The Hungry Burglar

Did you know that thieves frequently stop to eat during a burglary? What could possibly go wrong when a thief sits down to a snack, or even a meal, in the course of a robbery?

From The New York Times:

"But the phenomenon of the hungry burglar is timeless. An article in The New York Times on May 17, 1886, described the theft of nearly 100 pieces of flatware from the Poughkeepsie mansion of a fallen general’s widow. “After completing their pillage,” the story noted, the burglars “went down to the kitchen and brought upstairs to the parlor cooked meats, bread, cake, eggs and milk, and partook of the banquet there and then.”

"The peculiar act of eating at the scene of the crime occurs often enough to warrant mention in police textbooks like “Criminal Investigation: A Method for Reconstructing the Past.” A burglar may take food from the kitchen, the authors, James W. Osterburg and Richard H. Ward, write, “or display other forms of aberrational behavior that help establish a modus operandi.”

Here's a link to the article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/nyregion/burglars-eat-crime-scene.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur