Column Chronicles: The Crime Files: the tattoo thief

The Crime Files: the tattoo thief

Frank Cotolo
July 7, 2022

Every once in a while, diabolical crimes are committed, crimes that defy reason and logic, crimes that are never solved and still make no sense. The International Police places such cases in a top secret collection called The Crime Files. Here is one in a series being released for the first time in history.

In the summer of 2002, Erkstein Mildalay, London weightlifter (no, he did not lift London, that's where he lived) told local lawmen that he woke up after a night's bender at a pub and discovered the tattoo of a ship's anchor he had on the inside of his right forearm was missing. Enough physical proof of Erkstein's tattoo existed to stop investigators from laughing their lungs out, but even taking the claim seriously produced chuckles.

Three weeks later, Zelda Scoff, a retired cabaret dancer, reported her ankle tattoo, a heart with an arrow through the name Burt at its center, disappeared after a night's sleep.

A parade of missing tattoo reports ensued over the next few months. With no clue of solving the cases (and in order to stop local police from fits of laughter when investigating), the London police handed the cases over to Interpol.

At Interpol headquarters in the U.K., Manchester, three investigators were hospitalized for asphyxiation from laughing while working on the cases. Meanwhile, four dockworkers in Liverpool reported tattoos missing from different appendages while unloading a Norwegian Container ship.

The cases took an odd turn when Rufus Cardboard, Jr., a distant cousin to a member of the royal family, was found dead at a novelty shop in Thirsk. Cardboard choked to death on his own tattoo - a pentagram with the face of a great white stag at its center.

In 2003 reports of stolen or fatally ingested tattoos ended after Sidney Craftstomp, the only obese man in history confirmed to have 32 self-inscribed tattoos of custard tarts spanning the length of his spine, noticed that some appeared to have bites taken out of them.

The tattoo thief has never been identified.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.