← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
The TRUTH About Roofman: The Real-Life Hamburglar Who Hid in Toys “R” Us for Months | Roofman Movie
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hey, everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious. I like to think that I've heard it all. Every bizarre headline, every wild true crime caper from the last couple of decades. But even I have to admit, this one caught me completely off guard. Picture this. A guy who literally cuts holes through the roofs of McDonald's restaurants and then climbs down into the kitchens to rob the unsuspecting workers below. Not once, not twice, but over and over again. He'd wait until closing time and then he'd slip through the ceiling tiles like some kind of fast food phantom. And then he'd clean the place out. Cash drawers, safes, you name it. And then he'd put the workers in the freezer to be found by the next shift coming in. Legend has it he gave them their coats so that they'd be okay and was as polite as a robber could be. But eventually police caught him and he went to prison. And then he escaped. That's right. This guy, nicknamed the Hamburglar by some reporters, broke himself out of jail. And if you have never heard this story before, you are not alone. I hadn't either. Because let's face it, if you're going to rob a McDonald's by cutting through the roof, that is not just crime. That is cinema, my friends. But I'll bet you know about it now because the silver screen is giving this story the Channing Tatum treatment. The movie is called Roofman, but the real guy was Jeffrey Manchester. When he was captured for the robberies back in 2000, the North Carolina put him away for 45 years. That was a 45 year sentence he was facing. So yeah, he wasn't too keen. And four years into it, just four, he escaped. And he decided to lay low in a Toys R Us store in Charlotte. And when I say lay low, he actually lived in that Toys R Us store for months on end. He ate snacks from the shelves. M&M's baby food, the kind of thing you'd find at Toys R Us. And he used baby monitors to keep an eye out for employees. During the daytime. He began to leave the store to go to church and whatnot. And the whatnot included dating a woman that he met at the church. Now, she. She had no clue about his backstory. She. And when the cops arrived at her door, they forced her to make a date with him on her 40th birthday and lure him into a trap. And get this, picture it, they've got her in a cruiser, right? She's about a mile away from her Home. And Jeffrey Manchester's arriving for this date that the police made her ask him for on the phone, her 40th birthday. He's got flowers she can hear on the radio, everything as this honey trap, you know, trick is about to go into effect. She can hear them staking out, saying, he's coming. I got this door. And then she can hear them grab him and wrestle him to the ground. So you can imagine how hard that was for her. Apparently there was a flood of tears from both of them right at that moment at the arrest. She was taken to that spot, and it was waterworks. All that happened in January of 2005. And ever since then, Jeffrey Manchester's been cooling his heels in a North Carolina prison. But if it's any consolation, the roofman in the movie is a robber with a heart of gold, allowing his victims to retrieve their coats before locking them in the fast food freezers. So, you know, they'd be okay by the time the next shift found them. It may not have actually happened that way, though. Lots of people have different accounts, and movies are movies, right? We're supposed to feel great when we leave the theater. And one of the people who says, that is absolutely not what happened. I had a chance to speak with on my News Nation show, Shout out. News Nation. I'm on at 10pm Weeknights on news Nation. His name is Eddie Levens, and Eddie is the retired Charlotte police captain who led the task force that recaptured Jeffrey Manchester in that honeypot sting. That must have been awful for that girlfriend on her 40th birthday. Here's my conversation with Captain Eddie Levens. There's a dichotomy here. There are so many people who describe Jeffrey Manchester as clever and funny and almost loving. And then there's that whole other side, the victims and the police who say, not on your life. This guy's hardcore. How is it that he could be these two things?
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B
I think the term is called sociopath. I think when somebody can be so manipulative, they can get somebody to, you know, convince people who they're somebody they're not. And they build relationships with people simply for their own personal gain. That's Jeffrey Manchester.
- [05:23]
A
The movie with Channing Tatum is getting really good reviews. I'm curious if you plan to see it or if you have seen it or if you know much about it and how accurate it really is to the real story.
