The folks at Home Security, vendor of security systems to the
jittery and paranoid, sent us a link to their fantastic list of bad
booby traps, entitled The 5 Dumbest & Deranged Home Booby Traps. So good is it that we decided to dig in and find out a little more about the bamboozling array of home-made tricks and traps.
Shotgun Shenanigans
Back in 1990, Colorado warehouse owner Philip Connaghan got sick of
break-ins in his area and decided to take a few extra precautions. He
rigged a couple of shotguns to a tripwire and loaded them up. The
problem came when he was burglarized yet again, by the same gang
that had visited twice already. One of the three teenage thieves was hit in the
chest and killed. Connaghan turned himself in and plead guilty.
Trial Set in Booby Trap Death [NYT]
House of Pain
Belgium, 2002. A 79 year old man booby trapped his entire house in order to kill his family, who wanted nothing more to do with him (not surprisingly). According to his entry in the Darwin Awards
traps included numerous concealed shotguns triggered by threads, and an exploding crate of beer set to detonate once a certain number of bottles were removed.
The Darwin Awards link may have tipped you off to the ending. While rigging a wooden chest with yet another gun, it fired and shot him in the head. Police assumed suicide until the investigating officer almost caught a bullet from the same place.
Booby Traps Trap Boob [Darwin Awards]
Photo: 5rar.ASN
Crutch of Doom
Killing a Verizon technician might be a secret dream of many of our readers, but Eric Stetz of Bay Shore, New York went a little further than most.
His trap? A crutch with a nasty-looking kitchen knife taped to the handle. The entire contraption was hung above and behind the door using elastic and rigged to swing down when the door was opened.
Luckily, his landlord was a paranoid sort, or simply knew that Stetz was an oddball. He accompanied the Verizon technician and spotted the killer kit above the door. If the technician had entered alone, however, things might have got a lot more Dungeons and Dragons.
Doin’ it like MacGyver: Guy sets booby traps in NY home [It’s Truly Random]
Warehouse Woes
Burnley, England, 2006. Another warehouse owner, this time in sunny England, paid a friend to build him an alarm after a gang of kids kept breaking in to his mill. Instead of using the traditional klaxon or bell, though, his buddy decided the best noisemaker would be built from a shotgun.
Delivered and set up, the death-machine was triggered after just one hour. The proud owner, Jack Clarkson, reset the “alarm”, only this time with a live round. You can guess what happened next — a 12 year old broke in and, typical of street urchins of the UK, attempted to make of with the device. It blew up in his hand and although it didn’t kill him, he needed an operation to fix things.
Home-made booby trap ‘was alarm’ [BBC]
Photo: Tyrkinn/Flickr
Stun Gun Fun
Finally, a story we covered here at the Gadget Lab last year. Luke Iseman rigged his ride to shock thieves. The bike is equipped with a stun gun, a cellphone and a battery. Once stolen, the bike can be tracked down via GPS and then, when the perp is away from traffic, the gun is put into action. The gun is hooked up to the phone’s vibrator and it fries the rider with 50,000 volts at every buzz. You can keep the thing running until the battery goes dead.
There’s a happy ending, though. First, the bike has not yet been stolen and, best of all, Iseman is the only one of our hackers who has not been either arrested or killed.
How-To: End Bike Thefts With a DIY Stun Gun and Get Yourself in Trouble [Gadget Lab]
The 5 Dumbest & Deranged Home Booby Traps [Home Security]
