Spider Man, the burglar, caught with his backpack on.
For the autumn of 2012 I lived at the Palazzo Vannucci on the Cassaro, I had a third-floor bedroom that stretched from the facade of the palace to the back of the palace, plus the studio underneath that, and what I called the"ballroom,", really a salon, next to that, all with balconies front and back. My fellow roommates told me to always, always , every time I leave, to lock my French doors that gave onto the Piazzetta Santa Sophia, the palace's back yard. This was because the former occupant of my room, a student of urban planning, would often study and use his computer on the back balcony, where you could watch screeching seagulls wheeling overhead, and rest your eyes the lonely green jungle of giant houseplants filling the terrace of the house across the piazza. He left his French doors unlocked one day, and while others were in the rambling palace, awake and entertaining friends, a fearless burglar climbed up the fragile clay drainage pipes and over the balcony railing and took both his computers and other valuables.
Now here's the burglar in the flesh! Security cameras have caught him in action, according to the Palermo online edition of today's La Repubblica.
http://palermo.repubblica.it/cronaca/2014/12/21/news/l_uomo_ragno_colpisce_in_libert_raffica_di_furti_in_centro-103403784/
Here is what it says:
The police have nicknamed Palermo's 30-year-old Giuseppe Sardina the Spider Man and charged him for burglary. For reasons unexplained in the article, he remains at large and continues to rob apartments in both the classy Via Liberta` zone and in the lower-caste Via Rocella area in Ballaro` by climbing up the gas tubes and gutters. "It's my profession!" he says, seraphically, when shown security videos of himself at work.
He pries open a window and squeezes through while the owners are peacefully asleep, gathers up their jewels, televisions and computers, then, tired from his travails, goes to their kitchen and cooks himself a sumptuous dinner!!
An accomplice waits for him in a getaway car. At dawn, he takes the loot and beats it home to Ballaro.`
Now here's the burglar in the flesh! Security cameras have caught him in action, according to the Palermo online edition of today's La Repubblica.
http://palermo.repubblica.it/cronaca/2014/12/21/news/l_uomo_ragno_colpisce_in_libert_raffica_di_furti_in_centro-103403784/
Here is what it says:
The police have nicknamed Palermo's 30-year-old Giuseppe Sardina the Spider Man and charged him for burglary. For reasons unexplained in the article, he remains at large and continues to rob apartments in both the classy Via Liberta` zone and in the lower-caste Via Rocella area in Ballaro` by climbing up the gas tubes and gutters. "It's my profession!" he says, seraphically, when shown security videos of himself at work.
He pries open a window and squeezes through while the owners are peacefully asleep, gathers up their jewels, televisions and computers, then, tired from his travails, goes to their kitchen and cooks himself a sumptuous dinner!!
An accomplice waits for him in a getaway car. At dawn, he takes the loot and beats it home to Ballaro.`