The Locked-In Gym Robber

In Stockholm in 2010, on a Saturday night, a former member of a central Stockholm gym climbed onto the roof of the building, unscrewed the cover plate of an industrial ventilation duct, and crawled twelve metres through the duct to drop into the men's changing room. He had a backpack, a torch, a set of tools, and — for some reason that the police's later reconstruction was not able to explain — a sandwich.

The sandwich proved foundational.

The plan

The gym was closed on Sundays. The takings of the previous week, like those of most small commercial premises in Sweden, were kept in a small safe in the manager's office overnight. The burglar had been a member of the gym for some months and had, in his time as a member, observed the locations of relevant fixtures — the safe, the office, the camera positions, the closing-time routine. He had also, crucially, observed that the gym was closed for thirty-six hours every weekend, which gave him, in his calculation, a full day and a half to work uninterrupted before staff returned on Monday morning.

He had brought his lunch.

The doors

He landed on the changing room tiles, stood up, took a moment, and pushed open the swing door into the main gym. The door clicked shut behind him. The kind of soft mechanical sound that one does not particularly notice until one tries to go back through. He proceeded forward to the manager's office, picked the lock, opened the door, and discovered immediately that the safe was not where he remembered it being. It had been moved. He did not know where.

He left the office to search the rest of the building. He walked back across the main floor towards the front of the gym. He reached the front doors. He tried them. They did not move. Not slightly. Not at all. The doors were on a magnetic lock — the same kind used in many modern Swedish commercial premises overnight — held by several hundred kilograms of electromagnetic force, releasable only from a panel behind the front desk that required a code he did not have.

He returned to the changing room door. The one he had originally walked through. It was also on a magnetic lock. He went to every other door in the building. Every door was magnetically locked. The ventilation duct he had come through was now, in practical terms, a tunnel ten metres above his head with no straightforward way to climb back up to it.

He was inside until Monday.

Fifty-six hours

From approximately eleven o'clock on Saturday night to approximately seven o'clock on Monday morning he was, by his own subsequent statement, a guest of the gym. He ate his sandwich within the first three hours. After that, he had access to the gym's smoothie bar fridge, which had been left unlocked. He survived on protein shakes, energy bars, and water from the changing-room tap. He slept on the changing-room benches. He read magazines from the reception area. At various points, the security cameras recorded him using the gym's equipment — bench press, treadmill, a brief stretching session — over the course of the weekend. He did not, at any point, attempt to call anyone. The only people he could plausibly call were the police, and the police, as he was aware, would not improve his situation.

He waited.

The deputy manager

On Monday morning at approximately six fifty-five, the deputy manager unlocked the front door for the start of the working week. He stepped inside. He saw a man on a bench by the smoothie bar, with a backpack, drinking a smoothie, looking, as he later told police, deeply tired.

The deputy manager froze. The man stood up. And, in calm Swedish, asked the deputy manager to please call the police.

He had had two days to think about his situation. He understood that the security cameras had been recording continuously. He understood that the locked-in nature of his stay was on record. He understood that there was no defence available. His only request, when the door opened, was to be arrested quickly. The deputy manager honoured it.

The trial

The case was tried at Stockholm District Court — Stockholms tingsrätt. He was convicted of attempted aggravated theft. The judge, in passing sentence, observed that the defendant had spent approximately fifty-six hours in a closed gymnasium entirely as a consequence of his own choices. The custodial sentence was within the standard range for the offence. The judge declined to comment on the smoothies.

Several gym members later reported that, before the cameras were taken into evidence, they had seen footage showing the burglar improving his bench press substantially over the weekend. He had, by all evidence, left the gym in measurably better physical condition than he had entered it.

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Listen to the full story on Dumb Crimes Europe, Episode 10. Stream the episode here.