of a home before stealing the lawnmower, a woman in India accused her husband of surreptitiously taking her kidney, and a $6,000 velociraptor vanished from outside a museum in Florida.
- Trespassing: A group of teenagers in Mexico were busted breaking into a graveyard in order to hold a Ouija board session, and a tourist visiting Pompeii was caught driving a moped around the site's restricted areas.
- Vandalism: The legendary Georgia Guidestones were destroyed by way of a bomb blast, a bored security guard added eyes to a $1 million painting in Russia, a climate protestor pelted the Mona Lisa with cake, and troublemakers spray painted 'aliens exist' on the side of Rome's iconic Parthenon.