FUGITIVE LIVED IN TOYS 'R' US CUPBOARD

[Amelia]

FUGITIVE LIVED IN TOYS 'R' US CUPBOARD FOR SEVEN MONTHS

14 January 2005

The daily press.com

A Fugitive prisoner hid in the cupboard of a toy shop every night - and by day posed as a warm hearted churchgoer who gave out toys to needy children, it emerged yesterday. Indeed, the adventures of American robber Jeffrey Manchester sound so absurd that movie moguls are probably fighting for the film rights this very second.

The plot would go like this: Cops catch a notorious villain, known as Roofman because of his penchant for burgling McDonalds restaurants by drilling holes into the roof.

Sentenced to 45 years behind bars, Roofman's days of crime seem to be numbered.

But the dastardly rogue manages to escape prison by clinging to the bottom of a delivery van.

He goes on the run and finds the perfect hideout - a cubbyhole in the bicycle department of Toys 'R' Us.

Every night, when the security guards have locked up and gone home, the jailbreaker comes out to play.

He tries out the latest remote-controlled cars and computer games, watches films on a DVD player and cycles up and down the empty aisles to keep fit.

He dines off baby food swiped from the shelves and, to satiate his lust for evil, he occasionally tampers with the staff rotas.

The moral of the story? Crime plays.

It sounds like a joke, but this is exactly what happened to 33-year-old Jeffrey "Roofman" Manchester who was back behind bars yesterday after seven months on the run.

Even the police have a grudging respect for him. "You hate to compliment the guy, because he's a dirtbag. But we can learn a lot from him," confessed Sergeant Katherine Scheimreif of the Charlotte Mecklenburg police department.

Manchester had been serving a 45-year sentence for raiding branches of McDonald's where, in at least two cases, he herded staff into walk-in freezers after first allowing them to get their coats.

After breaking out of a correctional institution in Polkton, North Carolina, he changes his name and goes "underground" - in the toy shop.

But Manchester didn't just lay low in the toy shop. By day, he posed as a kindly churchgoer, attending Bible classes and dressing up as the Easter Bunny for a Sunday school Christmas party.

IN addition to stealing toys to "donate" to needy children, he also stole the heart of a 40-year old churchgoing mum-of-three who was honoured to become his girlfriend. He told her he had a topsecret government job.

When Toys 'R' Us became busy over Christmas, Manchester tunnelled into an empty electronics superstore and built a new lair beneath a staircase.

Ever the house-proud inmate, he painted the walls and decorated them with Superman and Spiderman posters, rigging up a basketball hoop stolen from the store. And he did his best to comply with health and safety laws by installing a smoke alarm and fire extinguisher.

A portable nappy-disposal bin became his lavatory, and he managed to divert the water flow from the store next-door into his den.

And in a bizarre move he even caused mayhem for puzzled staff by altering their work rotas before they came in the next day.

It was finally "game over" for Manchester on Boxing Day when he staged an armed robbery at the Toys 'R' Us store where he had been living - having used a baby monitor device to spy on the store's security routine.

Detectives searching the shop stumbled across his hideout and arrested him at his girlfriend's before escorting him back to jail.

"I've never seen anybody so determined," said Officer Fred Allen, who found the den. "He wasn't going to make a stupid mistake. We had to find him."