Criminal - The Roofman, Part 1

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Between 1998 and 2000, more than 40 stores and chain restaurants across the country were robbed by a masked man who always entered through the roof. Police couldn’t figure out where he’d turn up next. To listen to Part 2 right now, sign up for Criminal Plus. You'll also get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening to all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions apply. Air Canada. Nice travels. 25 years ago, Mervat Fayad was working at a McDonald's at the corner of North Main and Route 74 in Belmont, North Carolina, outside of Charlotte. She was just out of high school. We met Mervat at McDonald's to talk about one morning in May of 2000, when she arrived to open the restaurant around 5 a.m. with several other employees. There was a lot to do. Turn on the grills, the fryer, start cooking,

prep in biscuits, and start making the tea, fresh tea, fresh coffee, and make sure everything is stocked and good and clean. So I know Grandma, that's what we called her, she was making the biscuits. Mervette told her boss that she would handle making the tea and coffee right behind the front counter. And I just see someone that came right from the kitchen to the front counter area. And I see someone standing, but I thought, you know, it was one of the crew people.

The store was still closed. All the doors were locked. And then he said, I need you to get down on your knees and don't say anything or don't scream. So that's when I turned around and I looked and I saw him. The only thing I can see was his eyes and a little bit of like the nose, but more the eyes, because he had a mask on. And he was holding a, I believe it was 22 rifle in his hand. And this is when it hit me as in, okay, what is happening?

Mervat got down on the floor. Her boss, who had been in the bathroom, came around the corner and saw the man with the gun behind the floor. Her boss, who had been in the bathroom, came around the corner and saw the man with the gun behind the counter. I said to her, this is real. Elaine, this is real. And this is when he asked all of us to just stay quiet and go walk into the office.

Mervat says they were five employees in the restaurant that morning. They were all rounded up and brought back through the kitchen to the hallway outside her boss' office. The man with the gun took Mervette's keys from her. She had a small can of pepper spray attached to them. When he saw that, he grabbed it and he said, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to take it because I don't want you to do something stupid that would kind of force

him to do any harm. The man told all the employees to lie face down on the floor. That way we can all be low because of the drive-through window. That way no one can drive and see us. No one was talking. Everything was super quiet. The only thing you heard was the beeping and stuff like that from cooking.

I know that at one point the grills opened back up because they were cooking sausage. And the oven started beeping because there was apple pies in there. So one of the crew people, the lady in the kitchen said, Elaine, what do you want me to do with the sausage and the pies? She said, well, ask him. He's in charge here. And he actually told her that you can get up and remove the sausage and the apple pies from the oven. — And then, the man told her boss to open the safe.

— He had a bag, and she was just putting all the money that we had in the safe in the bag. So, and she was just putting, like last night's deposit, she was putting all the cash from the registers. And when she put all that, she said, okay, I'm done. You want the coins? And he actually said to her, yes, I like coins. Please put them all. So yes, she put all the coins that was in the safe that day, everything

in there for him. Was it a lot of money? I believe it was between $7,000 and $8,000, but that was a lot of money for him to take. Was he polite? I mean, what was it? Was he yelling? Super, super polite. He was saying nothing but, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for doing this to you guys. You guys are the good people. I'm the bad person. I'm so sorry. Please. And I didn't know whether to laugh or to be scared or is this real?

Because, you know, you see in the movies, robberies are not like that. Then he asked her boss, Elaine, to get the McDonald's jackets used by employees. What were you thinking when he said, I mean, when he said get the jackets? I don't think there was like time to think about any of that. I didn't even think about, well, what's next?

Once they had their jackets on, the man walked them over to the walk-in cooler and shut the door. He did tell us that don't scream or don't try to do anything for the next, I believe he said five, 10 minutes or something, and someone will get us out. So we got in there. Elaine was so scared that her mouth got so dry that it was shut. She couldn't open. She couldn't talk. So I looked at her and I just turned around, grabbed a bottle of milk, opened it, and I said,

here you go, just drink this. Just stay calm. We waited. We didn't hear anything out. So we started pushing the door a little bit. We kind of knew that door doesn't lock. He did not know that, but we knew that that door does not lock. It does not matter how many locks you put on there, it's not going to lock. So we just kept pushing it, pushing it, pushing it. We pushed it hard and it opened.

