The Man Who Made The Front Page Twice

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And at first, that proved true for Michael Millhouse, a sign painter from Lewiston, Idaho. In December 2007, he was out painting Christmas greetings on storefront windows around downtown. A photographer from the Lewiston Tribune happened to spot him at work — a big guy in a distinctive blue-and-black checkered coat — and took a picture. It was a nice, seasonal image, perfect for the next day’s front page.

Later that afternoon, the Tribune covered another story. A woman named Jami Johnson had accidentally left her wallet on the counter of a local Zip Trip convenience store. The wallet contained $600 in cash — money from her paycheck that she’d planned to use for Christmas shopping. When she realized her mistake and returned, the wallet was gone. The store’s surveillance camera had captured a clear image of the man who took it: a heavyset fellow in a blue-and-black checkered coat — and provided the security photo to the Tribune. Wanting to help support the local business, the Tribune ran that photo in the next day’s paper as well — and also, on the front page.

The next day’s paper featured both images, as seen below:

Two photographs, one atop the other, showing a guy in a distinctive jacket. One, naming the man pictured, and heralding him as a boon to his community. The other, flagging the guy as a heretofore unidentified scofflaw.

The paper — accidentally — solved the mystery of the Zip Trip theft.

The newspaper’s copy editors didn’t notice the problem until late Wednesday night, as they were laying out the front page. As Oregon Live reported, the editors “were pointing it out and laughing about it.” But it was too late to reach Millhouse or redo the layout. The coincidence went to press as-is.

But the newspaper staff didn’t just let the story end there. A newspaper employee dropped a copy off at the police station around 3 a.m. on his way home. By the time subscribers opened their papers that morning, Millhouse had already been arrested. Per the New York Times, the paper was “flooded with calls from readers pointing out the similarity” — everyone wanted to be the one who cracked the case. None knew that the newspaper itself had beaten them all to it.

Millhouse told the Tribune he had picked up the wallet intending to return it to its owner but got “bogged down with work” — including, presumably, all that holiday window painting. He didn’t give it to store employees, he explained, because he thought it had a better chance of being returned with its contents intact if he handled the situation himself. Per Oregon Live, in a signed statement to police, Millhouse called taking the wallet “the most stupid decision of my life, that I should be ashamed for the rest of my life.”

The wallet was recovered with Johnson’s driver’s license and credit cards still inside, though the $600 in cash was missing. (Millhouse offered no explanation as to where the money went.) Millhouse was charged with felony second-degree theft and released on $5,000 bond. As NPR later reported, he was ultimately sentenced to 30 days of house arrest.

The newspaper didn’t take a photo of that.

Bonus fact: In 2013, reporters from Reader’s Digest dropped 192 wallets around 16 different cities to see which cities’ residents would do the right thing. The (hardly scientific) results had Helsinki (11 out of 12 wallets returned) and Mumbai (9 of 12) topping the list, while Lisbon came in last with only one returned. And it gets worse: Per ABC News, that one wallet was returned by a Dutch tourist, and “not a single wallet was returned by a Lisbon local.”

From the Archives: The Very Lost Wallet: Lost in 1972, discovered in 2005. And not at a convenience store.