The Master Thief

Sean Murphy was an epic weed smoker, a devoted Tom Brady fan, and the best cat burglar that Lynn, Mass., had ever seen

- Zeke Faux

It was the play that turned “Manning” into a bad word in Boston. There was a minute left in Super Bowl XLII. The New England Patriots—Tom Brady’s undefeated New England Patriots—needed one defensive stop to beat the New York Giants. On third down, multiple Patriot defenders pushed through the line and grabbed quarterback Eli Manning’s jersey. But Manning slipped away and chucked a wobbly pass downfield, where a mediocre receiver, David Tyree, leapt, pinned the ball against his helmet, and somehow hung on to it as he crashed to the turf. Manning, the interception- prone doofus with the look of a confused middle schooler, would go on to beat Brady in the sport’s biggest game.

Sean Murphy seethed as he watched from his weed dealer’s couch. It was February 2008. Skinny, with deepset brown eyes, Murphy was a typical Patriots fan. He pronounced “cars” as “cahs,” got his coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, and had a mullet and a horseshoe mustache, at least when his girlfriend didn’t make him clean up. He moved furniture for a living in Lynn, Mass., a down-and-out suburb on the North Shore, and on Sundays, when he could get tickets, he made the 40-mile drive south to Foxborough to root for the Pats.

But there was another side to Murph, as his friends called him. On Saturday nights he put on an all-black ninja suit and went out looking for things to steal. He was a cat burglar—the best in a town where burglary was still regarded as an art form.

A few weeks after the game, Murphy was at the Boston Public Library, browsing the internet and planning his next break-in, when he came across an article about the Giants’ Super Bowl rings.