The employee saw that he had tried to lock them in by putting the long metal legs of a lemon slicer through the door's handle, but it didn't really work. Mervat Fayad still works for McDonald's today as a director of operations, overseeing several stores. When we met her, she took us into the back, into the walk-in cooler. So, a lot of people say,

oh, you were locked in the freezer. No, we were not locked in the freezer. But this is the cooler. The temperature is 41 degrees. I mean, it's kind of cold. Yes, yes, it is. But if you do jump in jacks, you're not going to die. So, you were all in here,

and how long do you think you were in here total? Oh, not even, not even five minutes. Because we were not able to be patient enough, and we wanted out. So when you walked out, you opened this door, and then were you all kind of looking around to see if he was still there? Yes, so we were in,

I think what got us at ease is that that back door was cracked open a little bit. The alarm was going and we didn't see him. Other alarms inside the store were going off too. The alarms for the safe and for the unattended ovens. Everything in the store was beeping. Everything. The only thing we hear is beeps and quiet.

Like us being so quiet. That's when we ran and called the police right away. About 12 officers responded. They started driving around, looking for the suspect. There had been another robbery at a nearby McDonald's late the night before. Employees there were also locked in the walk-in cooler. About a mile from the McDonald's, one officer noticed a car in the middle of a church parking lot.

He went to look at the car and saw a man coming out of some trees. When the man spotted the officer, he ran back into the woods. The police officer made himself known, attempted to arrest, short foot chase into kind of a wooded area. And it was dark. Sun was about to come up, but still dark. And the officer did the right thing and maintained his composure and got on his radio and called for backup.

And everybody came running. And as they say, the gig was up. The man reportedly said to the officers, you guys did a real good job today. I've heard him called the roof man. I've heard him called the rooftop robber. The morning of the robbery, Sky Pooley says he got a phone call. He's a retired special agent for the California Department of Justice.

If I recall right, my pager was beeping on my bedside. A very excited voice told me that they had caught him, that they had caught the roofman. And like so many times before, I asked them to please tell me what makes you think you got the roofman? And they described the two robberies. He was nice and he was polite. He was friendly, all while holding

a gun and threatening lives. And he put them in the refrigeration unit and was gone like a flash. So just that alone led me to believe that's the roof man. I'm Phoebe Judge, This is Criminal. Support for Criminal comes from Quince. Sometimes I'll save new clothes to wear for the first time when I'm on vacation. You can find new things for your upcoming trip at Quince. They have lightweight European linen pants from $30, a lot of styles of sleeveless linen dresses, bathing suits, and leather tote bags. So whether you're in the car, on a long flight, or walking around a new city all day, you can be cool and comfortable.

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Hungryroot.com slash criminal, code criminal. About a year and a half earlier, in the early morning hours of December 17th, 1998, police in Sacramento, California, got a call about a break-in at a local McDonald's. Employees arrived at the restaurant and found a masked man waiting for them inside. He had a handgun and had avoided setting off any alarms by coming through the roof using

power tools. Days earlier, another nearby McDonald's south of Sacramento had been robbed in the exact same way. And the detective at Sacramento Police Department realized after speaking to other local agencies nearby that this was a series. The suspect was following the same pattern, the same MO. A few months later, in March of 1999, McDonald's was robbed in Half Moon Bay,

south of San Francisco. It was early morning when a man wearing a ski mask approached workers inside while holding a handgun. He ordered them into the walk-in cooler and took $900. He had entered the building by cutting a three-foot-square hole into the roof. Police said that in recent months other McDonald's locations in Northern California had been robbed too. A police sergeant told a reporter the suspect had entered through the roof each time, saying, quote, chains are built the same way and floor plans are pretty much the same.

