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Cellphone records, security videos helped police nap Weymouth ex-con
Created by Patriot Ledger - Steve Adams on 4th April 2010, 11:41 amCOHASSET - Cell phone records and Lord & Taylor security videos led police to charge a Weymouth ex-con in the burglary of a Cohasset home.
Michael Subenko, 31, stole money, jewelry and credit cards back in November and went on a spending spree at South Shore Plaza, police said.
The house break took place just four months after Subenko was released from prison after serving a 13-year sentence for vehicular homicide in the death of a pregnant woman from Weymouth.
The four-month Cohasset investigation came to a head in March, when police obtained cell phone records indicating Subenko placed four calls from the area of the Braintree shopping mall on Nov. 20. Subenko denied involvement, telling investigators he was working at a cemetery in Weymouth that day.
Subenko’s criminal history dates back to age 12. A judge once called him a one-man crime wave and an “incorrigible public nuisance.”
He was convicted in 1999 for killing Mary Anderson of Weymouth when he struck her car in Hingham during a police chase. By then, Subenko had already racked up 83 arraignments. He has numerous convictions for car thefts and house breaks, including a 1999 conviction for breaking and entering in Cohasset.
On Nov. 20, the residents of a home on Norman Todd Lane in Cohasset came home and discovered their bedroom had been entered and several items stolen, including a Chase Visa card, police said.
Credit card company fraud investigators notified Cohasset police that the card had been used to make three purchases totaling $853 at South Shore Plaza the same day.
Lord & Taylor security tapes showed a man accompanied by a woman, later identified as Subenko’s girlfriend, making several purchases. Police searched the bedroom of her Pembroke home, where they found a pair of North Face boots and an Avani Dead Sea cosmetics kit, both of which were believed purchased with the stolen credit card.
Cohasset Detective Lt. Gregory Lennon called Subenko’s cell phone and told him he was a suspect in the break-in.
“He said he didn’t even know how to get to Cohasset,” Lennon wrote in an affidavit.
Subenko, of 25 Weyham Road, allegedly told police he was landscaping at Mount Hope Cemetery in Weymouth the day of the break-in. A cemetery supervisor told police no landscapers worked that day because of heavy rain.
The Massachusetts Parole Board issued a warrant for a parole violation after being notified Subenko was a suspect. Pembroke police arrested him outside his girlfriend’s house on Nov. 27.
Police in March obtained a search warrant for Subenko’s cell phone records and determined that he placed four calls around the time of the purchases.
Subenko is charged with breaking and entering in the daytime, forgery of a document, uttering false writing, larceny from a building, credit card fraud over $250, larceny over $250, identity fraud and larceny of a credit card. He is in custody at the state prison in Walpole and will be arraigned in Quincy District Court at a later date.
