ALTAMONT — Old-fashioned police work, combined with newer technologies and media —including social media — led police to the second suspect in an attempted Jan. 8 burglary at the Altamont laundry theft. Jason Murray-Craig, 24, of Berne, turned himself in on Feb. 16.

Altamont Police had been looking for Murray-Craig for more than a month, ever since two men broke into two coin-operated laundries — first in Rotterdam and then in Altamont, both in the same day. The other suspect in the case, James F. Wallingford of Schenectady, 40, was arrested on Jan. 20.

According to Altamont Police, both Murray-Craig and Wallingford have a heroin problem.

Murray-Craig turned himself in after a lengthy investigation by the combined police forces of Altamont and Rotterdam that involved the use of social media and confidential informants as well as frequent police stakeouts outside suspected drug houses.

As police sought to arrest Murray-Craig, their presence was so constant that Murray-Craig’s associates at staked-out drug houses were said to be urging him to turn himself in because the unmarked police cars were “ruining business,” Altamont Police Chief Todd Pucci told The Enterprise.

An arrest warrant that had been issued in the village for Murray-Craig on a previous traffic charge for aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle was executed at his arraignment. At the same time, he was also charged, in the attempted laundry burglary, with second-degree criminal mischief, a felony, for damaging property exceeding $1,500, since the coin changer will cost $3,511.22 to replace, and fourth-degree attempted grand larceny, a misdemeanor, for his unsuccessful efforts to steal money from the laundry.

Murray-Craig was released on a $20,000 bond posted by his mother and ordered to return to village court on March 4 at 5 p.m.

Pucci mused about the wisdom of immediately bailing out an adult child who commits crimes to support a drug habit. “I’m surprised to see his [Murray-Craig’s] mom posted bail right away, to be honest with you,” said Pucci. “If you know your kid’s got a drug problem, do you really want him on the street? I would think the best thing for him could be to help him go to jail for a little while and get off the heroin.”

The Enterprise called both Murray-Craig and his mother repeatedly and also spoke to them at the village court, but neither wished to comment.

One thing that helped the police to identify the suspects in the initial days of the investigation, said Pucci, was that in Rotterdam they went to the laundry twice: once during the evening without masks on, to wash their clothes and presumably check out the place, and the second time a few hours later, with masks on but in the same clothes, jackets, and shoes that they had worn earlier. All the police needed to do was post surveillance images of them doing their laundry, without masks on, and ask the public to help identify them.

Officer Christopher Laurenzo of the Altamont Police noted that his first real lead came from Facebook. Soon after the burglaries, local news stations had posted information about the burglaries and the Rotterdam Police had “tied into their postings” and requested help in identifying their subject. A citizen using a fake Facebook account with a fake name downloaded a photo from Murray-Craig’s Facebook account — without naming him — and posted it on Channel 13’s Facebook thread about the laundry burglaries, together with a comment about a distinctive article of clothing he was wearing, Laurenzo said.

“That was my first real lead,” he said. And, after that first opening, he said, “people began to talk.”

Once someone “threw the name out there,” Altamont Police went to Murray-Craig’s house and showed his parents the surveillance photo, Laurenzo said, and his mother confirmed his identity.

On Feb. 5, The Enterprise published a story describing how a security-camera video from the Altamont laundry showed two men trying unsuccessfully to break into a change machine, but they couldn’t be identified, as one had a hood over his head and the other was wearing a ski mask. Watching the Rotterdam video on television news, Pucci noticed that the men were wearing the same clothes as the men in the Altamont tape.

Attention from The Enterprise also apparently helped. Laurenzo noted that many of the informants who contacted him with information about the case mentioned that they had read this paper’s first story on the case, “Laundry duo strikes twice,” online at altamontenterprise.com.

Additionally, Laurenzo noted that, after Rotterdam Police put out an announcement asking for the public’s help, Altamont Police got in touch with the local television news channels too, to add that Altamont also had an open investigation involving the same suspects. That way, he said, “more people in Altamont would be paying attention, since they would hear ‘Altamont’ and not just ‘Rotterdam.’”

Police in unmarked cars had for some time been sitting outside known drug houses where Murray-Craig was believed to be spending time, Pucci said, hoping to find and arrest him. Some of Murray-Craig’s own associates, Pucci said, had pressured Murray-Craig to turn himself in so as not to hurt drug sales.

Laurenzo noted that police also used data from license-plate readers to try to track Murray-Craig’s movements, to see where he was traveling and at what times. But since Murray-Craig had access to multiple vehicles, Laurenzo said, “It was actually pretty hard to keep track of all of them.”

Murray-Craig surrendered to Rotterdam Police even though they had not issued a warrant for his arrest, Laurenzo said. When he did, Rotterdam contacted Altamont Police, “because we already had a warrant out for him on an earlier traffic incident in the village.” Laurenzo said that he happened to be in Schenectady at the time — looking, coincidentally, for Murray-Craig –—“so I ran over and picked him up.”

“Murray-Craig is more or less the mastermind,” said Pucci, “because for him it wasn’t just that one night, like it was for Wallingford.” Pucci said that there are several other local precincts also interested in talking to Murray-Craig about burglaries in their areas.

That wasn’t the only time that Murray-Craig’s distinctive clothing landed him squarely in the sights of law enforcement. Later in January, the State Police based in Oneonta released images from surveillance footage from the Oneonta Walmart that showed a suspect in a grand larceny case there. Across the back of the suspect’s shirt was printed the word “Mooradian’s.”

Investigator Jeffrey Moore confirmed there was a burglary at the Oneonta Walmart on Jan. 25. Soon after the burglary, State Police put screen grabs from store surveillance video on social media and asked for the public’s help in identifying the suspect, whose face could be clearly seen.

