The Continuing Adventures Of Mr. Genius

I witnessed this on TV over 30 years ago. It was the time where taxes on cigarettes in Quebec got very high. There were a lot of robberies of convenience stores, and they were stealing only cigarettes. Then, in the news, they showed a video of a robbery captured on security camera footage. A group of guys broke into a convenience store carrying a large trashcan, and while two of them grabbed all the cigarettes they could and put them in the trashcan, one, all smiling with a face saying, “D***! I’m so smart!” approached the camera with a pair of snippers and cut the video wire.

Apparently, Mr. Genius thought that cutting the wire would “erase” everything. Of course, they never took the videotape out. Police caught them a few days later.

During the same period, I was working as a service rep for a copier company. I got a call because there had been a break-in at a customer’s convenience store and the copier was damaged. It turned out that glass shards from the front door had fallen into the copier when the cigarette robbers broke in. Their location was slightly remote.

The police were still there when I arrived.

I asked the manager if he had them on a security camera.

He said, “Actually, it’s our third break-in. They figured out the schedule of the police rounds and hit when they were the farthest from here. The first two times, they managed to break into the office and grab the cassette. But not this time. We secured the VTR and jammed the cassette in. The police are looking at the footage as we speak. Smiling.”