The discovery a large collection of stolen shoes along Big Elk Creek in Elkton, Maryland, was connected to a suspected shoe thief who may have been operating for up to two decades.
Police felt certain that the dumped shoes were linked to a recent theft of shoes and pictures of the members of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at the University of Delaware. A witness to the crime saw a man running to a yellow Mitsubishi.
With the fear that his license plate might have been seen, it is possible that the shoe thief in question did what most criminals try to do when it looks like they are going to get caught – get rid of the evidence. Unfortunately for the suspected culprit, years of his activities had built up a supply that required a vehicle of greater substance than his yellow Mitsubishi.
The car in question led police to the upscale Newark home of 46-year old Walter Rubincan. According to Newark Police Lt. Brian Henry:
(The police) essentially knocked at his door, talked to him and it led to him confessing to these crimes.
In his home they found much more than they expected, Rubincan was said to have collected so many shoes that it took a flatbed truck several trips to haul them away to the police evidence room that they eventually filled.
Lt. Henry explained:
There’s 150 boxes full of shoes, but a safe estimate is that there are several thousand shoes there.
Rubincan, who is facing 25 separate counts of second-degree burglary and 77 counts of theft, is said to have “derived pleasure” from building his collection. The crimes that he is charged with go back four years, but police believe that he started as long as two decades ago.
ABC News noted that members of the Kappa Sigma Sophomore expressed relief that the suspected shoe thief had been captured, but Sophomore Nick Robbins expressed that they had misgivings about reclaiming the pilfered footwear:
We’re not really sure if we want the shoes back. We’ll take the pictures back, but he can keep the shoes.
Rubincan’s bail has been set at $138,000.
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Suspected Shoe Bandit Walter Rubincan
[Source: Images: Evidence; Rubincan image]
