Panther Burglar turns deadly

Margaret Sablesack had immigrated to the US in 1901 from Yugoslavia when she was a child. As a young woman she worked as a milliner at a NYC hat factory until landing a job as a lab worker in St. Luke's Hospital.

By 1957, Margaret was 63-years-old, never married, crippled by arthritis, living on welfare in her 5-room, second-floor apartment at 1249 Amsterdam Avenue near 121st Street and maybe thinking her situation couldn't get any worse. Of course, she was wrong. Margaret had so little and yet on September 16th of that year, a man had broken into her apartment and was rifling through her things as she dozed in a chair. Margaret screamed when she saw him and the burglar grabbed her by the throat. Margaret fell to the ground and, still trying to silence her, the burglar knelt on her. He broke several of her ribs; she was 5' and maybe 100 pounds. His assault was a success - she was quiet....she was dead...her chest crushed. 

Margaret's body was discovered the next morning when a neighbor in her building saw the front door to her apartment wasn't closed all the way. He stepped in to investigate, found Margaret dead and her normally neat abode was far from tidy.

The police on the scene noticed that although there was a murder victim, the M.O. for the burglary was similar to dozens they'd been investigating for months. A thief so agile they'd dubbed him the "Panther Burglar." Margaret's brother William inspected the apartment and noticed nothing more than a portable radio was missing. That's what her life was worth.

Three latent prints were lifted off the wall nearest Margaret's body. Detectives compared these prints with over 500,000 currently on record but couldn't find a match. Again, 1957 so way before some computer program could zip through these to find corresponding ridges and whorls.

Detective Romoldo Imundi instructed all officers apprehending burglars in that vicinity to book every individual, fingerprint them and put those prints to the side for him to look at in the morning.

On February 24, 1958, at 12:45 AM, a young man, clutching a bulging paper bag, was spotted prowling around a back alley on Riverside Drive near 111th Street. When Patrolmen Owen Furtado and Rudolph Mingoia approached, he took off running. If this was the Panther Burglar, the nickname was appropriate. He was super fast and elusive. The officers would fire 6 shots at the man, none of them hit.

The thief eventually scampered up the fire escape of an apartment building at 628 W 114th Street and disappeared through a fifth story window. Furtado and Mingoia followed him and began searching the building. They could hear a shower running in a common hall bathroom. When they entered they found a man, naked, under the spray who claimed to live in the building. Furtado thought it sounded plausible but where was his towel and soap? And the clothes and paper bag balled up and stuffed underneath the claw-foot bathtub matched the man they were chasing. Inside the bag was a portable radio. He was arrested on suspicion of burglary.

Roland Wiggins was 18-years-old, 5' 9", husky but light on his feet. He lived in a single room apartment at 50 W. 112th Street, was an aspiring amateur boxer and had no previous criminal record....until now and his prints matched those found at Margaret Sablesack's apartment.

Roland admitted to the burglaries, over 60 in total. He would walk along the rooftops in the early morning hours then drop down to the ledges of the apartments on the upper floors. "It was as easy as walking up stairs" and enter through the bedroom windows.

Roland was escorted from Felony Court to the Homicide Division to be questioned about the events of September 16, 1957. After 2 days of questioning, Roland admitted that he had unintentionally killed Margaret while trying to muffle her screams.

On June 6, 1958, Roland pled guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life; he was paroled on September 8, 1971 after serving 13 years.

photo courtesy of JET Magazine, March 20, 1958. I believe that's Det. Romolo Imundi on the left.

There is a very brief article in JET Magazine's March 20, 1958 edition which attributed this quote to Roland Wiggins but I can't find it anywhere else, "There's no thrill like the thrill of killing. I like to beat and break ribs."

When discussing his success at closing the case, Detective Imundi said "There are no super sleuths. Just guys pounding the pavement, asking a lot of questions. The trick is to presume nothing, to check everything." That definitely seems to have been the key to solving the murder of Margaret Sablesack and catching the "Panther Burglar."