A Newark man was sentenced to 15 years in prison this week, after he was arrested for a 75th time last month. Eric Warren, 43, has been committing theft-related crimes since 1988; according to police, he has at least 14 aliases, seven criminal convictions, and at least three short stints in jail between 2003 and 2004. But what was lucky crime # 75? What luxury item was too much for him to resist?
Warren was caught and convicted of trying to steal $180 worth of deodorant by shoving the smell sticks down his pants during a Jan. 20 robbery of a Rite-Aid Pharmacy in Kearny. Warren will now have to serve at least 13 years in jail before being up for parole. And because all good bizarre stories come in pairs, a man in Connecticut was also arrested this week for attempting to steal 58 containers of deodorant in his pants. Maybe Warren really had an odor problem, maybe his job required him to wear deodorant...in either case, he should have moved to the land of a thousand terrible local government-protected smells, Portland.
