McFreedom

On October 28, 2002, I speculated that the DC Sniper - later alleged to be John Lee Malvo - was none too bright, given his apparent plan to remove his requested $10 million from ATMs:

Even if it were possible to convince the bank or banks to go along, ATMs don't have all that much money in them. ATMs might have $36,000 when filled up, but that depletes quickly and on average if you emptied one, you'd get $18,000. That means to get your $10 million - even if any of this was even possible - you'd have to make 555 trips to the ATM. And you obviously couldn't go to the same one, twice - or even ones in the same city twice.

Now, allegedly, Mr. Malvo has told his jailers that, indeed, this was their plan, and that they hadn't even done basic research about how much money an ATM holds:

The corrections officer said Malvo told him that the sniper shootings were part of a plan to get money from the government and said "they were going to withdraw $100,000 or $200,000" at a time from a bank machine.

It's just stunning that all those people were killed by this idiot because he was carrying out a hare-brained scheme that was impossible. Apparently psychopathic idiots never heard of Google, I guess.