Results tagged “thief”

There was never going to be a real winner in the Kirsten Dunst vs. alleged burglar case. Either millionaire starlet Dunst was going to send someone to jail for 15 years for stealing a purse, or a thief was going to get off with a slap on the wrist. The NY Post is now reporting that 35-year-old Jim Jimenez has been acquitted after playing what they call an "I'm too stupid" card; reportedly submitting letters and grades from his former Special Ed program that backed him up.

We're torn about this rather graphic video, which depicts an alleged bike thief getting beaten up after getting caught by the bike owner and his friends in the East Village. On the one hand, lowlife thieves deserve what's coming to them; on the other hand, street justice does have its downsides (anarchy, mob rule, model riots, etc). But the blogger who posted the video, Prolly is not Probably, is all for it, writing, "The guy wasn't bleeding or banged up. Just enough to send a message. DON'T STEAL BIKES. Cops won't do anything and this guy will think twice about stealing bikes."

Two rabbis at a Brooklyn Heights synagogue are committed to helping a career criminal who's a suspect in repeated break-ins at their house of worship. Rabbis Aaron Raskin and Simcha Weinstein (the "funny" Rabbi!) befriended suspect Davis Duvallya, 43, several years ago, giving him money and food whenever he asked. Duvallya has 29 arrests on his record and an apparent drug problem, and it seems he sees his charitable friends as gullible targets. He was recently convicted of burglarizing Congregation B'Nai Avraham on March 3rd, stealing a stereo and a charity box containing about $50, and police say he's the main suspect in several other break-ins, which cost the synagogue a laptop computer and toaster. Rabbi Raskin says Duvallya most recently tried to break in on Thursday at 3:30 a.m., but a cleaner scared him off. Now police are searching for him, but Rabbi Raskin tells the Daily News that if Duvallya surfaces, he'll won't turn his back on him: "I feel you have to separate the person from the act. If he's a thief, don't let him in. But what, you don't feed him? He should die? No." But should a man be rewarded for noshing the hand that feeds him?

Is there anything Facebook can't do? A Park Slope family has now used the social networking site to track down an adolescent bicycle thief. Beth Harpaz, an AP reporter and author of The Girls in the Van: Covering Hillary, says a local teen used the oldest trick in the book to separate her 11-year-old son from his new BMX at the playground: He asked to "see your bike for a minute," then never rode back. (The trick even works on adults!) Harpaz tried filing a police report, but a beat cop discouraged her, saying, "If you file a police report, we'll have to arrest him. Just wait a few days. You'll get the bike back." And the policeman was right—though the BMX wasn't recovered thanks to NYPD detective work, but through Harpaz's dogged sleuthing. Long story short, some kids at the playground knew the suspect's first name and the Middle School from which he'd graduated, so Harpaz obtained a copy of the yearbook, identified him, and tracked him down on Facebook. After threatening to have him arrested, the unidentified thief revealed the bike's location, along with the combination for the lock. He also asked Harpaz, "Where do u live at?" but Harpaz knew better than to let him see her house for a minute.

A nattily-attired thief stole $50,000 in jewelry from a University Place apartment on Monday afternoon. According to the NY Post, Linda Kaplan, 76, entered her apartment and found a "thief — decked out in a black suit and tie... She demanded to know what he was doing, and he responded, 'I'm with the Fire Department,' according to cops. When Kaplan demanded to see ID, the 6-foot-2 bandit threw her down." Kaplan had left her apartment unlocked when she was "check[ing] in on a 102-year-old neighbor" and apparently the thief seized the opportunity. She screamed for help and one of the people who ran to her apartment was a painter who also saw the thief in another apartment: "Minutes earlier, the thief had poked his head in that unit but fled when he saw the worker." Police told the Post that the thief was like an "office creeper," dressed to fit in with surroundings while stealing objects.

