Pizzeria Robbery Mystery Solved After Cops Trace Toilet Paper Note Back To Suspect’s Roll At Home

Police photo.

Sometimes, the scene of the crime isn’t the only place police can pick up a few clues about the actions of bad consumers. Consider the lowly toilet paper roll — seems innocent enough, and yet it was the missing piece for cops seeking to solve the mystery of whose idea it was to try to rob a pizzeria using a note demanding money.

A 29-year-old man is suspected of attempting to rob a New York pizza restaurant, reports TribLive, after police say he walked in and handed a worker a note written in blank ink on a piece of toilet paper.

It read: “I have a gun. Give me $300,” and he allegedly claimed that another man had “a gun on me right now, and if I don’t come out of here with the money, I’m going to get shot,” police said.

A worker hit the panic button instead of handing over the dough — err, the money, not the pizza dough in this case — and police arrived to find the suspect still on the premises.

He told police that a large, bearded man had threatened to shoot him and put a gun to his back, saying if he left the pizzeria without cash it’d be lights out.

But instead, police insisted on returning to the suspect’s home to check out his paper good. He told police he didn’t “have anything to hide,” and took them back to his bathroom.

Once there, cops say they found a recently opened packaged of toilet paper sitting out on a table, and one roll had “writing engraved in it that matched the exact wording on the piece of toilet paper that Frey handed” to the pizza shop employee, police said, with a black pen resting nearby that matched the ink on the threatening note.

The suspect at first claimed that the man who’d held a gun on him was in the apartment, but instead pointed to three men walking down the street and accused them. Police cleared those guys, then obtained a search warrant for the apartment.

After cops found 91 grams of marijuana, syringes and spoons containing burned drug residue, they arrested the man and took him into custody on attempted robbery, theft and drug charges.

Police use toilet paper roll to link Uniontown man to pizza shop robbery [Trib Live]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist