Hansel And Cable

Once upon a time there was a German man who was known to police by his fingerprints. One day he decided that working for a living was much too hard and that stealing copper cables was much, much easier. The End.

Literally.

Police in the western city of Duisburg found the 32-year-old man's blackened remains by a set of cable cutters and pile of non-live cables he had already stolen.

Only because one of his hands survived incineration were officers able to identify the man as German of Kazakh origin.

"His fingerprints were already logged on police files," a local police spokesman said. "The force of the shock was so great that the hand was severed from his body."

I sense a Darwin Award candidate.