I don’t like to be serious all the time, and thank goodness the world is never short of news that makes you scratch your head, and is maybe worth a chuckle at the same time..
$4000 in ribs, chicken and fries is no laughing matter. It must have consisted of a major portion of the stores stock. Now while I do feel compelled towards sympathizing with the business owners, this article raises some very interesting questions about our suspect.
For the sake of argument, lets assume that this particular shop has prepared or raw ingredients lying around, and that the crook will cook them later at his own residence. Judging from supermarket prices, that is still a heck of a lot of meat to haul around. I do harbour doubts that that the offender is going to eat them all at once, there is probably a hoard of some sort involved here.
More interestingly, this means that the perpetrator was familiar enough with the ribbers to have cased the joint beforehand, ensured that they had quality food, and somehow brought along enough transportation to haul that much product home with him. Assuming local prices (which are probably not the same, but, are as accurate as I can get) this is the equivalent of a total of 200 racks of ribs, or, presuming a breakdown, enough chicken, wings, and ribs for 75-100 people.
The criminal was able to plan well enough to break in, steal the product, and secure it in his vehicle before making his escape. Thats a heck of a lot of work for one man. Again, if we presume this was prepared product (prepped in industry terms) then that is a lot of animal carcasses. With some trepidation, it can be asserted confidently that this man was not looking for a one time event, but, rather, enough food storage to make it through for a while.
Presuming again that this is not for a one off gig, we might assume this individual had recently gone through a downturn in his luck, and realized if he attempted to burglarize the store, he would be recognized by staff if he ever went in again, so he had to stock up his food stores for some time. This in turn implies that the thief has enough refrigeration capacity to keep this product fresh for a considerable amount of time. Even if he was planning on immediate use, the same capacity would be necessary, given that the caper commenced on a Wednesday, and generally people plan for big parties on the weekend.
While meat could be stored in less demanding facilities for a few days, it is probably beyond the capacity of most households to actually cook that much pork and chicken so quickly, not to mention what was probably an astronomical amount of french fries. Our ribbing robber hopefully planned for this contingency, because disposing of that much animal protein after it had spoiled would be a truly nasty job.
Again, we wish to state we are not in any way making fun of the business owners plight here. Their insurance will cover the loss, but, that will drive their rates up, and ultimately they will be short on product for a few days. The article does not mention a chain, so it was likely a locally run mom and pop business that got hurt in this caper. Indeed a tragedy, and one that I hope the owners can recover from. Restaurants generally do not have high profit margins, so I hope they are well established enough to be able to make things right with their customers and be able to shrug off this unfortunate incident.
This is what makes the article so interesting from the criminals standpoint. He had to be a visitor there before. He had to know what quality of product he was getting. If you’re going to throw a party, you’re not going to impress people with burgers from the number 1 chain worldwide. You have to have an angle. This chef of chicanery has somehow figured out all the logistics to this operation, from where the product was located, how to break in, how to transport it, how to store it and/or cook it, and most importantly, somehow feels a need to secure the product.
Perhaps indeed the thief has a hundred friends or more that he is seeking to entertain, but, that would also imply he had the space to house all those people for whatever event (and I did appreciate the superbowl party reference) and the ability to cook it quickly enough to satisfy them. This is why I subscribe more to the theory of a prepper, or someone who has just gone through a tragedy and wanted to have a supply of their favourite foods on hand. This man put a heck of a lot of effort into his crime, and the likelihood is that he will have to put a lot more in to capitalize on it.
Even if the thief attempts to sell it somehow for a quick buck, he still runs into the problem of storage, awareness, and price. So again, we run across another possibility that seems very unlikely. The most probable use is for personal consumption over the long term, because even large items like ribs can be stored very effectively in box freezers, and everything else adds an additional level of difficulty to the operation. It is a one time supply that likely cannot be replenished, after all, it is a mom and pop joint that probably doesn’t share their preparation or sauce secrets with rivals.
So, once again, we have proved that the world is a bizzare place, with people capable of the most unusual things. One hardly needs the paranormal to make the world a weirder place, but, when the human mind is capable of conceiving and motivating itself to pull off a crime like this, the paranormal suddenly becomes not so far fetched, but, actually pretty tame and believable. So, next time you wander into a local haunt, imagine what sort of insane things those walls have seen, what the smiles of servers and management are hiding in the secrets of their minds. Be it a legend of a ghost haunting a bed and breakfast, or a super crime that boggles the mind, we must remember that there is always another layer to the world. The one that we initially see, and the one that lies just beyond, the one that lies in the fascinating grip of the psychology of the human race capable of flying to the moon, and tearing the wings off flies. Always be on the lookout for the deeper story, because it will always be there for you, if you dig deep enough!
jayrsworld 