So many of the world’s greatest superheroes hide their true identity behind a mild-mannered alter-ego. On the surface, Clark Kent from Smallville, Kansas, may appear to be a mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet, but this cunning disguise—which largely consists of a pair of spectacles—is more than enough to mask his real identity as Superman, the illegal immigrant from the doomed planet Krypton. Penrod Pooch may appear to be a mild-mannered janitor holding down a steady job at a police station, but give him a minute to jump into a filing cabinet, and he will re-emerge as the woefully incompetent Hong Kong Phooey.
But this kind of fictional and not entirely convincing double life isn’t just confined to the realms of comic strips and animated TV shows. Take the very real case of John Zorn, for example. That wasn’t his real name, but we’re leaping ahead of ourselves in a mighty single bound that could clear a skyscraper. By day, John Zorn was a mild-mannered citizen of Charlotte, North Carolina.
He was a member of the local church, he had a steady relationship, and he was known for his generosity in handing out expensive brand new toys to the local children. But by night, John Zorn was the fugitive criminal mastermind known as Roofman.
The trouble with Roofman is that it’s difficult to fully pin down his contradictory character. This serial armed robber who once lived in a toy store was part Santa Claus, part Robin Hood, part Peter Pan, part Megamind, and part Easter Bunny. And although he made a brief appearance on America’s Most Wanted, this gentleman bandit appeared to attract a surprising level of respect from the police, his corporate targets, and even the innocent customers caught up in his meticulously planned raids. It’s not often the police get to say nice things about wanted criminals who have just escaped from prison. But this guy was a bona fide genius with an affable and considerate character. He might even be considered by some to be a bit of a legend. We’re allowed to say that because he never set a hedgehog on fire or bludgeoned anyone to death with a sledgehammer. In fact, on the whole, he was surprisingly chivalrous and non-violent for an armed robber. But the gun-wielding Roofman was still certainly a very different guy to the church-going John Zorn. And in much the same way that award-winning journalist Lois Lane rarely figured out that Superman was just Clark Kent without glasses, John Zorn’s steady girlfriend never figured out that Roofman was just John Zorn without the Bible.
The Sacramento Crime Spree
Although John Zorn had settled down in North Carolina by the year 2000, the story of Roofman begins a couple of years earlier, and a couple of thousand miles east in Sacramento County, California. By 1998, trying to order a Big Mac from McDonald’s anywhere in this region was proving to be a bit of a health risk. Not because of the amount of calories in a double-patty Big Mac.
But because there was always a lingering threat that Roofman might just be waiting in the wings whilst you were trying to enjoy an Egg McMuffin. And whenever Roofman showed up, you knew that you were in for something of an extended visit to McDonald’s.
Unlike most armed criminals, Roofman didn’t just randomly barge through the front door whilst waving around a weapon. As you might be able to guess from the name, Roofman instead descended from above like Ronald McDonald’s manic evil twin. He usually struck just as the restaurant was opening in the morning or preparing to close in the evening, so the risk-averse customer would be better off ordering their Happy Meals at around lunchtime.
Roofman would have already prepared long in advance for the surprise visit by discreetly hacking or sawing or drilling a hole through the roof of the restaurant. He would then clamber down into the interior via the use of ropes, before covering all his tracks and nipping to the restroom where he would hide until what he considered to be the precise perfect moment to pounce. Then, wearing a ski mask or bandana to presumably disguise his true mild-mannered identity, Roofman would make his presence known by pointing a semi-automatic handgun at the employees and customers, ordering them all to get inside the walk-in freezer or back room, and then cleaning out the cash registers before quickly making his exit through a back door.
Over the course of around two years, Roofman struck at least sixty times, taking around a couple of thousand dollars on each visit. During that time, he gradually expanded his operations across nine states—including Nevada, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Massachusetts—as repeatedly robbing the exact same branches of McDonald’s in Sacramento County every week might just have made his movements slightly predictable. And although his sights were set on McDonald’s for the majority of his misdeeds, he did very occasionally branch out into the rooftop robberies of other businesses such as Burger King, Blockbuster, Toys “R” Us, and Home Base. The mysterious masked villain once even stooped so low as to rob a branch of Taco Bell.
A Gentleman Bandit
But whilst the whole concept of armed robbery might be frowned upon in some quarters, it has to be said that Roofman was just so jolly polite and considerate to his victims. He wasn’t the type to scream at everyone to get down on the floor if they don’t wanna get hurt. Admittedly, he did have to assert his authority on some level, otherwise the employees would probably just snap at him to get to the back of the queue and stop mucking about.
