Stupid Crime Inspired Lawyer's Song
If only Roger Dillon had plotted as successfully how to avoid detection. The 23-year-old Youngstown, Ohio, resident allegedly spent months working for an armored car company and learning its confidential codes in order to pull off a $7.4 million post-Thanksgiving heist in nearby Liberty City with the help of his girlfriend—and mother.
Local residents and even law enforcement officials expressed some grudging admiration for the brazen audacity of the crime, reports the New York Times. However, Dillon’s alleged plot apparently was lacking when it came to avoiding detection, and the ease with which the suspects were caught has inspired derision—and a song penned by lawyer Alan Matavich that has become popular on local airwaves, “Dumb as Dillon.”
Suspicion quickly focused on Dillon when he didn’t show up at work the day after the burglary and neither he nor his girlfriend nor his mother could be found, the newspaper reports. Then authorities learned they had bought a minivan on the day of the theft. When the FBI searched his girlfriend’s pickup, which was found parked in a Youngstown suburb, they discovered receipts for purchases made in West Virginia a month or so earlier. Among them: a receipt for heating oil delivered to a nearby West Virginia mobile home that the trio had purchased as a hideout.
By Dec. 1, an FBI SWAT team had surrounded the trailer, in which the three were indeed living at the time. They are now facing federal charges that could result in prison terms of up to 25 years for Dillon and his girlfriend, Nicole Boyd, 25, and 15 years for his mother, S. Lee Gregory, 48.
“It sounds like a good plan, I know,” says Tony Slifka, the Liberty City police chief. “But they left a trail like Hansel and Gretel leaving the crumbs in the forest.”