A Torah scroll worth $50,000 was stolen from a rented SUV in Crown Heights yesterday, the Post reports. 21-year-old Levi Havosha says he had just returned from vacation with members of the B'Nai Avraham Synagogue in Brooklyn Heights, and decided to leave the Torah in his vehicle overnight and bring it back to the synagogue in the morning. But when he returned the next day, he found the window smashed and the hand-inked Torah scroll missing. Havosha is praying for the Torah's return, and he also wants to make sure the culprits are aware what they've gotten themselves into: "You're not messing with people anymore, you're messing with God."

According to her driver's license, the 76-year-old woman who was recently busted for stealing a wallet from a Fairway shopping cart is named Charlotte Petrovas. She's been arrested 73 times over the years under dozens of different aliases, and the assistant DA says they've had trouble verifying her identity because she "virtually burned off the fingers on both hands, which makes fingerprinting virtually impossible." In an interview with the Post, she explained that "my father died when I was young, so I had to go to work. I was a model in the Fashion District. I did that for years, but then I had an accident and broke three bones in my back and went on disability." She says she's not a "career criminal" but stole "just to get the things I need."

It turns out that senior citizen who was deemed a "pickpocket terrorist" by an unidentified cop after her wallet-snatching arrest at Fairway is pretty hardcore. The Post reports that the 76-year-old ex-con cannot be fingerprinted because she burned all her fingertips. Experts (or anyone who's seen Se7en) say that to permanently remove fingerprints one would have to use corrosive acid, burn them, or get plastic surgery. It's not known how the woman got rid of hers, and because of her penchant for aliases, even her lawyer can't figure out her real identity: "She keeps bouncing addresses. She moves here and there every few months. To be honest, I don't even know her real name." This is getting creepy! Maybe tomorrow we'll find out she has no DNA?

A 76-year-old ex-con who's been arrested some 37 times over the past three decades is behind bars again after being caught in a sting operation at the Upper West Side Fairway on Broadway. Responding to complaints about pickpockets working the aisles, undercover cops left a wallet in a shopping cart and arrested the woman after she allegedly stuffed it into her bra, sources tell the Post. The suspect, who goes by many aliases—the most current being Katherine Kelly—most recently did a year at Rikers after being caught thieving while on parole.

Even the police set up a "massive dragnet" to find a thief who tried to steal a safe from home in Staten Island's Todt Hill section, the thief still managed get away! The Staten Island Advance explained in spite of a "a helicopter with heat-sensing equipment as well as uniformed and plainclothes officers," the cops still lost track of a suspect who had returned to 70 Beebe Street to complete the task of stealing the safe. A cop reportedly said on the police radio, "I hear him in here! I can't find him! It's pitch black!" but the perp may have escaped by jumping out of a second floor window. The thief is also suspected in five other break-ins.

The Lower Manhattan Jack Spade store has been burgled multiple times this year, and as they say: three's a trend. In that vein, Men's Vogue reports that the store has now decided to celebrate their thief, who has returned three times to lift the perfect accessories for his crime (a little over $1K in merchandise). "Smitten by this criminal's dedication and affinity for their products they have created a comic book to commemorate his adventures," Breaking and Entering is based off the surveillance video and available at their Greene Street location, which has been "decorated in homage to their nocturnal visitor."

Wow: When a man tried to rob 86-year-old Elizabeth Maropoulos in Hell's Kitchen on Sunday morning, she told the Post, "Once I realized he was coming after me, I went kick, kick!" Still, she was knocked down and robbed of $100. Luckily the thief, Earl Wearing, was caught--Maropoulos proclaimed him a "bad, bad boy. He's a bastard." And a bartender at the Blarney Stone, where Maropoulos is apparently a regular, said she's a tough lady, "She's taken swings at [troublemakers] and chased them with a broom. She's out there at night directing traffic and bouncing." In related news, police believe someone is targeting elderly women on Staten Island--two women have been shoved and robbed--and a woman has turned up on surveillance video using their credit cards.