He came along at just the right time for Leigh Wainscott.
She had recently ended a 20-year marriage and was juggling work and life as a single mom. One day in October 2004, John appeared at her church. He was “funny, romantic, the most sensitive man I’ve ever met,” Wainscott later told the Charlotte Observer. “The guy that every girl would want.”
They were soon dating, sharing dinners at Red Lobster and evenings at her home watching movies. He often gave new toys to her kids, and when Christmas rolled around a few months later, he donated more items to the church toy drive than anyone else in the congregation. “Very engaging. Down to earth. Nice fellow,” their pastor said.
A few days after New Year’s, Wainscott was at work when a police officer approached her. He had a photograph in his hand.
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“That’s John,” Wainscott said.
But he wasn’t. He was Jeffrey Manchester, the officer told her, an escaped convict who had been living for the last six months inside hidden rooms he’d created in a nearby Toys R Us and Circuit City. They didn’t know where he was now, and detectives needed her help.
As her world came crashing down around her, Wainscott began to cry.
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Jeffrey Allen Manchester was born in Sacramento in 1971. By all indications, he had a typically sunny California childhood, attending high school in Rancho Cordova before enlisting in the military. With the legendary 82nd Airborne division, Manchester learned the skills of a paratrooper: rappelling, jumping from great heights and handling weapons. At age 20, he got married and started a family.
Manchester was deployed around the world, but in 1999, the family moved into military housing at the Naval Weapons Station in Concord. In November, police were called to their home on Hamilton Avenue for a 911 call about a domestic disturbance. Manchester’s wife filed for divorce and custody of their children.
A drone view of the former Concord Naval Weapons Station and the adjacent Dana Estates neighborhood in Concord, Calif., on Tuesday, March 19, 2024.
MediaNews Group/East Bay Times/Getty ImagesBy then, the Roofman robberies had already begun.
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Over the course of seven months, the Roofman hit over 40 restaurants, mostly McDonald’s franchises, for a total score of $100,000. Armed with a gun and power tools, he drilled through the roof. Then, he would drop down from the ceiling, sometimes as far as 14 feet, and begin the holdup.
After rounding up the employees, he would direct them to grab their jackets before herding them into the walk-in freezer. Once they were locked inside, he raided the store, then called police to alert them to the frigid workers. He primarily targeted restaurants in Northern California, but he occasionally expanded his range to Oregon, Nevada, Virginia and Massachusetts. The Roofman had a “coast-to-coast reputation as the most courteous thief in the nation,” the Sacramento Bee wrote.
“He was really polite, he was apologizing,” recalled one McDonald’s manager. “He said, ‘Would you please, ma’am, get on the floor, would you please, ma’am get down?’”
There were some close calls. Once, the Roofman escaped out of a back window right as police rushed into the McDonald’s. Detectives across the country suspected their man was military trained, especially because he could hit the floor after a long leap from the ceiling and not “miss a beat.” He was “extremely fast, strong and has kept his cool when cornered,” the Bee reported. “At least one investigator believed he never would be captured.”
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In May 2000, Manchester left Mare Island with the 481st Transportation Company, an Army Reserve boat unit, for an annual training exercise in North Carolina. Shortly after midnight on May 20, Manchester dropped through the roof to rob a McDonald’s in Gastonia that had closed for the night. Five hours later and 10 miles away, he targeted another McDonald’s that was about to open.
It was there, in the suburb of Belmont, North Carolina, that his luck ran out. As Manchester escaped on foot, police gave chase, eventually finding him hiding in some tall grass. He was reportedly gracious in defeat. “You guys did a real good job today,” he told the arresting officers.
Manchester was sentenced to a staggering 45 years in prison for robbing the two McDonald’s, primarily due to kidnapping charges for each employee. A brief trip to North Carolina had turned into a permanent stay.
“He came to the wrong place when he came to Belmont,” a North Carolina detective said.
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FILE - Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, Calif., on Dec. 29, 2015.
Michael Marfell/Getty ImagesFor four years, Manchester played the model prisoner, which allowed him access to the metal plant where inmates made bed frames and jungle gyms. In June 2004, a delivery truck arrived at the plant. Manchester slipped under the truck, gripped onto the underside and went out through the prison gates. He was free.
Investigators thought he might be making his way back to Sacramento, where his ex-wife and kids were living. But Manchester didn’t even try to leave the state. He had found his hideout: a Toys R Us.
The store at 6100 East Independence Ave. in Charlotte had everything he needed. There was baby food to eat, bikes to ride at night for exercise and remote-controlled cars to race around the roof when he was bored. He opened up packages of baby monitors and used them to watch the employees come and go. There was also a bit of serendipity: The Circuit City next door was permanently closed.