Roofman usually indicated that he meant business by firing off a few shots into a wall. But once he felt confident that he’d got everyone’s attention, he was surprisingly cordial, displaying impeccable manners and genuine consideration for his victims.
Before politely asking everyone to get in the walk-in freezer, he always made sure that they had an opportunity to grab their coats and sweaters first, so they wouldn’t feel too nippy or catch a pesky cold. He even said “please” and “thank you.” Roofman also joked around with everyone to try and lighten the mood, pointing out to the employees that at least they’ll probably get the rest of the day off. The victims wouldn’t be left inside the walk-in freezer for very long, anyway.
Upon leaving the scene of the crime, the first thing Roofman did when he felt he’d got clear was call the police and inform them that another bunch of people needed to be let out of the cooler. You never saw that level of consideration with Bonnie and Clyde.
Roofman’s copybook wasn’t entirely blot-free, though. During one hold-up in a branch of McDonald’s in Sacramento, he resorted to pistol-whipping one of the employees. This might sound a bit brutal and out of character, but it was in direct response to a surprise attack from the employee who had managed to sneak up behind Roofman and strike him over the head with a bucket. This was obviously not something Roofman could just laugh off, and his attempt at re-asserting his authority didn’t leave the employee with any serious injuries.
Corporate and Police Reactions
But odd violent retaliations aside, Roofman’s generally cordial behaviour and cunning tactics appeared to inspire a weird level of respect from his victims and the police. Mike Van Winkle, a spokesman for the California Department of Justice, told the press: “He’s business-like and focused, and very serious about what he does. But many of those he’s robbed have been struck by what a nice, decent guy he seems to be, a real gentleman.”
McDonald’s even adopted a bizarre comical response to the long chain of armed robberies, noting that: “We may have a real Hamburgler on our hands! He likes us. He’s very brand loyal. And we work hard to build that loyalty.”
McDonald’s later took the matter a little more seriously when they stumped up a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of Roofman. They probably only felt this change of heart when they discovered to their dismay that Roofman had been robbing branches of Burger King on the side, the two-timing scoundrel.
But it’s the reaction from the police that raises the biggest eyebrow. Instead of adopting the usual official stance of “We’re gonna nail this son-of-a-bitch!”, they seemed to prefer to point out how Roofman was pretty impressive at his job. And it’s true that Roofman had been quite ingenious in turning his criminal operations into a fine art.
Even though he was robbing different business locations around nine states, he was effectively replicating the exact same crime each time. He targeted fast food restaurants as he knew they would have far less security to navigate than, say, a bank. And leaving aside that one brave employee with the bucket, he knew that most weary fast food employees on a minimum wage weren’t going to do anything reckless in a bid to stop a robbery.
The preparation and execution of each rooftop descent was immaculately orchestrated, but perhaps the most ingenious part of the whole masterplan is how Roofman had cleverly tapped into the cracks of corporate procedure. He was exploiting the almost immutable patterns of corporate routine. All these employees were following the same preset sequences and performing the same chores in the same areas of the building at the same time of day.
They were almost mindlessly following an entirely predictable cycle of monotonous events, doomed to repeat the same actions over and over again, almost as if they were trapped in a perpetual time loop. And it was Roofman’s job to study these patterns, and exploit the weakest segments of the daily cycle.
The Long Arm of the Law
Having said all that, even genius criminal masterminds have their off days, and not every single operation was a slick success. Police occasionally found abandoned equipment and only half-completed holes on the roofs of fast food restaurants, suggesting that Roofman had been forced into making a hasty exit before he could finish the job. On another occasion, he drilled down into the roof of a McDonald’s in Folsom in Sacramento County, only to find that the restaurant was closed for Thanksgiving Day.
But by and large, aside from forgetting to make a note of national holidays in his diary, Roofman was close to flawless execution in his increasingly prolific rooftop robberies. And it was perhaps this step up in the number of rooftop robberies that eventually led to Roofman’s downfall.
The police had already come agonisingly close to catching Roofman in the act. During one attempted robbery of a branch of McDonald’s in Placerville in El Dorado County, the police were alerted whilst he was still on the roof. After he had made a desperate scramble down to the ground, it appeared that the police had the guy cornered in the parking lot. But with a single bound, Roofman was free.
He made a pretty impressive leap over a massive chain-link fence, sprinted across four lanes of busy traffic on Interstate 80, and disappeared into the woods. The Placerville police will always remember that day as the day they almost caught Roofman.
But the North Carolina police did eventually get to grips with Roofman on May 20th, 2000. Roofman had already done the early morning shift at a branch of McDonald’s in Gastonia, North Carolina. Whether he was fuelled by greed or an admirable desire to increase productivity, he decided to tackle a closing shift on the very same day.
Not in the same branch, obviously. He travelled the full ten miles to another branch of McDonald’s in Belmont, this time armed with a .22 calibre rifle. But on this occasion, he was surprised again by the bravery of a McDonald’s employee who wasn’t going to give up the profits of his corporate employer without a fight.
This bravery didn’t extend to lobbing a bucket at Roofman’s head. Instead, the employee just managed to discreetly hit a silent alarm button whilst Roofman’s attention was probably focused on making sure that everyone was wrapping up nice and warm for another stint in the freezer.
For a while, it looked as if Roofman had made yet another rapid successful exit from the crime scene with a cash haul juicier than a Chicken McNuggets ShareBox. But having been unaware that the alarm had ever been raised, he was equally unaware that the police were already on the hunt as he prepared to make his next move. He was spotted attempting to reach his vehicle in a nearby church parking lot, and was chased again into the woods. But this time Roofman was caught.
And here’s another example of Roofman’s quite remarkable good manners. After he was caught and handcuffed, he didn’t start squirming about whilst screaming “I’ve been stitched-up like a kipper by the filth!” Instead, he calmly turned to the arresting officer and noted: “You guys did a real good job today.”
The Man Behind the Mask
However, there remains a question mark here which has never been definitively resolved. Had the North Carolina police really caught the Roofman? Or had they just caught a Roofman?
The arrested individual was the man who would later go on to assume the fake identity of mild-mannered John Zorn, the bible-basher who was a respected member of the community in Charlotte, North Carolina. But for now, we just knew him by his real name: Jeffrey Allen Manchester. Not an awful lot is known about Jeffrey’s life leading up to the arrest.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that he had an ex-wife and three children living in the local area, although the only family member who ever agreed to speak to the press was his mother. We do know that he once spent time during his younger years actually working at a branch of McDonald’s. Later on in life, we know that he served as a US Army reservist, with another unconfirmed report suggesting that he was downgraded to a reservist after getting stripped of his combat status for reasons that military officials would never reveal.
This might explain why he became disillusioned and embittered over his military career, and decided to step back into McDonald’s, albeit not through the front door.
Here’s the thing, though. The police had concrete evidence that Jeffrey had pulled off the two McDonald’s robberies on that day in May 2000. And during interrogation, he was happy to confess to those two crimes. But Jeffrey claimed that he hadn’t committed any of the other sixty crimes that had taken place over the previous couple of years. Instead, he reckoned that he had been inspired by the stories in the press relating to Roofman, and had decided to carry out copycat robberies in honour of his hero.
The police weren’t remotely convinced. All of the crimes had been carried out in an almost identical manner. Although Roofman wore a mask, witnesses often painted a very similar picture of man with a strong athletic build and a pronounced Adam’s apple, attributes which matched those of Jeffrey Manchester. And it’s worth pointing out that following Jeffrey’s prison sentence, the regular rooftop robberies mysteriously dried up.
And yet—it appears that the police couldn’t ever pin any of the previous robberies on Jeffrey Manchester, and nobody was ever charged with them. The police could only charge Jeffrey with armed robbery and kidnapping for those two McDonald’s heists that unfolded on the same day. But he certainly got clobbered with a pretty hefty punishment for those two robberies. In late 2000, Jeffrey Manchester was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
The Great Escape
There was, however, one minor problem. There wasn’t a prison in the land secure enough to hold Roofman.
After being moved around various different prisons in North Carolina, Jeffrey eventually settled down in Brown Creek Correctional Institution in Polkton—a prison from which nobody had ever escaped since it had opened for business seven years earlier. For the first five years of his sentence, Jeffrey appeared to behave like a model prisoner, and picked up a nice little job in the metal plant. But he had more than likely been plotting his escape since Day One. And he was patient enough to play the long game.
Under this guise of a model prisoner, Jeffrey had quietly fallen back on his old expertise of studying patterns in routine and human behaviour to exploit the vulnerable cracks in the system. If McDonald’s employees think that their working days can feel a bit repetitive, they should try spending a few years in prison, in which both prisoners and officers alike are almost mindlessly following an entirely predictable cycle of monotonous events, doomed to repeat the same actions over and over again, almost as if they were trapped in a perpetual time loop.
