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Chutzpah! Authorities in Concord, N.H., arrested Frank Drake, 37, in October, after finding him watering one of his several marijuana-plant gardens alongside Interstate 89. Police seized 44 plants on the southbound side and 88 on the northbound side.

Authorities in Concord, N.H., arrested Frank Drake, 37, in October, after finding him watering one of his several marijuana-plant gardens alongside Interstate 89. Police seized 44 plants on the southbound side and 88 on the northbound side.

Don't Criminals Need to Keep a Low Profile? (1) Community activist Steven Myrick, 41, was convicted in October of a rape in Torrance, Calif., that had gone unsolved for seven years. Myrick had called attention to himself during a public housing demonstration in which he mooned police officers and was arrested (and a subsequent DNA test tied him to the rape). (2) Vincent Scheffner, 63, a municipal parking-meter worker in St. Paul, Minn., was under investigation at press time on suspicion of theft after a local credit union reported that he had been regularly depositing, for the last year, enormous amounts of coins into his account.

In September in Escatawpa, Miss., Curtiss Coleman, 53, attempting to dial 411 directory assistance, mistakenly dialed 911, though he immediately hung up. However, police routinely investigate dropped-911 calls and discovered Coleman's methamphetamine lab.

Quinton Thomas, 22, inadvertently strengthened the murder charge against him in April when he mailed a letter from the jail in Rockville, Md., believing that the contents would not be read by jail officials. However, Thomas had gotten the recipient's address wrong, causing the post office to "return to sender," and, as longstanding policy, officials inspect all incoming mail (for contraband). According to an August Washington Post report, Thomas characterized his emerging alibis and also wrote, about a witness, "This white

According to police in Warsaw, Poland, novelist Krystian Bala might have gotten away with torturing and murdering a businessman in 2000 if only he had resisted writing about his crime in his 2003 novel Amok. The trail for the killer had been cold for several years until a tipster informed police of the book. In the plot, which authorities say bore a distinct resemblance to the 2000 murder, were details that police say could only have been known by the killer. After investigating, police found several other ties Bala had to the crime, including the fact that the victim was Bala's ex-wife's lover. Bala was sentenced in September to 25 years in prison.