Roofing Company Employee Charged with Burglary

Photo: Mugshot of Steven Butler from the Bedford Police.

Police say they found several valuables that had recently disappeared from a nearby home, plus drugs, on a 26-year-old Medford roofing company employee this afternoon in Bedford.

Steven Butler has been charged with breaking and entering, receiving stolen property, and drug possession.

Bedford Police say the victim left their home on Old Billerica Road in the morning for a dentist appointment, and returned around lunchtime to find a thoroughly pillaged bedroom and newly-empty jewelry boxes.

Upon arrival, police noticed footprints near the home’s rear door, which indicated that someone wearing work books had recently visited without the homeowner’s knowledge or permission.

A roofing crew - many of whom presumably wore such boots - happened to be working on a contract nearby. Police investigated, and spoke with Butler as he sat in a Jeep Wrangler. Later, after Butler had exited the Jeep, police glanced in the car’s backseat window, and say they saw a handful of earrings and a silver dollar - some of the missing items - left right out in the open.

A search of Butler’s person, according to police, yielded several more of the ill-gotten articles, plus a baggie of painkiller pills. Upon inspecting the Jeep, police say they found more jewelry, luggage, and more pills, all lifted from another nearby homeowner who had yet to discover anything missing.