‘Jaws of Life’ burglar suspect makes not-guilty pleas
STAMFORD — A Shelton man charged with burglarizing three Greenwich ATMs and stealing more than $100,000 by using a life-saving tool used by firefighters to extricate motorists out of crashed cars has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Truck driver Joshua Moore, 40, had his pleas put into the record by the Stamford courthouse’s lead public defender, Barry Butler, during a brief hearing Wednesday before Judge Richard Comerford, which Moore did not attend.
Moore was arrested at the end of January on felony charges of first-degree burglary, larceny and criminal mischief and is being held at the Bridgeport Correctional Center unable to post a $550,000 court-appearance bond.
Moore is a convicted felon who was found guilty of using a blow torch to cut a cash box out of an ATM in Brewster, N.Y., in 2011. He was also convicted in 2013 of trying to burglarize one of the same three locations where the batterypowered Jaws of Life mechanical spreading tool was used to wrench apart the Greenwich ATMs where $107,300 was stolen in 2017 and 2018.
Since his Greenwich arrest, Moore has been charged with similar burglaries in Stratford, Derby, Monroe, Canton, Clinton and Stonington.
According to his 12-page arrest affidavit written by Greenwich Detective Daniel Bucci, Moore is a possible suspect in as many as 18 such ATM thefts in Connecticut and New York since he obtained the Holmatrol-brand Jaws of Life from eBay in the summer of 2016.
Moore is charged with breaking into the Shell Station at 129 E. Putnam Avenue on Aug. 14, 2017, cracking open the ATM and stealing $49,160. He is accused with doing the same thing to an ATM at 120 Post Road on Nov. 14, 2017, and stealing $26,000, before returning to the same address on Feb, 22, 2018, and stealing $32,180 from a replacement machine.
Bucci identified him as a suspect when he saw that Moore had been caught in 2012 trying to burglarize the same Putnam Avenue Shell station and was convicted of third-degree burglary. Bucci discovered that Moore was also a suspect in the burglary at a Greenwich McDonald’s where someone tried to use a blowtorch to break into that restaurant’s ATM.
With that information, Bucci used his department’s in-house license plate reader and entered Moore’s license plate to see if any of his vehicles had been observed by the readers on Greenwich Police cars.
Sure enough, the search turned up two hits for Moore’s 2001 BMW 7 series car. One was in the early morning of Nov. 12, 2017, which corresponded to the ATM burglary at 120 Post Road, and another hit in the early morning of Feb. 5, 2018, when the same ATM was burglarized nearly three months later, the affidavit said.
Searching Moore’s bank accounts, Bucci found that Moore made some very large deposits right after the three burglaries.
Between Aug. 14 and Aug. 19, 2017, right after $49,160 was stolen from the Shell ATM, Moore deposited $46,000 in cash into his accounts in several transactions, the affidavit said. Between Nov. 14 and Dec. 7, 2017, right after the ATM at 120 Post Road was burglarized of $26,000, Moore deposited $25,860 in cash during several ATM deposits, the affidavit said.
Between Feb. 22, and Feb. 26, 2018, right after the same Post Road ATM was burglarized of $32,180, Moore made multiple cash deposits into his account totaling $26,840, the affidavit said.
According to the affidavit, Bucci also found the $3,608 purchase Moore made on Sept. 9, 2016, from an eBay store that sells industrial equipment for a Holmatrol BCT-4120.
Moore is due back in court on July 24.