Police blame a woman named Butts for stealing toilet paper from a central Iowa courthouse, and while they’re chuckling, the theft charge could put her in prison.

“She’s facing potentially three years of incarceration for three rolls of toilet paper,” Chief Lon Walker said, stifling a laugh as he talked to KCCI-TV about Suzanne Marie Butts. “See, I can’t say it with a straight face.”

Workers had noticed the rolls disappearing from the Marshall County Courthouse much faster than usual, Walker said.

Butts, 38, was caught last week after an employee saw her taking three rolls of two-ply tissue from a storage closet, Walker said.

Butts insisted it was the first time she’d pilfered toilet paper, but she declined to answer further questions on her attorney’s advice.

The fifth-degree theft charge, a misdemeanor, normally carries a sentence of less than a year in jail. But Butts could face more time if convicted under the state’s habitual offender law because she has prior theft convictions.

Walker did not know why Butts was at the courthouse, but said that she did not work there.

It was unsurprisingly easy to find the two young men in Christchurch, New Zealand, behind a series of dairy robberies.

One of them paused as a robbery began to make purchase — using his own bank card.

Police soon arrived at his workplace, and the hapless pair ended up in Christchurch District Court on June 15 where Judge Colin Doherty sentenced the two.

One of them, identified as unemployed 18-year-old Lee Francis Whiley, pleaded guilty to three charges of aggravated robbery, two of attempted robbery, one of driving while forbidden, and a charge of intentionally injuring a man in an earlier incident.

The other, identified as 22-year-old Tana Weke Helsham, an assembler, pleaded guilty to one robbery charge, and two attempted robberies.

The court heard that they were both first-time offenders.

Whiley’s attorney, Steven Hembrow, said his client was bewildered.

Three weeks after taking his first dose of P — a slang term for pure methamphetamine — he ended up robbing more dairies to feed his habit.

“When he went into one of the dairies, he used his own eftpos card which was registered in his name.

“Clearly, the police did not have much difficulty in locating him as an offender.”

Judge Doherty said Whiley began the offending, going into the shop carrying a Stanley knife where there was a lone woman shop assistant and handing her a note demanding money and threatening to cut her throat. He took cash and tobacco.

He used the same note for several robberies.

For the subsequent offenses, Helsham went along, and used his eftpos card while they were checking out the store.

Whiley panicked and ran off at one store when the owner picked up the phone, and another robbery failed when the foreign shop assistant couldn’t read the note.

The court also heard that Whiley assaulted a man who walked past him in the street, attacking him from behind. He swung the man around and delivered a punch that broke his jaw in two places.

Judge Doherty described the attack as a mindless and cowardly attack and tacked on an additional year to Whiley’s four-year prison sentence for the robberies.

Helsham was sentenced to two years in prison, with leave to apply for house arrest.

He faced lesser charges because the crown accepted the fact that Helsham didn’t know that Whiley was using a Stanley knife in the robberies.

Helsham was ordered to pay NZ$100 (about US$75.98) in restitution to one of the shop owners.

Police in Buffalo, New York, say that an ex-convict robbed the same bank there for the second time in as many years, then sat down in the lobby and asked when the FBI would arrive.

According to police, the ex-con, identified as Kristoffer Cook, walked into a downtown bank and passed a note to a teller. When the teller handed him some money, Cook left most of it on the counter and left with a whopping $10. Officials say that he then waited in the lobby in the hope that FBI agents would arrest him.

Cook was released from prison in September of 2006 after serving two years for robbing that very same bank.

Police believe that he robbed the bank again in the hope of being taken back to prison.

Two car thieves in Marrietta, Georgia, were unable to make drive away in a car that they had just stolen because they could not make head or tail of its manual transmission, according to a witness there.

The two unidentified teenagers armed with a gun came up to a man outside a pizzeria there late on June 18. They stole his wallet and the keys to his Honda Accord, got into the car but couldn’t make it start because it had stick shift, according to 18-year-old John Williamson, an employee of the restaurant.

