A lot of people who like to watch the mystery and thrill of cop/detective shows resort to the well-known programs like "CSI" and "NCIS." Instead of following the mainstream murder mysteries, I have been an Investigation Discovery addict for years now. Among my favorite shows is "Homicide Hunter" featuring Lieutenant Joe Kenda.
Joe Kenda is a man in his 70s who worked for the Colorado Springs Police Department. Originally from near the Pittsburgh area (so he definitely gets bonus points for that), he married his high school sweetheart (some more points right there). He has impressively solved 92% of the cases that came across his desk during his career.
In the show, Kenda refused to work from a script and has, thus, expressed some of the best one-liners, zingers, and quotes that you'll hear on TV (I may or may not have just written down quotes as completely binged every episode).
You may still be wondering what is so great about a 71-year-old retired Colorado Springs homicide detective, but these 50 humorous, insightful, and high-quality quotes explain it all:
1. “Crime scenes tell you what happened. It doesn’t tell you who made it happen.”
2. “You have a sad formula: Take a gun, add a sad, egotistical attitude, mix it all thoroughly with alcohol, put this on a low simmer, and you wind up with one dead tattoo artist.”
3. “I don’t trust anybody. I don’t trust my mother… and she’s been dead eleven years.”
4. “Oh, please. So, your tragically dead ex-wife is in fact responsible for the drugs. You forgot to say the elephant stepped on your homework. You forgot that part.”
5. “The movies and television cannot and do not portray violent death. They all think they do and viewers all think that that is what it looks like… and it ain’t."
6. “Addiction took his mind and took his soul and drove all of his behavior. He couldn’t stop. So, what’s the answer? Don’t start. Don’t start. And you’ll never be faced with the question ‘how do I stop?’”
7. “As to why it [the gun of a victim] hasn’t been fired, I don’t have any idea. You have a reasonable assumption to believe that our man here got himself into a gun fight that he’s obviously the loser. He never got a round off, so he’s not very good at gun fights. Who knows?”
8. “Dark secrets are extremely destructive.”
9. “If I didn’t have to eat, I wouldn’t. It just doesn’t mean anything to me. Whatever it is, order me a number one. There’s always a number one. So whatever shows up is what I would eat.”
10. “Fine. Good-bye. Go to prison. Have a nice life.”
11. “Does it make any sense? No. But murder never does.”
12. “It’s 2:05 in the morning and I run out of cigarettes. And at that time, when I smoked, I no longer do, but when I smoked then, that was not acceptable, so I stopped at the neighborhood convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes.”
13. “They say love is a many splendored thing. It is, but it can include hate. Things of relationships can turn into nightmare scenarios very quickly.”
14. "[My son] is seven years old, and he’s looking at me like I’m a Nazi war criminal.”
15. “Not only are you the worst liar I’ve ever seen… you also have the I.Q. of a turnip.”
16. “Oh, sure you’re street smart. Sesame Street smart."
17. “My wife on occasion will get very annoyed with me and my cars since I love cars. My response was always the same: It could be women and whiskey, but it’s cars.”
18. “People are capable of anything. People don’t carry a sign that says ‘look at me, I had this dream about butchering your family’ so there is no kind of person. It is a person. A human. The most dangerous animal on this planet.”
19. “Casings eject from semi-automatic pistols, but they don’t fly a city block.”
20. “A shooting like this… in the dark at 80 yards, if you were Annie Oakley, you couldn’t make that shot directly. We have 19 bullets that go down this street at 1200 feet per second, like a nest of angry bees.”
21. “It is a five-shot capacity and you find four expended 38 caliber casings. One shot fired in this apartment, we have a dead guy in the street who has three other ones. Three plus one equals four. There is no way that this is not involved in my murder.”
22. “Everybody is wound up like a $2 watch to see what’s happening.”
23. “Crazy boyfriend did you say? Oh, I like crazy boyfriends.”
24. “I always assess people’s body language. They slump their shoulders. They look at the floor. They have the distinct look of a guilty person.”
25. “I signed up to pull guns on people and kick doors down, and that’s what I do.”
26. “I want you to remember something. Maybe you should even write this down: I don’t forgive, and I don’t forget.”
27. “It causes the human blood trace to fluoresce in ultraviolet light, so it literally glows yellow. I’m expecting this room to light up enough for me to read a newspaper in it.”
28. “How powerful can jealousy be? More powerful than a thermonuclear explosion.”
29. “You’re looking for sympathy? Look it up in the dictionary. It’s between shit and syphilis.”
30. “It adds up to one word: suspect. And that, my man, would be you.”
31. “Something I learned a long time ago: Don’t ever judge people based on their appearance or their physical size. Humans are all capable of enormous levels of violence given the proper motivation.”
32. “And now Earl is pedaling as fast as he can on his lie bike.”
33. “He thinks by calling himself Playboy he can attract girls. Well alright then. How’s that working out for you?”
34. “When I leave here, I’m gonna have somebody’s ass in my briefcase. And maybe it’s gonna be yours.”
35. “Being an asshole is not against the law. If I were, we’d have to erect a fence around the state of Colorado and inform everyone they are in custody.”
36. “Never mind the bullet with your name on it. Beware of the bullet that says, 'to whom it may concern.’”
37. “If you’re going to be a liar, you should at least have the decency to be good at it.”
38. “You lying little bastard. You didn’t tell me the truth for a second. Well, let me tell you something, Kelvin. We are going to have another conversation… and you are not going to like the next one.”
38. “If I find out that you tried to lie to a police officer, try to bribe one again, I’m going to hold a press conference and let this whole town know what a lying, cheating douchebag you are.”
40. “There are people in this world who will go to any length to solve a personal problem. Trust your fellow man? I don’t. I wouldn’t recommend that you do either.”
41. ““Anna opens the door in this low-cut jumpsuit affair and, obviously, is a woman who is very taken by her own appearance.”
42. “He was a typical 23-year-old. Everything he has worn in the last three years is laying on the floor.”
43. “Guilty people love to talk. Who am I to stop them?”
44. “You gotta be the dumbest guy on the planet. Maybe on three or four planets.”
45. “In murder cases, it’s not about speed. Speed doesn’t help. A murder case is a spinning top on a table. It’s perfectly balanced, and it’s spinning beautifully. Put pressure on the wrong place, it goes off the table, and you never get it back.”
46. “What makes humans so dangerous are their emotions. It allows them to kill for what anyone would believe is no reason. Once you kill once, after that, it’s just numbers.”
47. “Prison is gladiator school. You learn how to sharpen your skills as a bad guy.”
48. “Being stupid is not against the law. Believing your wife is also not a criminal act, even when her story is not believable.”
49. “When a kid says ‘I’m going to kill you,’ it would be in your best interest to believe them.”
50. “The only thing that Craig is sure of is that he’s reasonably certain this is North America.”
