Many of these stories are stolen (um … borrrowed) from anecdotage.com. Other sources are attributed where known.
Bugged
While visiting Moscow to play the Russians in the historic Summit Series (in 1972), the Canadian hockey team was assigned a room in an elegant hotel, which they suspected had been bugged:
“We searched the room for microphones,” Phil Esposito recalled. “In the center of the room, we found a funny-looking, round piece of metal embedded in the floor, under the rug. We figured we had found the bug. We dug it out of the floor and heard a crash beneath us. We had released the anchor to the chandelier in the ceiling below.”
Secret Police?
While serving as America’s ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman was shadowed everywhere by secret police. One wintry weekend, Harriman, invited to visit a British diplomat at his country estate, kindly advised his shadows that the property was only accessible by means of a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Nonetheless, the police set off after Harriman’s jeep in a standard-issue sedan.
Sure enough, they soon became bogged down and an agent was dispatched on foot. First, Harriman had the jeep slow down so the man could keep up. He soon became concerned that the man would freeze to death, however, and stopped the jeep to offer him a ride, promising not to tell his superiors. The man accepted, and ambassador and policeman rode together for the remainder of the journey. (anecdotage.com & Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes)
Steamship Snapshot
An Englishman was accused of murdering a friend in Rio de Janeiro harbour. One evening he returned in his yacht with the body of his friend who, he asserted, had been killed by falling from the masthead. An oar was missing, and doctors said that the wound might have been caused by such a weapon. And the friends had quarreled two days before.
But it fortunately happened that a passenger entering the harbour on a steamship had taken a snapshot which included the yacht. When developed, a black spot was visible against the sail. This, on enlargement of the photograph, appeared quite distinctly as a man falling from the masthead towards the deck. As a result of this extraordinary coincidence, and on the evidence of the photograph, the accused man was, of course, acquitted.” (anecdotage.com & Henry T.F. Rhodes: Clues & Crimes)
Fingerprints
On his ninetieth birthday, George Bernard Shaw was visited by Scotland Yard’s celebrated Detective Fabian. To mark the occasion, Fabian suggested that Shaw’s fingerprints be recorded for posterity. Incredibly, so faint were Shaw’s prints that no impression could be made.
“Well,” Shaw playfully declared, “had I known this sooner I should certainly have chosen another profession!” (anecdotage.com & C. Fadiman, ed, Barlett’s Anecdotes)
FBI Secrets
After evading New York police for a year, Michael LaRock was finally arrested in February 2002, after calling them from Auburn, Georgia to brag that he would never be caught. When he called back a second time, he was startled to find Auburn police at his door. Dispatch supervisor Carol Perry later explained how he was caught: “We have caller ID.”
(anecdotage.com & “Best Kept Secrets of… FBI Education” (Discovery Channel)
Willie $utton
The notorious bandit Willie Sutton was once asked why he had decided to rob banks. Sutton’s reply? “Because that’s where the money is.” (anecdotage.com & Theodore White: America in Search of Itself)
Tickled Pinkerton
Dashiell Hammett’s eight years working as a Pinkerton detective (between 1915 and 1922) taught him invaluable lessons about clever – and not so clever – sleuthing. On one occasion, the man he had been hired to tail wandered into the country and managed to become quite lost; Hammett himself was obliged to direct him back to the city. Once Hammett was engaged by the defense during the Fatty Arbuckle rape-and-murder trial. He also once foiled a heist (of $125,000 in gold) when he found the booty stuffed down the smokestack of a ship about to embark for Australia. (anecdotage.com & D. Johnson, Dashiell Hammett)