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Manchester tunneled in, using a board spring-loaded with a bungee cord to make a door. Inside the vacant Circuit City, Manchester used Toys R Us merchandise to decorate a stairwell space fit for a 10-year-old. He made a bed with Spider-Man sheets, put up a Superman poster on the wall and arranged toy models of Yoda. His stack of DVDs included “Matchstick Men,” “40 Days and 40 Nights” and “Spider-Man 2.” To avoid an accident that would lead to his detection, Manchester installed a smoke detector and a fire extinguisher. He’d traded a 4-foot-by-8-foot cell for a 4-foot-by-10-foot preteen haven.
After a few months in his hideaway, Manchester must have been feeling invincible. In October, he started attending the nearby Presbyterian church, where he met Wainscott. He told her that he worked for the government, but he couldn’t tell her exactly what he did. When she asked to see his place, he said it was “a government building, a sterile environment.”
Along with helping with Wednesday night Bible study, Manchester frequented a local gym and even went to the dentist. He gave his pastor the first two seasons of “Seinfeld” on DVD.
“If you draw a doughnut around that Circuit City,” a Charlotte police captain later said, “I bet he talked to everyone within a mile.”
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The vacant Circuit City store where Jeffrey Manchester lived for months is shown in Charlotte, N.C., Friday, Jan. 7, 2004.
CHUCK BURTON/APAlthough Manchester had the basics, he still needed cash to take his new girlfriend out on dates and pay for incidentals. At some point, police believe he broke into a pawn shop and stole a gun. He also surreptitiously changed employee schedules at the Toys R Us, likely hoping to create windows where he could roam uninterrupted.
On the day after Christmas, when the store’s coffers would have been fullest, Manchester walked into Toys R Us with a gun. During the robbery attempt, employees were able to contact the authorities, who quickly arrived at the store. Police dogs were brought in, and they scented out $7,000 in toys that Manchester had hidden above the ceiling tiles. Manchester was gone, but the damage was done: One sloppy decision was about to take down his tiny empire.
A few days later, a Charlotte police officer named Fred Allen was patrolling the empty Circuit City when he noticed something odd. Although the vacant store had its electricity on, one part of the store was completely dark. As Allen approached the dark spot, he saw a makeshift door, painted to blend in with the wall. Inside, he discovered the lair. A fingerprint found inside the hideaway came back to an escaped convict named Jeffrey Manchester.
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“I’ve never seen anybody so determined,” Allen told reporters. “He wasn’t going to make a stupid mistake. We had to find him.”
Manchester’s mugshot went out on the nightly news. Before sunrise the next day, he returned to his dentist to set the office on fire; police think he was trying to destroy his medical records. It was no use, though; several church members who saw his mugshot called police with suspicions about the clean-cut 33-year-old who materialized out of thin air six months prior. A detective went to speak with Wainscott. She agreed to arrange a meeting with Manchester.
Twelve hours after he set the dentist’s office on fire, Manchester arrived at Wainscott’s apartment with a bouquet of flowers. He was met by a swarm of law enforcement.
His ultimate blunder, Charlotte police Sgt. Katherine Scheimreif told the Chronicle, was “going back for the girl one last time.”
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Manchester is serving the rest of his sentence at the Central Prison in Raleigh. When he is released in 2036, he will be 65 — more than half of his life accidentally spent in North Carolina.
In February, it was announced that Channing Tatum will play Manchester in a movie entitled “Roofman.” Although Manchester’s escapades have a Robin Hood-like flair to them, he’s no hero, as police are quick to point out.
Manchester abandoned his children and joined a new family. He deceived everyone around him for his own gain. And he pistol-whipped at least one fast food worker at a robbery in Citrus Heights, not to mention traumatizing countless others he held up at gunpoint.
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Jeffrey Manchester
AP/North Carolina Sheriff“He’s a dirtbag,” Scheimreif said in 2005.
“It won’t surprise me if he escapes again,” she added. “He’s that crafty.”
She was nearly right. Prison records show Manchester attempted escapes in February 2009 and October 2017. A spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction said both attempts failed, but declined to provide further details, citing state privacy laws. Manchester’s last jail infraction was for substance possession in April 2020. Perhaps he is finally resigned to waiting out the clock.
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Although Manchester was always cooperative in police custody, he’s never explained why he cast aside his comfortable life for a lawless alter ego. The timing of the Roofman robberies, right after his marriage fell apart, certainly suggests a a perverse chance to reinvent himself. Or maybe he just liked having a secret identity, like the superheroes he plastered around his hideout.
Shortly after his final arrest, Manchester spoke to his mother from prison. His demeanor, cool and calm, was unchanged. When she asked about his recapture, Manchester was brief.
“Mom,” he said, “I kind of lost focus.”
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