Jeffrey observed the routines of the prisoners and the guards and the changing of shifts, but more importantly, he observed the routines of the delivery trucks. And whilst he was compiling his mental notes on the deliveries and procedures of the delivery trucks, he got busy in the metal plant putting together a plywood platform which he spray painted black. At some point, he managed to attach this black plywood platform to the undercarriage of a delivery truck without anybody noticing. But he still had to wait for the perfect moment to put the final phase of his plan into action.
On June 15th, 2004, dark clouds gathered over Brown Creek Correctional Institution and provided Jeffrey with the opportunity he had been anticipating. After finishing up work at the metal plant, he seized the calculated moment to slip out of line undetected, and made his way to the delivery truck which was just getting ready to leave the building. Jeffrey slid under the truck, attached a small piece of black cardboard to the back end of the chassis for a bit of extra privacy, and then clung tightly to the pre-prepared black plywood.
He had kind of created a primitive optical illusion here which was helped along by the miserable weather conditions. Anyone taking a quick check underneath the truck would have just stared into a fuzzy black void, and given it no further consideration. After spending two years of his life making dramatic surprise entrances from above, Roofman had now made a dramatic surprise exit from below, as the delivery truck trundled away from Brown Creek Correctional Institution.
A New Identity
A little later on that year, a new face popped up in a neighbourhood in Charlotte, North Carolina. His name was John Zorn, and this quietly charming and generous guy quickly turned into quite a likeable and popular figure. He joined the Crossroads Presbyterian Church, and attended Bible class every Wednesday.
He dressed up as both Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for the Sunday School Christmas party, handing out expensive new toys to the children. During a singles lunch held by the church, the largely unassuming John Zorn hooked up with a new partner—a mother of three by the name of Leigh Wainscott. Within the space of just a few months, John was showering lucky Leigh with diamond earrings, giving the hottest toys in town to the three kids, and taking the whole family on holidays.
Yet there were just one or two strange things about John. Nobody was ever allowed to visit his pad, and he never talked about his job or where exactly he was getting the money to pay for all these lavish gifts. But these oddities were connected. Apparently, John was not allowed to talk about his top-secret job working for the government, and his living quarters were in a highly-restricted government building. So “Movie Night” was always going to be hosted round at Leigh’s place.
No, scrap that, there were lots of problems. Because John Zorn was of course the new mild-mannered alternative identity of Roofman, also known as the wanted fugitive Jeffrey Manchester. And by this point, he certainly wasn’t living in a highly-restricted government building. Jeffrey had made himself a new home in a bizarre secret hideout in a busy toy store, plotting his next dastardly move.
Life in a Toy Store
As he had been clinging fiercely to the undercarriage of that delivery truck, Jeffrey had probably been hoping that the driver would take him a little further than just around the corner. But not one to hang about, he waited until the coast was clear, and proceeded to hitch-hike the next leg of his journey. There was speculation that he might attempt to travel back to see his family in Sacramento County, California, but his mother told the press that she wasn’t buying into that, explaining that she didn’t believe Jeffrey would put his family in such an awkward position. She also claimed that whilst Jeffrey had expressed some remorse and even embarrassment over his rooftop robberies, she had never been given an adequate explanation as to why he had done them.
She was certainly right about Jeffrey’s travel plans. He had no intention of making it back to Sacramento County. He only made it as far as Charlotte, North Carolina before taking up residence in a local branch of Toys “R” Us. Quite incredibly, he hid in a tiny cubby hole behind a bike display every evening, and patiently waited until the shop had closed, before getting out on the shop floor to stretch his legs a bit and make himself at home.
But this was obviously only a stop-gap measure. Jeffrey harboured more ambitious plans to upgrade to a plusher pad.
And he really began living the dream when, from his modest hiding spot behind the bike racks, he managed to burrow his way next door into an abandoned former branch of Circuit City. Now Jeffrey had got the best of both worlds. He no longer had to hide motionless for hours whilst waiting for closing time in a tiny cubby hole.
He could relax in comfort in a fancy new private spot under a stairwell of the empty Circuit City where nobody ever ventured. Then in the evenings, after Toys “R” Us had closed, he could sneak back into the toy store and largely just piss about all night like the world’s biggest overgrown kid. He would keep himself fit by going for a midnight bike ride around the aisles of the store.
