Continue Reading Below Advertisement

I hope that in some way this story was inspired by Nic Cage. I like the idea that people are out there watching Nic Cage movies thinking "Yes, I need to do some of this in my real life." It doesn't even matter what movie, either, just so long as Cage had a prominent role in it.

In this case, Clyde Gardner took a page from the Nic Cage opus The Wicker Man. Did he run afoul of a vagicentric island full of beekeepers? Did he wonder aloud how that doll got burned? Better. He schemed to dress up like a bear and commit unwholesome murder!

Gardner's plan was to find a real-life bear and kill it. How? Who knows, maybe give it an aneurysm by explaining this dumb-shit plan. Once the bear was dead, he would skin it. Then he would dress up in the skin and wait outside his girlfriend's home. Once she took out the garbage, he would attack her, in the bear skin, and use the bear claws to maul her to death, thus ensuring that the evidence pointed entirely to a bear as the culprit. It was almost too easy.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

How did his plan fail? Gardner got lazy and changed plans, instead just asking a buddy if he wouldn't mind running his girlfriend over instead. The buddy notified the cops, and Gardner was rewarded with 15 years in prison.