No. They called Floyd Robinson. Robinson drove out in his tow truck to give the hapless Fry the professional assistance he should have sought in the first place. Naturally, Robinson managed to get his truck stuck in the dirt as well. The comedy of errors continued as the steadily increasing pile of stranded vehicles had to call another tow truck. So they called ... Charley ... Bergin?

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"No. This is Greg. Charley's in the bathroom, hold on ..."

This time, yes, they called Bergin. He was already having a bad night, which wasn't improved by getting called out to the middle of nowhere to pull three idiots out of the dirt. Shortly after arriving, Bergin's wife called him to nag about something, but due to the shitty phone reception, he couldn't hear what she was saying, so he got super pissed off and threw his phone into the sand, to later be discovered by police.

When Bergin recounted the unlikely story to police, they weren't sure whether or not Bergin was the world's most needlessly convoluted liar, so they traced the chain of unlucky motorists back to Robert Fry. Forensic evidence connected him to the body, and also to a bunch of other bodies, enough to get him the death penalty. "I didn't murder all of them," Fry should have said, "I just murdered the last one, who murdered the one before that, who murdered the one before that ..."

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"... who murdered Kevin Bacon."

In June 2011, a young Macon, Georgia, woman named Lauren Giddings was reported missing, so a pair of detectives went to check her apartment. They found no trace of Giddings, but that was fine -- they'd already solved the case accidentally, by parking their patrol car in front of a row of trash cans. When the garbage man arrived, he was unable to collect the trash, so he just kept on driving. Her corpse was found in one of the uncollected cans later that day. Had those cops been willing to walk just a little farther, they may never have found her killer. Yes, a murder case solved by the laziness of police.

That's not the only lucky coincidence that led police to Giddings' murderer. Later the same day, local media conducted a bizarre interview with one of her neighbors, Stephen McDaniel. This guy:

13WMAZ
Forget the spoiler alert. You already know he's the murderer.

It was a run-of-the-mill interview in which McDaniel expressed his concern for his neighbor's safety, until the reporter mentioned the fact that Giddings' body had just been discovered. If you're curious, here's what it looks like at the exact second a murderer realizes he's boned:

"Wait, trash day is on Monday?"

If McDaniel had kept his cool, he might never have appeared on the police radar. But detectives took notice of his poorly concealed panic, and soon discovered enough forensic evidence to pin him to the crime, to which he pleaded guilty. Interestingly, McDaniel was a law graduate who was preparing to take his bar exam. You'd figure he'd be better at lying.

In the summer of 1976, New York City was terrorized by one of the most infamous serial killers of all time. Over the course of the next year, this unidentified psychopath carried out a series of random shootings, murdering six people and wounding seven others. He taunted the police and the media with anonymous letters, referring to himself as the "Son Of Sam."

thecriminalmindblog
Sam probably won't be hanging this one on the fridge.

The killer turned out to be a postal employee named David Berkowitz. His motive was about as sane as that of any unhinged psychopath -- he claimed his neighbor's dog was possessed by a demon and commanded him to kill. But the truly batshit ones are often the hardest to catch. The completely random nature of the crimes made it impossible to predict where or when he would strike. Indeed, the Berkowitz case was solved not by hard-hitting detective work but by the Son Of Sam's flagrant disregard for the traffic code.

In the early morning hours of July 31, 1977, Berkowitz parked his car in a Brooklyn neighborhood. He walked several blocks to shoot his last two victims before returning to his vehicle and driving away. At some point during this series of events, a pair of patrolmen noticed that Berkowitz's car was parked in front of a fire hydrant and ticketed it. Later, a neighborhood resident out walking her dog (a perfectly reasonable thing to do in Brooklyn at 2 in the morning while a serial killer is running rampant) saw a man running to his car in an awful hurry, and remembered that there was a ticket on his windshield. After hearing about the shooting that morning, she reported it to police.

Thomas Monaster/New York Daily News
"He's running around covered in blood and screaming? This is pre-Giuliani NYC;
you're gonna have to be more specific."

The cops traced the ticket to Berkowitz and decided to pay him a visit. When they arrived at his apartment and found his car, they noticed a note on the dashboard that they immediately recognized for its distinctive and famous handwriting -- the childish, all-capitals scrawl of the Son Of Sam. Berkowitz confessed his identity the moment he was arrested. If you're taking note, that is now two murders solved by people unwilling to look for a proper parking spot. Feel free to use this excuse next time you're in traffic court.