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Texas pizza shop responds cleverly after thieves steal a tip jar but leave a cowboy hat behind

No one saw the big twist coming.

via Canva and Lebos

A cowboy hat and a tip jar.

A story out of Wichita Falls, Texas, is an excellent reminder that even though there are people who do wrong in this world, there are plenty more to step up and do good. On December 28, some teenagers entered Stone Oven Pizza and stole the employee tip jar. But they left behind a big clue the restaurant owners thought might leave them to the crooks: a tan-colored Justin Bent Rail cowboy hat.

“Last night, our crew ran into an incident where some teenagers stole the tips out of the tip jar,” Stone Oven wrote on Facebook. “However, luckily enough, they left this hat.” To help compensate the employees whose tips were stolen, the pizza joint reached out to the community on its Facebook page to recoup the losses by auctioning off the hat.

“We’re not a big fan of hats around here, however, we know the beautiful community of Wichita Falls is, and we would like to open up an auction,” the post said. “The highest bidder by Tuesday afternoon will win the prize of this authentic cowboy jicama-giga! All proceeds will be divided evenly between the three team members that lost out on Tips last night!”

stone oven pizza, wichita falls texas, ninja turtlesStone Oven Pizzavia Google

The kind folks of Wichita Falls got the bid up to $200, but some people thought the hat should be used to catch the crooks. “Yall seen Cinderella?” asked someone else. “Line up all the men in the kingdom. We’ll find that prince charming!” However, just before the pizza place would give the hat to the highest bidder, a man who was the hat’s original owner came forward.

“What this attention also did was allow us to find the original owner of the hat… not the teenager that dropped it, but the gentleman whose truck was broken into that those kids had stolen it from,” Stone Oven wrote. "While the owners of Stone Oven were prepared to meet this man in mutual combat to defend the wages of our team… It was the team members themselves that decided this man’s head was indeed looking cold… we will be returning the property to its’ rightful owner… do not worry the employees have been given $50 bonuses for altruism and compassion."

The beautiful thing was that even though they couldn’t auction off the hat to help the employees, some community members donated a couple hundred dollars for them to split. “Over the last couple of days we have gotten some amazing responses to this post, and the community has opened up their hearts to our employees,” Stone Oven wrote in a December 30 update.

In the end, the employees got their money back and the truck’s owner got his cowboy hat returned. The only loose end is that the thieves are still on the loose. However, Ryan Thomas, the co-owner of Stone Oven, doesn’t want them to go to jail, but maybe a little extra help in the kitchen will do. “I’d rather somebody make them come back and wash dishes for eight hours straight or something,” he told Today.com.

If you’re in the area of Wichita Falls, Texas and would like to help out the local community, Stone Oven is currently accepting donations for its sock drive. The drive was created to help people experiencing homelessness and those in need with socks, gloves, hats, beanies, or whatever else they may need to make it through the winter.

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High school sociology students identify suspect in 40-year-old ‘Redhead Murders’ cold case

DNA students proved the students’ hunch was correct.

via Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

Tina McKenney-Farmer and Jerry Johns.

A group of high school students in Elizabethton, Tennessee, did something local law enforcement couldn’t do in 40 years. They identified a suspect in the murder of Tina McKenney-Farmer, one of the 14 victims in the “Redhead Murders,” an unsolved series of murders in the south in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

All of the victims were white women with reddish hair who died similar deaths. They were strangled and disposed of on the side of major highways in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia.

The students’ work was part of a sociology class taught by Alex Campbell in 2018. The class's goal was to uncover whether the killings were the work of one man. The students’ incredible detective work on the case was documented in a popular 10-part podcast, Murder 101 by iHeart True Crime.

Campbell assigned the project to his students because he enjoys "projects that get the students interested, projects where we can apply what we're learning in our classes,” he told People. “I had never heard about the murders even though I've lived here my entire life. They had these murders, but nobody had ever come to a consensus whether there was a person responsible for more than one of them, was there a serial killer active?"

‘Bible belt strangler’: How did high school students solve 40-year-old cold case murder? | Dan Abramwww.youtube.com

Over one semester, they determined that 6 of the women were likely to have been connected to the same murderer and labeled him the “Bible Belt Strangler.” They also helped identify one of the unidentified victims, Tina McKenney-Farmer.

The class also brought in a former FBI agent, Scott Barker, who taught the 20 students how to profile a case. He told the students that to connect all of the murders to one killer, they needed to identify four things: the timeframe, geography, signature and the M.O. or modus operandi.

The students came to the conclusion that McKenney-Farmer was murdered by Knoxville trucker Jerry Johns, who died in prison in 2015 after being convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder in 1987. Johns picked up a woman, strangled her and left her along Interstate 40.

“If we look at Tina Farmer’s case and how she was killed, do these other cases match the M.O., the signature, the time frame and the geography is all the same and we have five other murders that match it completely. So, we know who killed her. He should be the primary suspect in the killing of all these others,” Campbell told CBS 12 News.

DNA evidence later proved that the students were correct by linking Jerry Johns to the McKenney-Farmer crime scene. Investigators now believe that Johns may have been responsible for more of the Redhead Murders.

By the end of the year, the students had also identified 6 victims in the Redhead Murders.

Tennessee State Legislature commended the students for their work. However, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has never publicly credited them with the discovery.

