Rutherford PD: Career burglar, 61, confesses to break-ins

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Rutherford police teamed up with a Bergen County Police sergeant yesterday to catch a 61-year-old career burglar who they said confessed to a pair of local break-ins after he was spotted trying to get into another house.

Jerry DeMarco

03/22/2014 3:41 p.m.

Rutherford Officer Vincent Callan found Steven Benedek hiding behind a vinyl fence of a Darwin Avenue home after BCPD Sgt. Robert Carney saw him run from a rear yard on Washington Avenue, Police Chief John R. Russo said.

Benedek, of Passaic, has a Bergen County criminal record that stretches back nearly 20 years, mostly for burglary.

He later told detectives he broke into a home on Hawthorne Street on Dec. 18 and one on Hobart Avenue on Jan. 5, Russo said.

Benedek was being held on $150,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with two counts each of burglary, theft, criminal mischief and defiant trespassing, as well as one count each of attempted burglary, armed burglary and obstruction.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy RUTHERFORD PD

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