Escaped robber returns to annals of weird crime
Cops say 'Roofman' lived large in store
The slick-as-fry-oil robber known as "Roofman," a former Army reservist in Concord who drilled and dropped into fast-food joints from the Bay Area to Massachusetts, is back behind bars with another whopper of a saga.
His downfall this time? A woman.
By day, Jeffrey Manchester's spent his six months on the lam as a generous churchgoing volunteer known as John, who gave toys to kids and told his new girlfriend and church congregation that he had a secret government job, police said.
At night, he was a fugitive hiding and playing in a Toys "R" Us, making his lair in a cubbyhole in the bicycle display, racing remote-control cars on the roof after hours and riding bikes around the store for exercise, said Sgt. Katherine Scheimreif of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., police. He even monkeyed with the employees' work schedules, and his diet included stolen baby food, she said.
The crafty and polite Manchester, 33, was serving a 45-year sentence in June when he hid under a delivery truck and became the first person ever to escape from the Brown Creek Correctional Institution in Polkton, N.C.
Suspected of at least 40 robberies at McDonald's and other businesses in the Bay Area and across the country before being sent to prison in 2000, he was caught again last week in Charlotte, where police are still piecing together the brazen new persona he created.
When the Toys "R" Us where he was holed up became crowded during the holiday shopping season, he fashioned a secret passageway into an adjoining Circuit City that had been abandoned, Scheimreif said. In a cubicle he built of sheetrock under a stairwell, he painted the walls, put up posters and action figures, mounted a toy basketball hoop and watched Spiderman and other movies on a DVD player, she said.
Meanwhile, he planned a takeover robbery of the Toys "R" Us, even installing a baby video monitor in his cubicle to see what was happening in the store. Police believe he got a gun by robbing a pawn shop, but when he attempted the Toys "R" Us robbery on Dec. 26, authorities said, two employees slipped out, forcing him to flee through his secret door and allowing police to find his hideaway and the clues that led to their identifying him.
They didn't find him, but two members of Crossroads Presbyterian Church recognized police photos of the man who had joined their church in October. Police also linked him to the arson of a Charlotte dentist's office where he had gone to have his teeth fixed and which he is believed to have torched last Tuesday in an effort to destroy his records, Scheimreif said.
When police told his girlfriend in Charlotte, Leigh Wainscott, who he really was, it was a "huge shock," she said in a phone interview on Monday night.
"I was numb and in shock. I was hysterical," she said. She refused to believe them until they showed her evidence on the Internet, she said.
"He was very well-spoken, well-dressed, clean, generous," she said of the man she had been dating since mid-November. He volunteered for the church's outreach program for needy families, giving their kids toys, she said.
Those toys apparently came from Toys "R" Us, Scheimreif said.
"My pastor and my congregation all fell in love with him immediately," Wainscott said.
He bought her diamond earrings and expensive scarves; he gave gifts to her three children. They spent the holidays together, decorated her Christmas tree and went to movies.
But after learning his real identity, Wainscott agreed to cooperate with police and arranged for Manchester to come to her home on Jan. 5 for her 40th birthday. Instead of finding her and her children, he was nabbed by waiting police.
His big mistake was "going back for the girl one last time," Scheimreif said.
After his arrest, police allowed him to call Wainscott.
"He was very sad and humbled and felt terrible that he had to deceive us, " Wainscott said. "He encouraged me and told me to be strong and to do the things we talked about doing. He wasn't upset."
"I don't hate him," she said. "I'm disappointed and confused. I don't know whether to smack him or hug him."
Manchester also got to talk to his mother after the arrest.
Explaining his capture, he told her, "Mom, I kind of lost focus," she recalled Monday. The mother, who asked not to be identified, lives in the Sacramento area, where Manchester's twin 13-year-old boys and 11-year daughter also live with their mother.
"He doesn't seem super-embarrassed about the notoriety," his mother said. "I know I would be."
"As his mother, I can't imagine," she said. "This is something you would see in the movies."
Indeed, some people said the escapade reminded them of the Natalie Portman film "Where the Heart Is," about a pregnant teenager who moves into a Wal-Mart, Scheimreif said.
As Manchester sits in Mecklenburg County Jail, police are contemplating what new charges to lodge against the man they describe as meticulous, intelligent, athletic and so polite that he was known to give captives a jacket before ushering them into a walk-in freezer.
"You hate to compliment the guy, because he's a dirtbag, but we can learn a lot from him," Scheimreif said.
"It won't surprise me if he escapes again," she added. "He's that crafty."