“It’s things that law enforcement haven’t been able to do in 30-40 years. That just gives me so much confidence that when you’re passionate about something, and you’re willing to put in the work, you can get it done and you can really go above and beyond any expectations you have,” student detective Reiley Whitson told CBS 12.

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Home invasion robber returns cash to victim after running into him at a video poker lounge

Talk about a bizarre reunion.

via Michael Coghlan/Flickr and Trap Gang/Pexels

A robber and his victim have a bizarre reunion.

An unusual story out of Australia shows that even though someone may be a hardened criminal, they may still have feelings of remorse. It also shows that even their victims can forgive and forget if they don’t take things too personally.

The Daily Mail reports that Christopher Howard Gordon, 35, knocked on the door of a home in the Victorian town of Traralgon in Australia last March, holding a fake gun. When a man opened the door, Gordon demanded that he be allowed in the home and that the owner give him cash.

The man led him into a room where his daughter and partner slept. After seeing the sleeping child, Gordon was startled and immediately fled the home after receiving a box of cash.

The next night, Gordon went out to a video poker lounge 40 minutes from where he had robbed the man. In a bizarre coincidence, Gordon and the victim were there simultaneously. Instead of fleeing the scene, Gordon apologized to the man telling him that he was given the wrong information from an acquaintance. He had no idea that children would be present, and just wanted some “cash and weed.”

The victim accepted the apology, and the two sat beside each other playing poker, with Gordon handing the victim the cash that he had stolen. At the night's end, Gordon asked the victim for a ride home, and he obliged.

When Gordon appeared in court for sentencing, the judge noted that his actions showed remorse for his crimes. "You and the victim sat near each other on the slot machines while you intermittently handed the victim $150 to $200," Judge Arushan Pillay said, according to ABC Australia.

"When the venue closed at midnight, you asked the victim for a lift home, who eventually agreed to this. I consider that your words and actions to the victim demonstrate a level of immediate remorse,” the judge added.

Gordon was granted time served and released from jail.

So, will the fact that Gordon experienced remorse for his crimes deter him from robbing someone else? The most recent research, albeit from nine years ago, shows that remorse plays a big role in determining recidivism rates, but there’s a difference between whether people feel guilt or shame for their actions.

“When people feel guilt about a specific behavior, they experience tension, remorse, and regret,” the researchers wrote in a 2014 article published by Psychological Science. “Research has shown that this sense of tension and regret typically motivates reparative action — confessing, apologizing, or somehow repairing the damage done.”

Researchers found that criminals who feel a sense of guilt are less likely to commit another crime than those who feel shame. Those who felt shame were more likely to feel defensive, blame others and return to their old ways.

The question is, did Gorgon feel guilt or shame for his actions? He blamed his acquaintance for sending him to the wrong address but accepted responsibility for his actions by paying the man back. Time will tell if Gordon learns from this episode and gets his life back on track.

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Caring hero stops a bank heist by giving the robber a hug

A little love can go a long way.

via Woodland Police Department

A Good Samaritan thwarts an attempted bank robbery.

A story out of Woodland, California, a town outside of Sacramento, shows that sometimes, a little empathy can turn a potentially violent situation into a peaceful outcome. According to the Woodland Police Department, it all unfolded at a Bank of the West on Monday, May 22, at 11:00 a.m.

Michael Armus Sr., 69, was waiting in line when he noticed a man slip a teller a note. The tellers looked concerned, and the man who slipped the note had his shirt pulled over the bottom of his face. The man claimed that he had a gun. It was a robbery.

Then Armus noticed something familiar about the man. It was his former neighbor, Eduardo Plasencia, 43, who was also his daughter’s friend.

“I seen that the way he was talking, he was getting irritated. He said, ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody,’” Armus said, according to NBC 15.

Armus noticed that Plasencia sounded troubled. So, instead of attempting to disarm him and stop the robbery, he asked him some questions.

“He seemed to be depressed the way he was talking, so… I said, ‘What’s wrong? You don’t have a job?’ He said, ‘There’s nothing in this town for me. I just want to go to prison,’” Armus said.

"I felt compassion for the man. What could have happened to this guy to make him want to go in there and just throw his life away?” he told ABC 7 Chicago.

Armus then asked if they could step outside.

“So, I took him outside, and I give the man a hug right here at the doors. He started crying,” Armus said. “Then, I stepped away from him, and swoop, here come all the cops–no sirens, just lights everywhere, rifles out, ‘Get on the ground!’”

The Woodland Police Department later applauded Armus, saying he calmed the would-be robber down and encouraged him not to commit the crime.

“His words of wisdom worked and Plasencia changed his mind and left the bank,” the police department wrote on Facebook. The police later told ABC that Armus is a "Good Samaritan who delivered the right message that made a difference."

Who knows what would have happened if Plasencia hadn't left the bank with Armus and been arrested? It’s pretty remarkable that in a situation fraught with so much tension and danger, Armus had the presence of mind to determine the robber’s emotional state and coax him out of the situation.

He also had the compassion to see him as more than just a criminal, but a person who had fallen on hard times and needed some serious help.

"It was meant for me to be here," Armus told ABC News.

Plasencia was booked at Yolo County for attempted robbery. When police apprehended him, he wasn’t armed, as he had told the bank tellers.

“Thank you to the very brave Good Samaritan who delivered the right message that made a difference,” the police department wrote on Facebook.

Armus says that he may visit Plasencia in jail to see how he's holding up.

“Love overcomes all things. People don’t realize that. Try to be kind to somebody. It makes a difference,” he said.

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