Cops: Laptop Thief Busted After Customer Service Call

(Newser) – Calling customer service for help with your laptop is generally a fine idea, but maybe not if you stole the thing in a home burglary. Police in New Hampshire say they made an arrest on Monday and recovered a computer stolen in February 2013 thanks to that very scenario, reports WMUR. The break came when Apple emailed the original owner and thanked him for calling customer service. Except he hadn't.

Someone else had done so, using the long-gone laptop's serial number as a reference. "It then took us a while to track down the individual who made the phone call, but we were able to put that together and ultimately come up with enough evidence to charge him with the original burglary and recover the computer," says a detective. It might be "the only example of when a broken computer is a good thing," observes the Consumerist.

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Cops: Man Freed After 15 Years Robs Same Store

(Newser) – Christopher Miller robbed the Stride Rite shoe store in Toms River, NJ, in 1999, got caught, and served 15 years in state prison. Police say he became a free man on Friday and celebrated by catching a bus to Toms River and, yes, robbing the same Stride Rite shoe store, reports the Star-Ledger. Though he had 15 years to stew over what went wrong the first time, authorities say this robbery didn't go so well, either. Two employees were so slow in handing over cash that the "agitated" robber grabbed the register drawer himself and fled on foot, reports the Ocean County Signal. (The employees refused to hand over their keys, scotching any hopes for a getaway vehicle.)

They called the cops—the apparent plan was to tie them up in a storage room, as happened in the 1999 robbery, but the employees refused to go—and within minutes, a police K-9 unit tracked down Williams and recovered the stolen $389, reports the Daily Record. Miller is charged with robbery and is being held on $100,000 bond. The 40-year-old is from Tulsa, Okla., and police aren't sure what his connection is to Toms River, besides maybe nostalgia.

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Cops: Arby's Burglar Gets Stuck in Ventilation Shaft

(Newser) – It probably seemed like the perfect plan on paper: Climb up on the roof of the local Arby's after it closed for the night, zip inside through the ventilation shaft, and then plunder the store's vast riches. Except police say a would-be burglar in South Carolina ended up stuck in that ventilation shaft for about 10 hours—until the morning crew opened up and heard him shouting for help, reports CarolinaLive. Rescuers had to cut him out of there, and he suffered dehydration and a possible broken arm. Laquain Deshawn Guy, 22, will face second-degree burglary charges as soon as he's out of the hospital. Advises the Consumerist: "Take that as a lesson, bad consumers: You are not in Mission: Impossible and the universe has its own way of dealing with you if you forget that fact."

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Man Caught Growing Pot, Thanks to Own Home Alarm

(Newser) – It's generally a fine idea to set up a secure alarm system at your house that alerts police at the first sign of trouble. Unless, of course, you happen to be growing marijuana illegally inside. Such is the fate of 53-year-old Marlon Gene Kelley of Muskegon, Mich., reports MLive. Kelley's home alarm tripped one day when he wasn't home, and officers arrived at the scene and walked inside through an unlocked door. They found eight plants, five guns, and a bunch of grow equipment. For Kelley, it all added up to three to 12 years in prison.

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Feds: Con Sent Obama Threat to Wrong Address

(Newser) – President Obama might currently have one of the better-known addresses in America, but that piece of trivia was apparently lost on the Pennsylvania inmate charged with trying to send him a threat. Joseph Savage gets his latest day in court today, and prosecutors allege that, while cooling his heels in Fayette County lockup in late 2012, the 34-year-old convicted child molester sent Obama a letter threatening "to kill and to kidnap and to inflict bodily harm" on a member of the president's family and to "torture and murder the president upon being released from prison." Problem? He mailed it to 1400 Pennsylvania Ave., and Barry lives a couple of doors up the street. Delivery challenges aside, the letter arrived and was promptly turned over to authorities, the AP reports.

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What Not to Do When Angry About Pot Dealer

(Newser) – Two strange marijuana-related arrests from the police blotter: Bad strategy: A woman in East Texas got herself arrested after she called police to complain that a dealer had sold her low-quality marijuana, reports the AP. Evelyn Hamilton spent $40 on the pot and says she called the cops when the dealer refused to give her a refund. She was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia—after pulling the pot she had left from her bra as proof.Bad strategy, II: When police pulled over a driver in Maine and found marijuana in the car, he told them it couldn't possibly be his. The reason? He fessed up to having just stolen the vehicle, reports the Franklin Sun Journal. Police say Douglas Glidden was telling truth about the stolen car, but he still faces charges of theft, driving under the influence, and, yes, possession of marijuana.

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Dumbest Thing Ever Said to a Cop During DUI Stop

(Newser) – He was pulled over with glassy eyes, slurred speech, a boozy smell, and he blew well over the legal limit on his BAC test, so 61-year-old Michael Moore probably couldn't say much to help his case. But this? He "told me that his wife told him that he (had) been drinking too much so he decided to go out and 'drive it off,'" writes his arresting officer in Stuart, Fla., reports UPI. Also, Moore (not the filmmaker), who was pulled over for speeding just after midnight on Feb.13, mentioned that he was headed to a bar for a few more drinks after the spat with his wife, reports TCPalm. Despite his reasonable explanations, Moore got busted on DUI charges.

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Police Find Mom Hiding in Bedroom at Teen Party

(Newser) – Not that unusual: Cops show up to bust a teen party involving booze, and find someone hiding in a bedroom. Unusual: That person is the home's 56-year-old owner, and mother to the 18-year-old who threw the bash. Police say they arrived at the home in Naples, Fla., just after midnight yesterday, to find beer cans, bottles, and pot in the yard; as they approached, the partiers went inside and shut lights off, reports ABC7. Mariel Weinand, 18, answered the knock on the door—with the assistance of the two girls who were keeping her upright, say police—and passed along her mom's cell phone number. Police rang Carolyn Weinand, who said she was unaware of the party and out of town.

She also gave them the OK to break up the party, which they moved inside to do. And that's when they say they found people hiding in a number of rooms and closets—and Carolyn Weinand hiding in a bedroom. She then changed her tune: The Naples Daily News reports that Weinand kept making "statements trying to justify having the party and allowing alcohol," per police, among them that she thought they'd be safe if they didn't have to drive. She says she didn't buy the booze, but she's charged with 26 counts of selling, giving, or serving alcoholic beverages to persons under the age of 21 all the same. Both mother and daughter were hit with one count of having an open house party. (Weinand certainly isn't the first parent to get caught at a teen party.)

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Suspect's Giveaway: He Was 'Walking Awkwardly'

(Newser) – Pro tip: If you're going to smuggle heroin in your underwear, try to walk like a normal person while doing so. Bernard Charles apparently couldn't manage that, so when Customs and Border Protection officers spotted him "walking awkwardly" at New York's JFK Airport on April 1, they patted him down—and found a "hard object in [his] groin area" that ended up being two clear packages holding 1.79 pounds of heroin, according to US Homeland Security.

Charles, a 42-year-old citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, was initially detained when he disembarked Caribbean Airlines Flight 520 and appeared "visibly nervous," avoiding eye contact; customs officers were examining his suitcase at the time, CBS New York reports, and they brought him to a private search room. That's when they noticed his gait and patted him down, the New York Daily News reports. The drugs he was allegedly carrying are worth more than $70,000 on the street, according to authorities. He faces 10 years in prison for drug smuggling. (A celeb recently confessed to smuggling cocaine onto planes, for her own personal use.)

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