“The kid was just sitting in the car trying to start it but he had no idea what to do. He looked dumbfounded. The only thing he had going was the radio,” said Williamson who witnessed the scene.

While the thief was attempting to start up the car, restaurant employees called the cops who showed up and caught the two hapless hoodlums as they tried to flee into nearby woods.

Unlike many parts of the world, most cars in the United States have automatic transmission, and because of this, many drivers are not accustomed to driving vehicles with manual transmission, in which a clutch pedal must be depressed to change gear.

An 18-year-old man from suspected of tagging almost a dozen buildings in Yakima, Union Gap, and Wapato, Washington, was booked on felony and misdemeanor charges on June 18 after sheriff’s deputies nabbed him — with his own camera.

The unidentified man’s car had been impounded as part of a burglary arrest in the Lower Valley. When a local towing company opened the glove compartment on June 11 to look for the registration papers, they found a digital camera inside.

Initially, the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office said, an employee of the towing company thought that the camera was stolen. But after turning it on and looking at the photos, it became clear that the camera was evidence of a different sort.

Every single image showed the suspect spray-painting graffiti on several buildings.

The photo gallery was apparently so extensive — and specific — that deputies said June 18 that they were able to match photos in the camera to recognizable buildings in Yakima, Union Gap and Wapato.

Apparently, the suspect took great pride in his work. Much of the graffiti was elaborate, Chief Criminal Deputy Ed Campbell said.

After getting a search warrant, deputies raided the suspect’s home in Union Gap and confiscated a large amount of graffiti paraphernalia as well as a camcorder depicting the suspect spray-painting his tag on a building.

Now that sheriff’s deputies have both cameras in hand, Campbell said that other youths are under investigation and more arrests may be made.

As of this writing, no charges have been filed, although prosecutors are reviewing reports.

Investigators in Brandon, Florida, say that they know who stole a fire truck from Fire Station 7 on June 16: a teen who used to hang around there, washing trucks and learning the equipment.

The teen, identified as 17-year-old Michael Bellamy, of Allamond Avenue confessed to the caper the night of June 18, explaining that he wanted to take the truck for a joyride and “thought it would be fun,” according to the sheriff’s office.

Bellamy admitted that he called the fire station, claiming to be a representative of Emergency One, the manufacturer of the truck. He requested that the fire engine be left outside for a pickup, said sheriff’s spokesman J.D. Callaway.

Then, Callaway said, Bellamy made a bogus 911 medical call that emptied the fire station of all personnel.

When everyone was gone, he hopped into the fire truck, and took it for a joyride — lights flashing, siren wailing.

Bellamy said that a friend named Dante was driving the fire engine when it got stuck in sand at a construction site at Progress Village.

Bellamy was charged with grand theft and taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center. He also faces a charge of making a false 911 call.

Bellamy told investigators that he has been interested in fire trucks since he was a child, hanging out at various fire stations, washing the trucks and getting to know the equipment.

“He gave no real reason to steal the engine other than he knew how to start it and operate it, and thought he just wanted to take it for a ride,” Callaway said.

“He said he did it just to have fun.”

A man in Bushnell, Florida, who is accused of stealing poisonous snakes from a shed there has been taken to the hospital after the reptiles bit him.

According to Sumter County sheriff’s investigators, employees at a Wal-Mart there spotted the man, identified as Jonathan Lafever bleeding from his wounds at the store and authorities called to the scene found five poisonous snakes in the trunk of his car, CBS affiliate WKMG-TV Channel 6 in Orlando, Florida, reported.

Authorities said that the owner of the snakes was contacted and identified the reptiles as two Rock rattlesnakes, a Honduran Milk snake, a butter rat snake and a southern hognose snake.

According to a sheriff’s report, Lafever confessed to taken the reptiles from a shed that was marked “Poisonous Snakes.”

Lafever was airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition. Authorities said he has not yet been arrested because of his hospitalization.