‘You Broke My Whole World’: The Wild Story Behind the Strange-For-Fiction Drama ‘Roofman’ | film

toEgg Moore was supposed to celebrate her 40th birthday. Instead she received a visit from the FBI. “They told me that the man you were seeing was not who you thought he was; he was on America’s most wanted list,” she recalls.

When agents showed her a photo of her boyfriend to prove it, Moore “fell to pieces” and cried. “They shattered my whole world. I was devastated, as if someone had just died.”

The man in question was Jeffrey Manchester, an Army veteran who robbed dozens of McDonald’s restaurants by sawing off roofs. In 2000, he was arrested in North Carolina and later sentenced to 45 years in prison. But he escaped in 2004 and, to evade authorities, hid in a Toys R Us store in Charlotte.

Manchester lived there secretly for several months, eating what was on the shelves, and boldly trying to lead a seemingly normal life outside the store. He joined a local church and dated single mother Lee Moore, then Lee Wainscott, before his luck ran out for good.

The wild story is retold in Roofman, a film released Friday starring Channing Tatum as Manchester and Kirsten Dunst as Moore. Writer-director Derek Cianfrance created an immersive environment that included casting people who knew Manchester in real life and restoring an abandoned Toys “R” Us by reinstalling electricity, plumbing, lighting, and truckloads of old toys.

For Moore, 60, who recently visited Manchester in prison and made a fleeting appearance in the film as a school crossing guard, it was an opportunity to reflect on a short but indelible period of her life — and to tell friends and acquaintances about the incident for the first time.

When she first met Manchester in 2004, she was going through a divorce from a 20-year marriage. “One day, this new guy showed up at our church and there was definitely some buzz because we didn’t get new people in very often,” Moore recalls by phone from Charlotte, where she works in the auto industry. “His intentions were to walk into the church and sit in the back row without being noticed. But that did not happen.”

Manchester was encouraged to participate in church activities, especially during the holiday season. His first date with Moore was a long walk to a local park and they began seeing each other two or three times a week. He claimed to have just moved from New York and worked for the federal government.

“There was nothing to worry about,” she says. “He was handsome. He always knew what to say to charm the ladies and make everyone feel at ease. He was very cunning, very clever, had a lot of energy and was funny.”. He was well dressed, clean, courteous, very courteous, well spoken, and knew what to say at all the right times.

“I’m a very confident person and the pastor adored him and the congregation adored him. I felt safe. There was no reason to doubt.”

Moore felt comfortable introducing Manchester to her 12-year-old son and daughters, ages 9 and 15. “He would bring them a little something to break the ice. He would always get down on their level and try to connect with them in some way. He had kids — I didn’t know that at the time — so he knew how to interact with kids and he was very good at it.”

She knew nothing about his background. Manchester once served in the 82nd Airborne Division and struggled to return to civilian life. His wife rejected him because he was unable to support their three children. When an army buddy suggested that he apply the best of his abilities to get his life together, Manchester took the advice in a completely original direction.

Starting in 1998, he applied his military precision and intelligence to a new mission: robbing McDonald’s restaurants by sawing off their flimsy roofs in the middle of the night and then striking when the morning shift arrived. He is believed to have robbed more than 40 stores and displayed a friendly manner, asking McDonald’s staff for their jackets before locking them in the fridge.

Manchester was arrested in 2000 and sentenced to 45 years in Brown Creek Correctional Institution. But in 2004 he made a spectacular escape, hiding under a truck leaving the prison’s loading dock. Now that he’s on the run, his choice of hideout is as daring as his robberies: the local Toys “R” Us store in Charlotte.

He built a small “nest” for the survivors behind a bicycle display, subsisting on baby food and M&Ms taken from the shelves while decorating his makeshift bed with Spider-Man sheets. To avoid detection, he set up a selection of video baby monitors, allowing him constant surveillance of store staff. From his hidden place, he learned their routines and observed their behavior, especially that of the obnoxious manager whom he regularly witnessed abusing his employees.

After months of isolation, Manchester is tired of being isolated. In late October, he began venturing outside, using a nearby, shuttered convenience store in Circuit City as a secret entry and exit point. He began attending Crossroads Church, run by Pastor Ron Smith and his wife, Jean, where he quickly integrated into the community.

Looking back, were there any telltale clues? When Moore pestered him about not having a car, Manchester bought a green 1999 Chrysler Concorde for $5,000, registered it in her name and paid cash. She says, “Well, I thought the government paid well!” We went shopping at a department store one day and bought a bunch of Christmas decorations, and he paid cash for them.

“We didn’t go out in public much and he never sat with his back to the door. I thought it was military training because he had a military background. They teach you to watch your back and I didn’t think anything of it. Other than that, I never suspected. He always showed up when he was supposed to. He always managed to get to church and where he needed to go.”“.

Manchester told Moore he lives in a sterile government apartment and is not allowed to have guests. In fact, he passed the time in his hideout by watching DVDs including Catch Me If You Can, the 2002 Steven Spielberg film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, one of the most famous con artists in history, who successfully impersonates a pilot, doctor and lawyer. The fingerprint he left on the DVD led to his arrest.

He had only been dating Moore for two months, and in January 2005 — the day she turned 40 — the FBI came to Moore’s workplace and told her that Manchester was on their most wanted list. She left with them and remained in their custody for most of the day. They asked for her help in taking over Manchester and she agreed.

“It was very painful. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I had three kids, I was a good girl, and I didn’t want to get into trouble so I helped them. They had me call him and pretend everything was fine, like you see in the movies,” Moore admits. [though this moment does not appear in Roofman]And I pretend I was excited to see him that night for my birthday and to pick me up at seven o’clock or something.

Manchester duly showed up at her home with a bouquet of flowers. Moore was in the back of the police car about a mile away listening to the drama unfold at dispatch. “I could hear them saying, ‘We’re in position’ or ‘He’s coming’ or ‘Here he comes’. Then you could hear him struggling to the ground and everyone was screaming and I knew it was over then.”

I spoke to Manchester on the phone for a few minutes later that evening. “I apologized for arresting him and he kept apologizing for cheating on me, so there was a lot of crying and a lot of sadness and a lot of apologies.”

A few months later she visited Manchester in prison. There was no further contact until Cianfrance began researching the film and speaking to Manchester regularly. Moore went to see him again earlier this year, and they now talk on the phone every two weeks.

“We talk like old friends, we just catch up, we talk about our families and the movie and what’s going on,” says Moore, who remarried a decade ago. “I’m not in love with him; I just consider him a friend and someone I’ve cared about for a long time. My husband has always known me and he’s always been very supportive, so he understands that I talk to him from time to time. He gets that.”

Do you think Manchester regrets his crimes? “Having spent over 20 years in prison thinking things through, he feels very remorseful and realizes he made some stupid decisions and should not have gone down that path.

“A lot of us as parents use our kids as an excuse. We want to give our kids more; we want our kids to have what we didn’t have. It started like this: He wanted to provide more for his kids, and make his kids happy. In the movie they show that his daughter had a bad birthday, and then the next year, all of a sudden, her birthday was very lavish.”

“But later he started to enjoy playing the game and dodging the police and seeing what he could get away with for how long. He started to love it: the adrenaline, the catch-me-if-you-can attitude.”

Now in his 50s, Manchester is currently serving his sentence at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina (he can only make outgoing calls, but Cianfrance estimates they’ve spoken more than a hundred times). He is not scheduled to be released until 2036.

However, Moore notes, “He seems very articulate and very positive all the time; he’s never negative. He’s in a good place and I’m in a good place. We usually focus on the positive and look forward to the next time we can talk about these things.”

They both welcome Cianfrance’s film and the attention that comes with it. “I’m glad the story exists because I didn’t talk about it for so long. All the people that came into my life over the last 20 years, I didn’t go around telling everyone about that part of my past. I pushed it down and didn’t talk about it. Then when I started coming back, I felt like I needed to tell them.”

“All my family knows, all my friends know, everyone at work knows, so there’s no need to hide it anymore. I feel comfortable talking about it and I stand firm when I say he’s a good person; he just made some bad decisions and there should be more grace and more forgiveness in the world.”