If he was feeling in a really playful mood, he would take some of the radio-controlled cars up for a little spin on the roof. And another handy benefit was that Toys “R” Us came with its entirely free all-you-can-eat buffet, albeit mostly in the form of kid’s snacks and baby food.
You might be wondering why this branch of Toys “R” Us didn’t have an effective security camera system in place. Anyone who bothered to check the previous night’s footage would surely have raised some kind of alarm when they saw a grown man taking radio-controlled cars up onto the roof, gorging himself silly on stolen baby food, and bouncing around the aisles on a space hopper. Well, the store apparently did have an effective security camera system.
But Jeffrey had taken over control of it. After sneaking into the manager’s office and studying the manual for the security cameras at great length, he probably knew more about how they worked than anybody else in the store, and was able to manipulate the system so that it failed to record any of his late-night antics.
The Man Cave
An hour or two before the store was due to open again the next morning, Jeffrey would retreat through the secret passageway behind the bike rack, back to his bizarre new man cave in Circuit City. And he really went to town with the decoration of his new lodgings under the stairwell. He painted the walls bright colours, put up posters, set up action figures, and mounted a toy basketball hoop. During these daytime hours, he would often while away the time watching superhero movies on a DVD player, both of which obviously came courtesy of Toys “R” Us. Spider-Man was obviously a clear influence on Roofman’s career path, and it’s no surprise that Spider-Man 2 was a particular favourite that was regularly top of the viewing pile. It does all sound a bit like the story of a man who never grew up, or perhaps a man who was making up for a lost childhood.
But there was a sensible side to the living arrangements, too. Jeffrey had ensured that he had installed a stolen smoke detector in his new home under the stairwell, and it was also reported that he’d managed to pipe in water from Toys “R” Us, so he wasn’t just rolling around in his own filth. And there was a far more serious ulterior motive for his choice of location. From his secret lair in Circuit City, Jeffrey was planning out his next big robbery next door in Toys “R” Us.
The problem with avoiding the busy shop floor in the daytime hours, and avoiding any interaction with the workforce, is that he was never going to get into the safe this way. At the end of every day, all the takings were securely locked away in a safe hidden around the back of the store, but Jeffrey knew that the manager was the only one with the key to get inside it. So Jeffrey’s next big masterplan was to mount another carefully-orchestrated early-morning raid on the store when the manager was on the scene, and get him to open up the safe and hand over the cash.
Jeffrey was clearly thinking along the lines of cutting out unpaid dead time by moving in next door to the very place that he intended to rob. Yet again, Roofman got busy on studying the crushingly repetitive routines of a corporate company. But it was easier than usual this time.
He set up a stolen baby monitor in his man cave, so that he could sit back and observe the daily schedules of his intended targets from the comfort of his den whilst playing with his action figures and happily munching away on baby food. And there was another big difference. Instead of just observing the patterns from an aloof position, this time Roofman was able to directly influence the course of events.
During his late-night visits next door, he started mucking about with the staff rotas so that the schedules fitted in better with his plans, behaving like the almost literal gremlin in the works of an innocent toy store. Roofman wasn’t just identifying and exploiting the weakest spots in the system. He was now treating the occasionally confused employees like puppets on strings, and making them dance to his tune.
The Double Life
It was shortly after Roofman began hatching his latest plot, that he assumed the identity of John Zorn and began leading the new double life down in the local church community. In typically child-like Roofman style, he had chosen the name John Zorn because it sounded a bit like Max Zorin, the villain from the 1985 Bond film A View to a Kill, and Jeffrey thought it sounded cool.
Over the course of several months, Roofman was living something approaching a normal life with his new relationship and his church activities, yet he still sneaked back off to his man cave in Circuit City after he’d had enough of being normal for one day. The church pastor Ron Smith later remarked: “He was a very engaging, down-to-earth, nice fellow. My bullshit metre is pretty good, it’s pretty tough to scam me. There is a good side to this guy, that’s what I’m struggling with now—the other side.”
Just about everyone in the local church community felt that John Zorn was a thoroughly decent and kind chap. And his new girlfriend Leigh Wainscott never once suspected that her new partner might just be a notorious escaped criminal on the run. At least we now know where all those toys for the kids were coming from.
All this does make you wonder if Roofman was ever tempted to give up his life of crime and just settle down in Charlotte. He’d managed to get away with being John Zorn for several months. Perhaps he could have set up a new roof tiling business, and found himself proper lodgings that extended beyond a stairwell. He already had new friends, a new relationship, and new respect.
He must surely have considered the option of embracing this new grown-up life. But I suppose the problem is that he was very much living a lie, as John Zorn didn’t exist. Perhaps he could only keep up the pretence for so long before reverting back to Roofman and slinking back to his secret lair every night to work on the next phase of his villainous masterplan.
The Final Heists
Roofman would of course need a gun to carry out his latest armed robbery. And whilst he may have lived next door to a toy store, I’m sure he was aware that a Buzz Lightyear Glow-in-the-Dark Infinity Blaster wasn’t really going to do the business here. So for the first time in a while, he carried out another rooftop operation. On November 28th, 2004, he scaled the dizzy heights of a local pawn shop in the middle of the night, cut a hole through the roof, and dropped down inside for a private nosy at what was on offer.
He walked away with four handguns. During the same week, he took a trip to the local dentist. He didn’t want to rob anything on this occasion, he just popped in to get a bit of work done. This might not seem massively significant right now, but it gave everyone something to chew over just a few weeks later.
By Boxing Day, 2004, Roofman—or Jeffrey Manchester—or John Zorn—was ready to make his big strike. Just a few days after dressing up as Santa Claus to entertain the children at Crossroads Presbyterian Church, Roofman was hiding under his more familiar masked disguise when he burst out of nowhere to surprise the early morning customers at Toys “R” Us in search of a Boxing Day bargain. I say he burst out of nowhere. He did, of course, just casually sneak out of the secret passageway behind the bike display, but nobody in the store had realised that.
But there seems to be a little confusion over these final chapters of the criminal escapades of Roofman. It’s usually wrongly reported that Roofman got caught again during this particular heist. Whilst it’s not the most well-documented criminal case in the world, if we dig a little deeper into the truth, we find that he actually got away with this one. Armed with one of the stolen handguns, he ordered everyone to get down onto the floor around the back of the store.
He didn’t have many alternatives as branches of Toys “R” Us don’t usually come with handy walk-in freezers for prisoners. He then politely frogmarched the manager to the safe, and asked him to open it up and hand over an unconfirmed amount of money. Some reports estimate that it was in the region of $15,000.
And here’s the really clever bit. After leaving everyone on the floor, he then nipped around to the fire exit at the back of the store and triggered the alarm. By the time the police arrived on the scene, everyone naturally assumed that the robber had made a swift exit from the building, and was now miles away, counting up all the loot.
What they failed to realise is that the robber had actually just sneaked back onto the main shop floor and disappeared through the magic secret passage behind the bike racks. As the police were interviewing the traumatised customers and employees, Roofman was just next door, watching the whole investigation unfold on the baby monitor.
The Beginning of the End
Yet, within the space of just a couple of weeks, Roofman had rather let himself down in more ways than one. That trip to the dentist was now clearly bothering him, probably because he realised that it wasn’t a good idea for a local dentist to keep dental records on file which could link John Zorn to his true identity as a wanted escaped convict. When Roofman made a return visit to the dentist’s in the middle of the night, it’s possible that he was simply trying to locate his own dental records. But whatever his original motive, he eventually resorted to surprisingly drastic action.
He burned the dentist’s office to the ground. Well, that’s one way of making sure that nobody’s ever going to find those records. But you can’t help feeling a bit concerned that Roofman was now beginning to seriously venture off the chimney stack.
Very shortly afterwards, he broke his own rule by robbing the exact same place twice within a remarkably short window of time—just a matter of days. Perhaps fuelled by the triumph and ease of his very recent haul, he decided that he might as well carry out a brisk follow-up operation. But on this second occasion, things didn’t run quite as smoothly as he’d planned.
For starters, he’d barely got out his gun before a female off-duty Sheriff’s Deputy came wandering into the store. Roofman responded to this unexpected visit by punching her in the face and stealing her gun. But in the meantime, he had lost control of the heist.
Customers and employees were running around the shop and not really doing what they were told. Roofman eventually decided that he needed to sack this one off as a bad job, and at the first opportunity, he discreetly disappeared back into the passage behind the bike racks. He couldn’t trigger the fire alarm round the back this time, as there were too many people milling around in panic over there.
And witnesses later revealed to the police that nobody had seen him leave via the front or back of the building. For the first time, the police began to suspect that the robber hadn’t gone very far at all.
Following an exhaustive examination of the entire toy store, the secret passageway to the villain’s den next door was finally uncovered. There was no sign of the robber himself. It appears that Roofman had decided he was no longer safe in Circuit City. But he had certainly left in a hurry and didn’t have much time to tidy up.
