Police arrest 'career' vending burglar

Penn detectives made the arrest with the help of films and fingerprints. University Police arrested a "career thief" early yesterday morning, shortly after he allegedly broke into a vending machine in a campus building for at least the sixth time. Randy Murphy, 30, of the 5100 block of Locust Street, is currently in custody at the Philadelphia Police Department's 18th District Headquarters at 55th and Pine streets. He faces six counts of burglary for robbing various campus vending machines. No hearing date has been set. Police arrested Murphy on Walnut Street near the Moore Building at 33rd and Walnut streets, where he allegedly had just completed his latest burglary, police said. The arrest came after police spent several weeks videotaping, dusting for fingerprints and finally obtaining an arrest warrant. Murphy "made a living" by smashing snack machines in campus buildings and pulling cash from the cash boxes, University Police Det. Commander Tom King said. Murphy allegedly timed his break-ins to occur shortly before the machines were due to be restocked, assuring that the spoils of his conquests were usually several hundred dollars, police said. When University Police officers Tony Serrano and Jim Lydon arrested him yesterday at about 6:30 a.m., Murphy was carrying between $80 and $90 in one-dollar bills as well as a bar he allegedly used to pry open the cash counter inside a machine on the first floor of the Moore School, police said. King estimated that Murphy was responsible for "most, if not all" of the 30-plus thefts from vending machines which have been reported since the beginning of November. At the end of January, after the incidents began accumulating, Security Services Director Stratis Skoufalos had a video camera installed near the vending machines on the third floor of the David Rittenhouse Laboratory at 33rd and Walnut streets. The machines had been burglarized four times in three months. According to Det. Gary Heller, the University's lead detective investigating the thefts, Murphy allegedly struck again just two weeks after the camera was installed. Police got a "crystal clear" videotape allegedly catching him in the act, Heller said. "This tape is like something you'd see on one of those cop shows," King said. According to police, Murphy always allegedly used the same formula: sneak into buildings at around 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. after Physical Plant employees had opened some of the doors, then shatter the glass panel to a snack machine, making off with the cash inside. By way of a statute known as "common scheme and design," Heller was able to use the evidence presented in the tape to obtain an arrest warrant about two weeks ago charging Murphy with all five of the DRL vending machine burglaries. But arresting Murphy, even after Heller obtained the warrant, took time. After nearly two weeks passed without an arrest -- and two more vending machines had been smashed -- University Police assigned Lydon and Serrano, who normally work during the day as part of a tactical bike unit, to patrol the eastern end of campus in plainclothes during the early morning hours and "keep an eye on things," Heller said. The strategy paid off. The two officers arrested Murphy on just their first day were assigned to the special patrol. "This is an example of a painstaking investigative process which resulted in the apprehension of the person we believe is largely responsible for the recent vending break-ins," King said.