- [05:35]
B
It definitely is a movie. And I think Mr. Tatum's doing a great job of, you know, entertaining people about the, you know, story that he was told about. But in the real life of it, Jeffrey Manchester was nothing but a criminal. I mean, he was putting guns in people's faces. He was robbing people across the country. He finally got caught, and then before he got taken down, he almost made the fatal mistake of pulling a gun as he was getting arrested. So it wasn't very smart on his part, but I'm glad we were able to catch him before he did really any more damage. But he caused a lot of trauma for a lot of people.
- [06:06]
A
One of the things I didn't realize even reading up on this movie and the story behind it was that there's the Toys R Us that he was living in for months on end, but then there was also the Circuit City, which was vacant next door, that he was using as sort of a ruse entry and exit, and that even made it hard to catch him.
- [06:24]
B
Why is that what he had done? What got our attention initially at my task force was the fact that the store had been robbed three times. And every time that he would rob the place, rob the toys or us. We thought he was running out the back door. But in true life, he really wasn't. We had a K9 officer who was actually tracking the guy, and he would go to the back door and lose the track. So he got really frustrated, and it was his effort on a day off, coming back and searching the building where he found the secret layer, the hidden layer that he was actually using. He basically cut a hole in the wall underneath a rack and painted the wall to look like it was still brick. And he would roll under this shelving before he'd open the back door, roll onto the shelving and get into the Circuit City next door, pull the wall up. And so the dog was really confused. He was doing circles around the back door. Couldn't figure out why he lost the track, but it was just good work on a K9 officer's part to, you know, he was ticked off after about the third time figuring out where this guy really went.
- [07:24]
A
And the truth was, it would have been great had he actually been there. But by the time you guys found that false brick wall, he was long gone. Ultimately, it was this girlfriend that he met in church who had no idea about the backstory. Her name was Lee Wayne Scott. She's remarried or she's married now to someone, and her name is Lee Moore. And she talks to him every two weeks on the phone. And she's visited him in prison. Says he's a guy who tried to look after his kids and just lost his way. But what a tough thing for her to have to go through on her 40th birthday. Have to do this honeypot, you know, trickery to get him to come and meet her with flowers.
- [08:02]
B
She's, you know, she was one of his victims. I mean, if you think about the long haul, he went from California to Charlotte and committing crimes the entire time he was crossing the country. And when he finally decided to, you know, create more victims, you know, she was just in the line of fire, basically. But using somebody and taking advantage of them in a church setting, in some type of, you know, group setting, that they were coming together, trying to meet couples and things like that, I think that's pretty dirty. It just leads to, you know, me believe more and more that his sociopathic activities just. It was just. It was all about Jeffrey and what he was going to do. And he was going to make money and use everybody that he ever met along the way to his advantage. And that's what he did here with her.
- [08:41]
A
My great thanks to Eddie Levens, the Charlotte police captain whose team caught Jeffrey Batchester. And I am dying to know what you think about this case or if you've seen the movie and how you feel it compares to the real story that the victims tell, which is, this guy was brutal. The victims say, this man shoved a gun in my back. I was terrified. And the police say the same thing. They say he was cold, heartless, calculated, and that he menaced these victims who will never be the same. Right? He did this to his girlfriend, Right? He just strung her along on this big lie to the point where cops showed up at her door and arrested her and then forced her into this whole sting operation. Like, talk about ruining someone's life. So I'm super curious to see where you weigh in. You see the movie, you see how some people talk. The girlfriend. Look, she is on the record as saying that she still likes him, she's married to someone else, and she still talks to this guy on the phone every two weeks, and she still visits him in jail, and the husband's fine with it. So in that respect, you gotta think that she knew him well, or at least she knew the person she thought she knew well. And she has a fondness for him. She sees a different side. But those victims will never forget what it was like being robbed at gunpoint and being shoved in a freezer. You haven't been a crime victim. You don't know if you don't walk in those shoes, it is a whole other world. So I'm curious to see how you'll weigh in if you saw the movie, if you didn't see the movie, what you think about this guy. So if you're watching on YouTube, please leave me a comment, tell me what you think. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, leave a review and tell me what you think of the case, our coverage of it, the movie, all the above, or anything else as well. As always, I'm so thankful for you guys, for watching and listening. I'm Ashley Banfield and remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead. Seriously.