Police found the surveillance equipment, the discarded baby food containers, the basketball hoop, and approximately $6,800 worth of stolen toys. The employees who had been on duty that day would often have to fork out for any missing items out of their own pocket. But over at Toys “R” Us in Charlotte, it appears that thousands of dollars’ worth of toys could gradually go missing over the space of a few months, and it was all just chalked down to rotten bad luck.
The Hunt and the Sting
Roofman’s own luck was about to run out. The police were of course still on the hunt for the missing fugitive Jeffrey Manchester. During a later search of the cell he had so ungraciously vacated, officers discovered that Jeffrey had spent a lot of time drawing up plans for what appeared to be his “Dream Home.”
This wasn’t your usual kind of multi-million-dollar mansion with a private swimming pool and helicopter pad. Jeffrey seemed far more interested in drawing up plans for elaborate mazes with secret passageways and trap doors and escape holes and hideouts, almost as if he was drawing up architectural plans for a house in which he might be able to escape from himself.
It didn’t take long for the police to identify a connection between the missing Roofman, and a familiar style of armed robbery carried out by a man who lived in a small escape hole next door which could be accessed by a secret passage. But it was a simple tin of empty paint which provided the crucial evidence. After sprucing up his man cave in bright colours, Roofman had left the discarded tins of paint just hanging around in another corner of the abandoned Circuit City. A fingerprint found on one of the tins of paint matched that of Jeffrey Manchester.
Now all they had to do was find him.
By early January 2005, the city of Charlotte was heaving with posters and flyers asking for information on the whereabouts of Jeffrey Manchester, and warning citizens that a dangerous criminal may be at loose in the local area. And of course, these photographs of Jeffrey Manchester were eventually glimpsed by members of the Crossroads Presbyterian Church who had suddenly realised that mild-mannered John Zorn just might not be all he seemed. Naturally, it was John Zorn’s partner Leigh Wainscott who received the biggest shock of all. After the police were able to confirm that John Zorn and Jeffrey Manchester were one and the same, they paid Leigh a visit to break the news. A shocked Leigh initially refused to believe it, until she saw the evidence with her own eyes after the police showed her Jeffrey Manchester’s profile on America’s Most Wanted and she found herself looking at the same guy that she had been dating for months.
Leigh later told the press: “I was numb. I was hysterical. He was very well-spoken, well-dressed, clean, generous.
My pastor and my congregation all fell in love with him immediately.” On top of all that, it was poor Leigh’s 40th birthday. But that turned out to be quite fortuitous for the police, even if it ruined Leigh’s birthday.
After finally coming to terms that she had fallen in love with a man who did not exist, Leigh agreed to spend her 40th birthday helping to set up a sting operation with the police. She telephoned John Zorn and invited him over to her place before going out for the birthday meal that they had both planned earlier. John Zorn later turned up on the doorstep that evening with a bouquet of flowers and yet more toys for the kids.
But however he made his entrance into Leigh’s house, Roofman was destined to make his exit in the back of a police van. He remained as calm as ever as he was arrested.
Leigh later claimed that he expressed genuine remorse during a telephone call with him a few days later. She said: “He was very sad and humbled and felt terrible that he had to deceive us. I don’t hate him. I’m disappointed and confused. I don’t know whether to smack him or hug him.”
Meanwhile, arresting officer Sergeant Katherine Scheimreif of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, followed in the footsteps of tradition by expressing hints of genuine admiration for the guy that she had just taken into custody. “You hate to compliment the guy, because he’s a dirtbag, but we can learn a lot from him. It won’t surprise me if he escapes again. He’s that crafty.”
The Final Sentence
In early 2005, Jeffrey Manchester was found guilty of a long list of charges including robbery with a dangerous weapon, breaking and entering, and malicious use of explosives to damage property. And again, the law came crashing down pretty hard on Roofman. He was sentenced to upwards of forty years in prison, and remains in a maximum control facility today with no hope of parole until the 2030s.
And you can’t help feeling that it’s a bit of a shame in a way that one of the most ingenious and largely non-violent criminal brains of recent history currently spends about 23 hours a day locked alone in a prison cell with nothing to do. Admittedly that’s probably something of a relief for every branch of McDonald’s in the area, but imagine what he might have been capable of if he’d turned his sharp mind to something productive instead of forcing people at gunpoint to step inside walk-in freezers. It’s hard to say for sure if he was genuinely fascinated by the concept of exploiting the patterns of human behaviour, or if he was just the boy who never grew up and became convinced that he lived inside the pages of a Spider-Man comic.
