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
Chapter 1: Who is Mervat Fayyad and what happened at her McDonald's?
Twenty-five years ago, Mervat Fayyad 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, prepping biscuits, and start making the tea, fresh tea, fresh coffee, and make sure everything's stocked and good and clean. So I know Grandma, that's what we called her, she was making the biscuits.
Mervat 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.
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Chapter 2: How did the robbery at McDonald's unfold?
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 an, 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 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's office. The man with the gun took Mervat'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...
you know 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 that the lady in uh 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.
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Chapter 3: What were the robber's actions and demeanor during the crime?
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 yeah 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 didn't know. I don't think there was, like, time to think about any of that. I didn't even think about, well, what's next?
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Chapter 4: How did the police respond to the McDonald's robbery?
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 jumping 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. 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. Just 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.
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Chapter 5: What is the history of the roofman robberies?
The police officer made himself known, attempted an 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 Poli 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'd caught him, that they'd caught the roof man. And like so many times before, I asked them to please tell me, what makes you think you got the roof man? 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.
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Chapter 6: Why was the roofman difficult to catch?
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That's HungryRoot.com slash criminal, code criminal, to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. HungryRoot.com slash criminal, code criminal. About a year and a half earlier, in the early morning hours of December 17, 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 M.O.,
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 restaurant's 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.
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