McArthur Wheeler was just your average middle-aged man from Pittsburgh who, one day in 1995, decided to rob a bank.
Well, two really.
In broad daylight.
Oh, and with no disguise, his bare-naked face exposed for all to see.
The first robbery went off without a hitch, and he even gave the surveillance cameras a cheeky grin on his way out. Emboldened by his successful haul, he merrily went on to his next bank, pulled this robbery just as smoothly as the first, and flashed the same catch-me-if-you-can grin at the cameras as he exited.
Satisfied with his day’s handiwork, he trotted off home to take stock of his takings.
Later that night there was a knock on his door. Well, several large, heavy knocks that rattled the door in its frame and echoed down the hallway, to be honest. Curious as to who would be knocking on his door at this time of night, he opened the door and was surprised to find the police standing there, handcuffs at the ready.
At the police station, confused, in disbelief, Wheeler, couldn’t fathom out how he had been identified. He was not just shocked that they had managed to track him down so quickly, but that they had managed to track him down at all.
Even after the police showed him the surveillance tapes of him actually robbing the banks and his grinning face for all the world to see, immortalized on film, he was still at a loss as to how they had found him.
When asked how he thought he could get away with robbing two banks in broad daylight with no disguise, his explanation was interesting, to say the least.
Before each job, Wheeler explained, he had meticulously rubbed lemon juice all over his face, having read that lemon juice can be used as invisible ink when writing. In his mind, there was no reason why it shouldn’t make him invisible to the surveillance cameras as well!
Thinking that he was pulling their leg, the police referred him to a psychologist, after charging him, of course. He evaluated Wheeler to see if he was pretending not to know what was going on, if he was crazy, or if he was a drug user. The findings of his study showed that it was none of the above.
He was just simply incompetent. He was not crazy, he was not playing the fool, but the final analysis confirmed that he was definitely lemon-juiced up.