Maybe his own arresting officer was right when she suggested that Roofman might well escape again. The local branches of McDonald’s should perhaps exercise caution with their future promotions, as if there’s one thing likely to bring Roofman out of incarceration, it’s a Happy Meal that comes packaged with a new Spider-Man toy. Or maybe it’s not entirely out of the question that he was telling the truth when he claimed that he wasn’t responsible for the original massive crime spree for which nobody was ever convicted, and that the original Roofman is still waiting in the wings, poised to make his next strike. What we do know for sure is that having spent a great deal of time masterfully slipping through the cracks of corporate routine, Jeffrey Manchester now finds himself mindlessly following an entirely predictable cycle of monotonous events, doomed to repeat the same actions over and over again, almost as if he was trapped in a perpetual time loop.
Key Takeaways
- Jeffrey Manchester, known as ‘Roofman,’ committed around sixty rooftop robberies across nine states, primarily targeting McDonald’s restaurants from 1998-2000.
- Despite being an armed robber, Roofman was unusually polite to victims, letting them grab coats before entering freezers and calling police afterward to ensure their release.
- After escaping prison in 2004 by hiding under a delivery truck, Manchester created the fake identity ‘John Zorn’ and hid in a Toys ‘R’ Us and adjacent abandoned Circuit City.
- Manchester’s girlfriend Leigh Wainscott and his church community were completely unaware of his criminal identity until police connected him to a robbery and showed her his ‘America’s Most Wanted’ profile.
- He was finally recaptured in January 2005 after Leigh agreed to help police set up a sting operation on her fortieth birthday, and was sentenced to over forty years in prison.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Roofman and what was his real identity?
Roofman was the alias of Jeffrey Allen Manchester, a serial armed robber who later assumed the fake identity of John Zorn, a mild-mannered church-going resident of Charlotte, North Carolina.
How did Roofman typically carry out his robberies?
Roofman would prepare long in advance by discreetly hacking, sawing, or drilling a hole through the roof of a restaurant, then clamber down using ropes, hide in the restroom until the perfect moment, and surprise employees and customers wearing a ski mask or bandana while pointing a semi-automatic handgun at them.
What businesses did Roofman target?
Roofman primarily targeted McDonald’s restaurants, but also occasionally robbed Burger King, Blockbuster, Toys R Us, Home Base, and even once robbed a Taco Bell.
How was Roofman described in terms of his behavior toward victims?
Roofman was described as surprisingly cordial, polite, and considerate. He would let people grab coats before putting them in walk-in freezers, said ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ joked to lighten the mood, and would call police after leaving to inform them that people needed to be let out of the cooler.
How did Jeffrey Manchester escape from Brown Creek Correctional Institution?
After observing delivery truck routines for years, Manchester attached a black plywood platform to a delivery truck’s undercarriage, then on June 15, 2004, slipped under the truck and clung to the platform, using black cardboard for extra camouflage, and escaped as the truck drove away.
Where did Jeffrey Manchester live after escaping prison?
After escaping, Manchester made his way to Charlotte, North Carolina where he initially hid in a tiny cubby hole behind a bike display in a Toys R Us, then burrowed into an abandoned Circuit City next door where he created a secret living space under a stairwell.
How did Roofman manipulate the Toys R Us security system?
After sneaking into the manager’s office and studying the security camera manual at great length, Jeffrey learned how to manipulate the system so that it failed to record any of his late-night activities in the store.
How was Jeffrey Manchester finally caught after his second escape?
After his girlfriend Leigh Wainscott saw his photo on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and realized John Zorn was Jeffrey Manchester, she agreed to help police set up a sting operation on her 40th birthday by inviting him over, where he was arrested.
What evidence linked Jeffrey Manchester to the Toys R Us/Circuit City hideout?
A fingerprint found on a discarded tin of paint in the abandoned Circuit City matched Jeffrey Manchester, providing the crucial evidence linking him to the secret lair.
What was Jeffrey Manchester’s sentence after his final capture?
In early 2005, Jeffrey Manchester was found guilty of multiple charges including robbery with a dangerous weapon, breaking and entering, and malicious use of explosives to damage property, and was sentenced to upwards of forty years in prison with no hope of parole until the 2030s.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The “Roofman”: The Bizarre Story of the Bandit Who Lived in a Toy Store
- Hero image source by Alexrk2 / openverse, by.
