Pa. Officials Follow Monkey Thief's MySpace Page to S. Md.

For most fugitives, life on the lam involves keeping a low profile. Not so for Steven Labore, who fled Pennsylvania after he and a pal were charged with stealing two monkeys.

Labore, 19, was tracked down this month in Southern Maryland after the prosecutor handling his case discovered that he had posted his phone number and part of his new address to his publicly accessible MySpace page.

"I just punched it in," said Chad Schneider, an assistant district attorney in western Pennsylvania's Washington County. "He had his phone number and his address, so I figured I'd go get him."

Labore had eluded authorities since he missed a court date in March. He was arrested shortly after the monkey theft in November and had been free on $20,000 bond.

As police tell it, Labore and his friend Michael Naylor set out to steal marijuana that was rumored  falsely to be growing in a greenhouse on the property of the Wild World of Animals, an animal education and entertainment business in Eighty Four, Pa. There was no marijuana, but the pair found something else to steal, police say.

   

 

"Yeah, jackpot: There's no weed, but there's monkeys," Schneider said.

The thieves successfully removed two monkeys, Gwendolyn and Lucy, from their cages before a third, Kenya, raised a commotion, police said.

 

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