The Lemon Juice Robbery: How Overconfidence Led to a Bizarre Heist

One chilly winter morning in 1995, two unlikely criminals were about to embark on a daring adventure. It was on January 6 in the streets of Pittsburgh when McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson decided to make their mark in the world but in the most peculiar way. They planned to rob not one, but two banks in broad daylight, armed with nothing but a sense of misguided confidence and a baffling belief in the power of citrus fruits. McArthur entered the Mellon Bank and went up to the teller with a semi-automatic handgun clutched in his trembling hand. With a shaky voice, McArthur demanded to hand over the cash. The teller, probably suppressing a chuckle, handed them a sum of $5,200 without much resistance. What set this pair apart from other robbers was their choice of disguise. Or their lack of it. Instead of masks, they had smothered their faces with lemon juice. McArthur had fallen for a rather absurd notion that lemon juice could make them invisible to security cameras. Of course, he had tested this theory previously with a Polaroid camera. He had covered his face with lemon juice and took a photo. He didn’t appear on it. Maybe it was due to a faulty camera or intentional misalignment, but he didn’t care. He was ready to test this odd theory during the heist. The debate remains on who was the greater fool in this tale: McArthur, the mind behind the curious theory, or Clifton, the incredibly naive believer. Nonetheless, they got arrested soon after the robbery. As the police confronted McArthur with a still frame from the security camera, McArthur couldn’t believe it. “But I wore the lemon juice. I wore the lemon juice”, <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/article/73185038/dumb1/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">he said</a> in disbelief. <a href="https://medium.com/mind-cafe/the-lemon-juice-robbery-how-overconfidence-led-to-a-bizarre-heist-bc9736f5c2ac">Read More</a>