From: janeebeslis@hotmail.com (Praxis)
Subject: Police Dog finds Criminal in CoS
Date: 13 Jun 2003 01:59:49 -0700
Message-ID: <3e471c14.0306130059.4eeaaa99@posting.google.com>

From http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/58683.htm

'SPIDEY' SUPERZERO
By GILLIAN HARRIS, MURRAY WEISS and BRIDGET HARRISON
THWAP! BAM! OOF!

June 13, 2003 -- The bug-eyed "Spider-Man" burglar who sneaked into apartments by scaling drainpipes was finally nabbed following an action-packed chase - after he broke into a Midtown building from the roof, police said yesterday.

Cops said the agile and elusive burglar is Rufus Graham, 40, a crack addict on parole who was busted in April for possession of drugs but released by a judge after spending only one night in jail.

Officials said Graham was conditionally released, under parole supervision, in March from a four-year prison stint for selling crack.

They're now investigating why he was allowed to walk free despite violating the conditions of his release by getting re-arrested.

In two months since he was allowed back on the streets, cops believe Graham's "Spidey" crime spree has included 25 burglaries in upper Manhattan. He was charged yesterday with two, and law-enforcement sources said he had confessed to another 10.

At his arraignment last night, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Patricia Nunez declined to set bail for Graham because he will likely face additional charges. The case was adjourned until Monday.

Cops were alerted to Graham at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday after he tripped an alarm on the seventh floor of a commercial building on West 45th Street.

They spied him hiding in the conference room of an office he allegedly was robbing. But before they could get to him, he jumped out the window, leaping down four floors and over an alleyway onto a third-floor rooftop. When cops looked out of the window, he lay on the roof and pretended to look hurt, before leaping up and running away, sources said.

The thief left behind a backpack in the conference room containing Social Security and benefits cards with his name on them, cops said - and a laptop computer, Palm Pilot and a stolen bottle of white wine.

A police car chased the fast-footed thief to a parking lot, where he scaled a 10-foot barbed-wire fence before running into the Church of Scientology building on West 43rd Street, sources said.

Police finally snared him by calling in a canine unit.

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From http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/92073p-83577c.html

Swat Spider
Man burglar
Agile ex-con nabbed in string of break-ins on West Side
By RICHARD WEIR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The Spider Man burglar who shimmied down drainpipes and scaled upper West Side buildings was snared by cops after he tried to hide in a church, officials said yesterday.

Ex-con Rufus Graham, 40, is suspected of breaking into two dozen homes and a school, stealing cash, clothes, credit cards and electronics, police said.

The acrobatic 5-foot-11, 200-pound thief struck at night, usually by climbing through open windows, cops said.

The crime spree, which began May 18, ended at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday after Graham broke the glass door of a theatrical booking agency and triggered a burglar alarm, a law enforcement source said.

Officers investigating the break-in at the seventh-floor office of the Brooking Group at 145 W. 45th St. heard rumbling in a conference room.

"They saw him sitting on the window sill, trying to hide behind the blinds," the source said.

Ignoring orders to come out, Graham inched his way out onto a ledge, pushed off, sailed over an alley, landing on the roof of a three-story building, sources said.

Graham allegedly faked a leg injury and then bolted, running over rooftops and escaping. But a police dog tracked him down five blocks away inside the Church of Scientology at 349 W. 48th St., authorities said.

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