It cuts down on the workload. One detective told a reporter, I'd look up on the roof if I had a McDonald's. He was able to hide in the restaurants. Sometimes he would bring himself out as the stores were opening. Folks are showing up to start coffee and making breakfast foods and whatnot. And sometimes he would bring himself out and begin a robbery with the victims after closing. And I know of no robbery committed in this case in which there were customers inside or involved. As far as I know, that never happened in this series.

It was always the robber and the employees. Robbery started popping up all over the West Coast. It was, seemed to be a ticking time bomb because he was, the series was picking up steam and it was prolific. Quite a few robberies were on the list, in my list, that I thought he was responsible for. By August of that year, there had been 27 similar robberies

across California, Nevada, and Oregon. And the way the suspect got in each time, through the roof, wasn't the only thing connecting them. According to detectives, one reporter wrote, the robber's cordial demeanor is as distinct as his rooftop entry. He was a gentleman going so far as to use ma'am, sir, thank you, to the point of when he put a group of men and women into their freezer or refrigerator,

he would often have a male employee give up his own jacket or sweater or sweatshirt to any of the women who might not have such a coat for herself. He was also known to call police from borrowed employee cell phones or pay phones to tell them that there were employees locked in the cooler. But police couldn't catch him. One case in California, responding officers were there, probably within a minute or sooner than when the call went out that there was an armed robbery in progress. And responding officers saw the suspect on the roof and as officers began their containment

of the area and surrounding the building, as you might say. The suspect jumped off of the roof of the McDonald's restaurant, under the ground, ran away, jumped a fence, ran over four lanes of highway traffic and up a mountainside, and escaped. So he was proving hard to catch. To say the least. In October of 1999, the Sacramento Bee reported that the so-called rooftop robber had taken his quote, fast food fetish to the East Coast. McDonald's Up and Down I-95 between Virginia and South Carolina were being robbed.

McDonald's corporate offered a $5,000 reward. Some people speculated that the suspect was a former McDonald's employee. Was it clear that you were dealing with someone who was not only athletic but also pretty smart. We respected his abilities, his skills and abilities, skill in his movements throughout the building to avoid detection from outside. It gave us a sense that perhaps he had some sort of training, in handling a weapon and in his movements. The robber had fired his gun to scare employees, once into the ceiling and once into a fax machine. But police said he hadn't fired at any employees during his robberies. During one robbery, he pistol-whipped and tied up an employee, after the employee

came up behind him and hit him over the head with a bucket. Police arrested a 19-year-old man named Jacob Ray Farrell on the roof of McDonald's in California. He'd triggered an alarm at 2 in the morning. But he had no weapon or black mask with him. And when police searched the roof, there was no hole. He told police that he had climbed onto the roof to try to get some sleep. And he was later ruled out as a suspect. McDonald's corporate increased their reward to $10,000. It must have been incredibly frustrating that you couldn't catch him. Yes, frustrating. Yeah, it was frustrating.

I don't know how better to say it. It was frustrating, but all good things come to an end. In early 2000, a robbery was reported at a Trader Joe's near Salem, Massachusetts. Police believed it was the rooftop robber. By then he was linked to robberies at 35 other stores and restaurants across the country, mostly McDonald's, but he had also been connected to robberies at Burger King locations, as well as grocery, toy, and video stores. Police said he had stolen almost $100,000 in cash.

And they seemed to have no idea where he'd turn up next. There's no set pattern, a Sacramento County Sheriff Sergeant said. It's all a big lotto. Restaurants that hadn't experienced robberies were also finding holes on their roofs. Police suspected that in those cases, the rooftop robber had been scared off. A repairman in the Sacramento area who closed up eight rooftop holes said the robber was clearly determined. He said he had dug through asphalt and sheet metal and even used an axe to chop through

a roof in one location. The police started asking the public for help. They set up a hotline for any tips, and they also released a description of who they thought the rooftop robber was. This is not the kind of person family members would be suspicious of, an investigator told a reporter. When they picture the kind of person who can rob, they don't see him.

