CLEVELAND — It was a theft so large and brazen that even law enforcement officials admit some admiration for it.
One suspect, the authorities say, spent nine months working for an
armored car company, learning its employee-shift patterns and the
access codes for its safes. By the police account, he and his
girlfriend waited until the Monday night after Thanksgiving, when the
year’s largest receipts from retailers were in those safes, then looted
them and drove to the remote hills of southern West Virginia.
There, joined by his mother, they holed up in a mobile home they
had found on a scouting trip in October, and counted their haul: $7.4
million in cash and checks.
“It sounds like a good plan, I know,” said Tony Slifka, police chief of Liberty Township, Ohio,
the Youngstown-area community where the theft occurred on Nov. 26. “But
they left a trail like Hansel and Gretel leaving the crumbs in the
forest.”
As a result, the young couple, whom at least one online true-crime
site has called the Goth Bonnie and Clyde for their love of fantasy
role-playing games and vampire novels, were back in Ohio on Wednesday,
pleading not guilty to charges stemming from the theft. All the money
they are accused of taking has been recovered, the police say, except
for a few hundred dollars.
The pair — Roger L. Dillon, 23, and Nicole D. Boyd, 25 — face up to
25 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to steal money from a bank;
conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines; and
transporting and aiding and abetting in that transportation. Mr.
Dillon’s mother, S. Lee Gregory, 48, faces up to 15 years.
Brought into federal court in Cleveland in hand and leg shackles
and orange prison jumpsuits, the three defendants, separated by their
court-appointed lawyers, exchanged affectionate smiles with one
another. Only Ms. Boyd had relatives among the spectators, and at the
end of the hearing she mouthed “I love you” to her mother and
grandmother.
After the theft, the working-class couple quickly became suspects,
and just as quickly became figures of local lore in Youngstown, where
they and Ms. Gregory lived. Talk radio and online chat rooms were
filled with admiration for them.
“They are heroes,” one person wrote in an online discussion at the
site of The Vindicator, a Youngstown daily. “Nobody was hurt. It’s one
for the working man or woman.”
But after they were caught, they became a subject of derision for
having made it only as far as Pipestem, W.Va., just 350 miles away.
Inspired by discussions on talk radio, Alan Matavich, a lawyer and
amateur songwriter, wrote the lyrics for “Dumb as Dillon,” which has
been popular on pop and rock stations in the area.
“You hear people now saying that, like, ‘Oh, you’re dumb as
Dillon,’ ” said Scott Kennedy, a disc jockey on Y-103, a local rock
station that plays the song.
The police rapidly focused on Mr. Dillon. He had, after all, failed
to show up to work at the armored car company, AT Systems, the day
after the burglary, and he, his girlfriend and his mother could not be
found. The authorities also learned that they had bought a 1989 GMC
Safari minivan the day of the theft. And Ms. Boyd’s pickup truck was
discovered in a parking lot in the town of Salem, just south of
Youngstown.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
searched the pickup and found receipts indicating that the couple had
been in Beckley, W.Va., the nearest large town to Pipestem, in October.
Among the receipts was one for purchase of heating oil that was
delivered to the mobile home.
At 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 1, an F.B.I. SWAT team from Pittsburgh
surrounded the trailer and ordered the three suspects out. The agents
turned more aggressive when Ms. Boyd, her agitated dog refusing to come
with her, was slow to respond to their orders, her parents say.
“It almost made it worse for her,” said her mother, Valerie Rosati.
“She was scared as it was, and the dog wouldn’t come out of the house
with her.”
While Ms. Boyd was worried about her dog, Mr. Dillon was trying to
figure out where his plan had gone wrong. “The agents tell me the first
thing he asked them was, ‘How’d you get us so fast?’ ” Chief Slifka
said.
A more confounding question for some who knew them best was how
such a seemingly nice couple — like Mr. Dillon’s mother without a
criminal history — could have ended up this way.
No one is more perplexed than their landlord, Cookie Bowman, who
said that on the day of the theft, Mr. Dillon, Ms. Boyd and Ms. Gregory
all helped tend to Ms. Bowman’s mother, who had just fallen and broken
her hip.
“I mean, these are not people you expect to steal $7 million,” Ms. Bowman said.
On the other hand, Ms. Boyd, employed most recently as a seamstress
and a stripper, was fonder of spending money than of working, said her
former husband, Mike Stuckey, who has had custody of their 5-year-old
son since their divorce.
“Her dream job was not working,” Mr. Stuckey said.
Mr. Dillon, who regularly led long sessions of the role-playing game
Dungeons & Dragons, dreamed of doing something grand with his life.
“Roger was always looking for a way to break from the everyday and
become extraordinary,” said Jared Mason, his best friend since fourth
grade.
Friends of Ms. Boyd and Mr. Dillon say they never drank alcohol,
took drugs or smoked, preferring books, movies, music and role-playing
games for entertainment.
“Would I say she lived at times in a fantasy world in her head?”
said her mother, Ms. Rosati. “Yeah, and I don’t think she ever got out
of it.”
Friends, family and law enforcement officials say that if Mr.
Dillon had a fateful flaw, it was probably his supreme confidence in
his own cleverness.
“He thought he was infallible,” Chief Slifka said. “That’s what
gets you in trouble. When you’re under stress you make mistakes. And
that’s how you get caught.”