Tips from the public rolled in, and “some people recognized it was him,” said Moore; some of them said that Murray-Craig had previously worked at Mooradian’s Furniture.

According to Investigator Moore, in the burglary at the Oneonta Walmart, the subject had pushed an empty cart over to the electronics department, filled it up with over $1,000 in electronic items and then left the store through an emergency exit and climbed into a waiting car driven by a second subject.

Moore and Altamont Police Chief Pucci both said that the Walmart in Cobleskill was hit the following day, Jan. 26.

Moore said that in the Cobleskill incident, it was “the same MO, the same-looking vehicle.” He specified that in Cobleskill it was actually the other subject — the one who had driven the car at Oneonta — who went into the store and committed the burglary.

According to Cobleskill Police Officer John Sullivan, the Walmart burglary in Cobleskill occurred at 5 pm on Jan. 26. Moore said that, in that case, the subject “filled a shopping cart with $850 in electronics and walked out the door.”

Because the Cobleskill investigation is ongoing, Sullivan said he could not comment further.

Pucci said that he believes he knows who the second suspect in the Oneonta and Cobleskill Walmart burglaries is. Asked if it could have been Wallingford, he said, “We believe we know who the second suspect is. It’s not Wallingford.” 

Pucci told The Enterprise that this possible connection to Oneonta and to Investigator Moore reminds him of another case, from a few years ago, in which he worked together with Moore on a web of interrelated cases that all started from a single case in Altamont, involving a stolen skid-steer.

In December 2011, according to Pucci, Altamont Police Officer Christopher Laurenzo saw a notice in a police publication about a skid-steer worth about $30,000 that had been stolen from a residence in Worcester, which is between Oneonta and Cobleskill.

Laurenzo said, “Hey, I think I just saw that skid-steer up the street, at Ron’s Garage.” He wrote down the serial number, went out to the garage and asked then-owner Ken Willsey if he could look at the skid-steer. “Of course the numbers matched,” Pucci said. “Then that one thing blew up into a big thing,” he continued.

Pucci described Willsey in an Enterprise article from 2013 as a “customer of a chop shop” — a place where stolen cars are disassembled and sold for parts. The investigation that started in Altamont soon grew to include Oneonta’s Investigator Moore as well as representatives of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Albany County District Attorney’s office. Pucci said it led to a multimillion-dollar case of cars being stolen as far south as Florida and Louisiana. He is not sure if the case has ever been fully closed.

Speaking of Moore — who is looking into the recent Walmart burglary and also happens to be the one who investigated the initial skid-steer theft, Pucci quipped, “This is the second case we’ve solved for them. So I hope they appreciate little old Altamont.”

Murray-Craig is racking up run-ins with the law

At age 24, Jason Murray-Craig of Berne is already familiar to local police and courts.

He appeared in Altamont Village Court on March 4 before Judge Rebecca Hout on charges of felony second-degree criminal mischief, as well as misdemeanor fourth-degree attempted grand larceny, stemming from attempted burglary at the coin laundry in Altamont on Jan. 8.

His case was adjourned until April 1 but, on his way out of the village courtroom, he was taken into custody by Altamont Police so that he could be handed over to Schenectady Police, who planned to charge him with petit larceny. Altamont Police officers did not have details about the Schenectady case.

Murray-Craig was arrested on Jan. 14, 2014 by the City of Albany Police for criminal possession of a controlled substance, failure to signal within 100 feet of a turn, and unlawful possession of marijuana, according to an Albany Police Department Summary Report.

He appeared in court on those charges, and pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment, stemming from an earlier incident; the Jan. 14 charges were covered under that plea, and he was given a conditional release, according to an Albany City Court clerk.

Murray-Craig was then arrested in Schenectady on Dec. 10, 2014 on charges of aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, according to Schenectady Police Lieutenant Mark McCracken. He was released on tickets and scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 7, 2015. A court clerk at the Schenectady City Courthouse said that Murray-Craig did not show up in court on Jan. 7.

Coincidentally, Jan. 7, 2015 is the same date that Murray-Craig was due in Altamont Village Court on a vehicle and traffic misdemeanor stemming from a Dec. 11, 2014 incident in Altamont.

Murray-Craig failed to show up in court in Schenectady on Jan. 7, 2015 or in court in the village of Altamont that same evening, but authorities believe that they have a good idea of where he was. It was late that same night — or, more precisely, into the very early morning hours of Jan. 8 — that police say he and James F. Wallingford attempted to break into the bill changer at the laundry in Altamont. (See related story.)

In that Dec. 11, 2014 traffic incident in Altamont, which occurred one day after he was arrested on a similar charge in Schenectady, according to the arrest report issued on Feb. 16, 2015, Altamont Officer Jill Kaufman was alerted at about 10:30 p.m. by an off-duty Guilderland officer of the possible erratic operation of a vehicle along Western Avenue between Gun Club Road and Gregg Road.

Kaufman observed the vehicle headed westbound along Route 146 West as it crossed Maple Avenue. She saw it cross to the left of the center pavement marking three times, the report says. She then made a routine traffic stop, and a check of the vehicle registration and driver’s license status revealed that Murray-Craig’s license had been suspended after he failed to appear on a summons previously issued in Easton, in Washington County. A passenger in the car had a valid license, so Kaufman had that person drive Murray-Craig home. She issued him a ticket, for which he was to appear in the village court on Jan. 7.

When he did not appear in Altamont Village Court on Jan. 7, the court issued a criminal summons ordering him to appear in court on Jan. 28. On Feb. 4, after Murray-Craig had failed to respond to the criminal summons, the court issued an arrest warrant.