The investigator also said that the suspect was motivated by money and, quote, has a good relationship with his mother. She added, you can just tell that by the polite way he treats people. And then, a month later, in May of 2000, a masked man entered the McDonald's in Belmont, North Carolina. He put Mervat Fayad and her co-workers in the walk-in cooler and shortly after was caught by police. His name was Jeffrey Manchester. He was 28 years old and had a rifle, drills, pry tools, and hammers with him, and a nylon bag stuffed with $8,000.

He was also carrying a military ID. He was in the Army Reserves. The police put Jeffrey Manchester into the back of their car and drove him over to the McDonald's that had just been robbed to see if the employees recognized him. So now we're all like, well, we didn't get to see his face, but I remember his eyes and nose. There was something about, you know, his eyes and nose, because I was staring at him the whole time.

They told us we were scared to go outside. So they said, no, you can stay inside the lobby and kind of just look. So when we looked, he had that smirk on his face, like, I'm caught. And I said, yep, that's him, because I remember his nose and his eyes. I said, that is him. The officers had also found Mervat's keys, the ones he took, because they had a can of pepper spray on them. They gave them back to her. The McDonald's employees looked at security footage from outside the restaurant to figure out how he might have gotten into their store in the first place.

There was a ladder to the roof attached to the side of the McDonald's, but the bottom six feet or so were locked behind a cage to prevent people from climbing up on it. Mervat says the video showed him jumping up onto the unlocked part of the ladder and climbing up. She says it looked like he first tried to dig through the ceiling into the bathroom, but they just installed sheetrock and he couldn't get through it.

He ended up coming through the ceiling of the stock room in the back of the restaurant. And then he slid the ceiling tiles and he came down. And I guess he waited there till we came came and that's when he did it. I had every belief that this was our suspect. I knew it was him. I knew it was him. Sky Pohle, along with another agent, got on a plane to North Carolina. We'll be right back. This is Advertiser Content brought to you by the all-new Nissan Murano.

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Sky Pooley says he arrived in North Carolina late at night. He went to the jail where Jeffrey Manchester was being held. And he met with us and he said, the other people in the jail there, other inmates he was referring to, told him not to talk to us, that we would not do him any favors. And so he said, I'm glad you all came to see me, but I'm not going to answer any questions. So I was ready to be done.

I put my folder away, my pen in my pocket, and he said, but wait, I'd like to ask you questions. And I said, well, that's rich. You won't answer my questions, but you want me to answer your questions. And I said, oh, OK, let's have a conversation if you would like. They started talking. Jeffrey Manchester told them that he'd read about the McDonald's robberies on the West Coast and had decided to try it for himself.

He said he was just a copycat and had nothing to do with the robberies in California. Sky brought up a robbery that had happened outside of San Francisco. And the suspect forced the manager into a small room where the safe was, and the suspect looked up at the corner of the room and there was a camera. And the suspect stood up on a chair and with his hand moved the camera away from his face. And Jeff Manchester, good looking young man, I said, you know, when you robbed this restaurant in Emeryville, you stood up on the chair and moved the camera.

I said, Jeff, you've got a nose on you, man. And that bandana you had didn't cover it all up. So I'm looking at you, it's just like looking at that video with the camera being moved. So I know you're our guy. And he continued to deny. It wasn't me.

He said, he said, I just learned about this from the news in California. Need some money. So I thought I'd do the similar type of robbery here. And I said, well, that's interesting, Jeff, because, you know, when you, you robbed the other McDonald's up in Virginia, I would say the little old lady manager, the woman you hold the gun to, she told me, she said, you know, for holding a gun on me, he was the nicest guy. And when I said that, Jeff's eyes teared up. And he maintained his innocence by words,

but his reactions told a very different story. Jeffrey Manchester was originally from the Sacramento area, and he was estranged from his ex-wife. McDonald's officials said he had never worked at McDonald's before, but his ex-wife had a decade earlier. Sky Poley told us that when he looked into it more, he found that Jeffrey Manchester had worked at a McDonald's in the Sacramento area, but at a different location than his ex-wife.

