How to Catch A Criminal: When Life Gives You Lemons

Every officer with a decent amount of time on the job knows the unexpected turns an investigation can take. Seeing a major case through to completion often involves giving up on a theory and taking your investigation in a different direction as new information becomes available. In How to Catch A Criminal, we look at the many ways not-so-perfect crimes are solved. This month, the perfect bank robbery goes sour.

We have all likely come across people who suffer from an inflated sense of confidence. Maybe we work with them, maybe we come across them as a suspect in an investigation. Regardless, there seems to be quite a few people walking around certain they know more than they actually do. Take, for example, the average “jailhouse lawyer." Individuals who have been arrested so many times, they feel they have a firm grasp on legal procedure. However, if they are legal experts, why do they end up spending so much time in jail, unable to avoid arrest and prosecution? Naturally, the answer is because they aren't experts. Certain people tend to be so confident in their knowledge, they never stop to consider how much information they don't know or if what they do know is accurate. Simply put, if someone is too foolish to understand a concept, they may also be too foolish to recognize that they don't understand that concept. This phenomenon, known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, has been studied at length, and found that failure to recognize your own shortcomings can lead to an inflated self-assessment. Professor David Dunning and graduate student Justin Kruger were inspired to research this phenomenon after reading about a series of robberies which struck the Greater Pittsburgh Area in 1995. The men behind these robberies were so confident in their master plan that it never occurred to them it could be flawed.

This article appeared in the January/February issue of OFFICER Magazine. Click Here to subscribe to OFFICER Magazine.

On January 6, 1995, two men walked into the Mellon Bank branch in Swissvale, Pennsylvania, about 9 miles outside of Pittsburgh. One stood in line, acting as the lookout. The other man approached the teller before drawing a firearm and demanding cash. The teller handed him around $5,000, and just like that, the man turned to leave the bank, joined by his accomplice. The job was quick, clean, and easy. So easy in fact, the two men pulled a repeat performance at a Fidelity Savings Bank branch in nearby Brighton Heights. The robbers had effortlessly managed to fill their pockets, no doubt because of expert planning and execution. They must have been quite confident in their ability to rob the banks without being caught, because neither man bothered to conceal their face. No masks, no sunglasses, no wigs or false mustaches. Just two brilliant thieves getting rich quick.

As with any bank robbery, law enforcement immediately launched a thorough investigation. As part of the investigation, detectives obtained security camera footage from the banks. In what was surely a surprise, detectives saw that not only were the men's faces not hidden, but they made sure to look directly at each security camera and smile on their way out. They were left wondering why anyone would go through the trouble of robbing a bank without trying to hide their identity. Nevertheless, within a week, one of the robbers had been identified.

On January 12, Clifton Earl Johnson was arrested and charged with the bank robbery. He was also connected to two unrelated robberies from the year prior. There was little doubt that he was the man waiting in line while his accomplice held up the teller. With Johnson behind bars, it wasn't long before detectives identified the second man as McArthur Weeler. For months, authorities searched for Johnson’s friend. Despite making himself quite visible during the bank robberies, Wheeler was doing a great job of keeping a low profile. He managed to avoid detection until April 19. That night on the evening news, Pittsburgh Crime Stoppers aired a segment about the bank robberies and showed an image of Wheeler from the security camera footage. This image led to a flood of anonymous tips regarding his whereabouts. Shortly after the broadcast aired, just past midnight on April 20, McArthur Wheeler was found and arrested. Unaware that he had made the news earlier that night, Wheeler believed he still had the ultimate alibi. As far as he was concerned, nobody could identify him from the bank security cameras. This was of course thanks to the careful preparation and planning he and Johnson had done.

Wheeler was brought into the interrogation room, where he was questioned about the hold-ups. He denied involvement and figured a lack of evidence would set him free. To his absolute shock, detectives presented him photos of he and Johnson in the process of robbing the banks. He couldn’t hide his confusion as he exclaimed, “But I wore the lemon juice! I wore the lemon juice.” Detectives asked him to elaborate, and that is when McArthur Wheeler revealed he and Clifton Johnson's foolproof plan.

Sometime prior to the bank robberies, Johnson came up with a brilliant idea, which he shared with Wheeler. Johnson explained that if you write on paper with lemon juice and allow it to dry, it disappears and can be used as invisible ink. While this is true, Johnson seemed to lack an understanding of the chemical process. He believed lemon juice causes invisibility, when in reality, lemon juice will dry clear until a heat source releases carbons that turn the juice brown, making it visible. He knew little enough about the juice’s properties to think that he knew it all. This led him to concoct the most cunning heist ever devised. They would simply rub lemon juice on their faces, walk into the bank like normal, rob the teller, and walk out. The lemon juice would render their faces invisible to security cameras, therefore no one will ever be able to place them at the scene of the crime. Unsurprisingly, Wheeler was skeptical of this plan and thought they should run a test first. With his eyes stinging from the juice, Wheeler took a picture of himself using a Polaroid camera. It appeared Johnson was right. Wheeler did not show up in the photograph. That was all the proof he needed to go ahead with the robberies.

After explaining all of this to the detectives, they could only surmise that Wheeler had used the camera improperly, perhaps pointing it in the wrong direction because the juice got in his eyes. The bank footage, however, had no trouble capturing the citrus bandits. Johnson took a guilty plea and testified against Wheeler in exchange for a 5-year sentence. Wheeler, as the man who pulled the gun on the tellers, received a much harsher 24 years in prison. The unfortunate truth of the matter Is that Wheeler was right to doubt the juices capabilities, and he paid a terrible price for Johnson's misguided confidence.