Criminal Minds

I have long been of the opinion that criminals are not necessarily among the smartest segment of our society.  Maybe it is simply that the more intelligent criminals are too smart to get caught, but I don’t think a lot of Mensa members spend a significant amount of time in jail.

Let me illustrate. 

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Throughout this post, keep in mind, Mensa is the world’s oldest and largest high IQ society, open only to applicants scoring in the 98th percentile for intelligence.

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When I was attending college at the University of Missouri, I worked at Wal-Mart.  My roomy, Roberto, and I decided we’d have a party for some reason I’ve long forgotten.  So we invited lots of our coworkers at Wal-Mart.  I think most of them showed up.

One young man was not too long out of high school…and loud.  At any opportunity he would launch into some story about his experiences, most of which seemed to stray across the lines between legal and illegal at frequent intervals.

He launched into a tale about how he and some friends had gotten high, drunk, or otherwise impaired one time and decided they really needed to break into an area clothing store.

I don’t actually remember if he said they were drunk or high but pretty much all his stories began with, “I was ‘messed’ up,” so I believe I’m safe in saying it.

Anyway, they threw a brick through the front window of a clothing store (I’ll call it Jones’s), then climbed through the shattered window and ran around the place, snatching up whatever took their fancy.

He grabbed a beautiful, high-priced leather jacket, then shoved his arms through the sleeves as he climbed back out through the glass shards and ran.

Police sirens announced the impending arrival of the authorities.

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The next time he actually made it to school, he wasn’t exactly surprised when the principal called him into his office.  He knew where it was.  Rumor has it that he spent more time in the principal’s office than that member of the administration himself.

“Where were you Saturday night?” the principal asked.

“Hanging out with my friends,” the kid replied.

The principal nodded thoughtfully.  “Did you and your friends break into Jones’s?”

“No.  We were just hanging out.”

“Are you sure you didn’t break in Jones’s?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” the boy answered.  “Why do you keep asking me that?”

“One of the things stolen was a jacket just like the one you’re wearing.”

“So?  There are a lot of jackets like this.”

“One of the people who broke in cut himself on the glass.”

“So?”

“You have a cut on the side of your head.”

“So?”

“You also have blood on the back of your jacket.”

The boy was feeling a little trapped, so he quickly explained, “No I don’t.  That’s ketchup.”

“Ketchup?” the principal asked.  “Why is it on the back of your jacket?”

The boy thought fast.  There was a cut on the side of his head and blood on the back of the jacked.  He tried quickly to come up with an explanation, but his intellect failed him.  “I was putting it on when I climbed out of the window.”

I’m pretty sure his Mensa application was returned, stamped, “You’re kidding, right?”

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A few years after that I was running a delivery service in and around Columbia.  A friend had a system of newspaper machines that included part of my delivery area.  He asked me if I would load the machine since I was going past it anyway.

You know me…nice guy.  I said, “yes.”

One day I arrived to find the spot where the machine had stood was empty. 

I first contacted my friend and then the police.  The cops took a report and promised to keep their eyes open for the stray newspaper machine.

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Not too many days later, I got a call from the authorities.  They had found the machine and explained to me that it had been damaged.  They wanted me to look at the machine and tell them how much money had been taken, for their report.  I asked them to give it back to the newspaper company.  They did. 

I checked out the machine and couldn’t help but chuckle.  The extensive damage to the coin box bore witness to some serious work, probably involving a hammer, a chisel, and a pry-bar.  There was no evidence of a metal-cutting saw at all…just pure, sweaty, hard work.  When I counted the newspapers the thieves had left I laughed out loud and told the cops, “They probably put in several hours of hard work to net them a total of 50 cents.

I’ll bet they had to ask for help filling out their Mensa application.

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Now I have no way to actually know exactly what happened in my next story or what the young man was thinking.  I can only go by the evidence and the police investigators’ suspicions.

Joseph Schexnider wasn’t a really bad child.  He did get into some trouble as a kid growing up in Abbeville, Louisiana.  I suspect there were problems at home because, by the time he was eight or nine, he had started running away.

He dropped out his freshman year of high school and found work doing odd jobs.  Once he got bored with whatever job he’d found, he would just quit and look for something else.  He even got a job selling cotton candy and peanuts for a traveling circus but, when the circus went overseas, Joseph was left stranded in New York until his local church bought him a plane ticket home to Abbeville.  He enlisted in the National Guard but was discharged after a short time for medical reasons.

After all that, Joseph became a wanderer, traveling from town to town and state to state, working long enough to earn traveling money before moving on.

In 1983 the 22-year-old was arrested for being in possession of a stolen car.  His court date was set for January of 1984, but the day came and went with no sign of Joseph.  His family didn’t know where he was and the cops couldn’t find him.  It was assumed he had run away to escape punishment for his crimes.

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Now this part is my speculation.  I think Joseph felt he was going to get locked up soon, and chose to get some quick cash to run away.  What better place to get some money than the Abbeville National Bank?  But there was another problem.  He didn’t have any money in it.  He went to the bank anyway.  Due to security there was no obvious mode of access into the building.  He found a way to climb up onto the top of the building and looked for any way he could gain access.

Then he saw a chimney.

Yup.  Without even a Santa suit, he climbed in.

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Recently, the bank was undergoing renovations.  A contractor opened the long-sealed chimney and discovered Joseph Schexnider inside, where he had been since sliding down inside the chimney 27 years before.  He didn’t look too good. 

If I had to guess, I’d say Joseph had never even heard of Mensa.

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