He had received Army artillery and airborne training, which would have involved jumping from heights and rappelling. And he was part of an Army Reserve boat unit that specialized in transporting military equipment from one base to another. He had most recently been on a training mission that had gone from California to Florida to North Carolina. One of his fellow Army reservists told a reporter that after the exercise was over, Jeffrey Manchester told him that instead of going back to California right away, he was going to stay with some friends. Three days later, he was caught by police in North Carolina.

Jeffrey Manchester was indicted in North Carolina on 14 felony counts for robbing the two McDonald's restaurants, including one count of possessing a weapon of mass destruction and eight counts of first-degree kidnapping for the eight employees he had held up. He pleaded guilty to several of the charges against him, like robbery and breaking and entering. But he pleaded not guilty to the kidnapping charges. His lawyer said he didn't believe he was guilty of kidnapping for forcing employees into coolers.

I had to go to the trial because I was one of the people that had to testify. We all had to. And was he in the courtroom when you testified? Oh, yes. Absolutely. Did you look at him? What was that like? I was very nervous just for the simple fact that my boss and my other crew, they were not in the courthouse because we were not allowed

to testify while they are all in there. So it was one at a time basically. Till the end then we were able to sit together. So I couldn't find anyone in that courtroom to kind of like look at and feel comfortable. So, and then I had to look at him and I have to say, yes, this is him. He's the person. But it had that same smirk, that little smile smirk on his face that do you remember me or yep, it's me kind of look.

And he was just sitting so tall, like just, like he... I, you don't see that I'm sorry look on his face. It was like, yep, it's me. A jury eventually found him to be guilty of seven of the eight kidnapping charges. And he was sentenced to 32 to 45 years in a North Carolina state prison. In the meantime, Sky Poley was working on connecting Jeffrey Manchester to the more

than 40 other robberies and 22 attempted robberies that had taken place in California and across the country. And we found that that followed in large part his military assignments. For example, most of his military work was done here in California. And we found that when he was on the East Coast during military service, we had roofman robberies. And then when he was back in California, we had West man robberies. And then when he was back in California, we had West Coast robberies. Then I think it was the following year, he's back doing his two weeks and we had roof man

robberies again. And at one point there was that Midwest robbery. And lo and behold, if that wasn't the only Midwest roof man robbery we had, was about 50 miles from his training site. Did you start talking with the people in his life? I did. I did. I spoke with his mother, very nice woman. That's hard. Accusing her son of close to 40, maybe 50 armed robberies.

I felt so bad for her. But she knew nothing of any robberies. I believe her. I don't think she knew what was going on. So they were shocked. She was shocked. She was devastated. Her son was looking at a great amount of time in prison in North Carolina. But we were pushing for a federal prosecution here on the West Coast.

But then the September 11th attacks happened. Everything changed. We were no longer focusing on a prolific armed robber. We were now focusing on homeland security. And so the the steam that we had behind us for the federal prosecution dissipated quickly and that was not even on the table anymore Jeffrey Manchester was never charged with any other robberies besides the two that took place in North Carolina He was sent to Brown Creek correctional a medium-security prison outside of Charlotte. I actually called the prison that he was assigned to. I just said, I'm the special agent,

the cop in California who's been working this case for two years. I've got nearly 50 armed robberies attributed to him, and I know him and his MO the way he works probably better than anybody right now. I said it's not a matter of if but a matter of when he tries to escape and the response was with confidence that nobody was going to escape that officer's prison. On the next episode of Criminal. The sheriff officer came in and said, I would like to let you know something.

We're humans. We make mistakes. I wasn't surprised that he tried. I was surprised that he succeeded. I think it was for the chase. If you want to hear part two right now, sign up for Criminal Plus. Part two will be waiting for you. Plus, you'll get ad-free listening on all of our shows and bonus episodes.

Sign up now at thisiscriminal.com slash plus. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Cicico, Lena Sillison, Lily Clark, and Megan Kineane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. This episode was mixed by Michael Rafeo. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see

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