It may have been one of the stupidest things ever done on the Jersey Shore by a person not named Snooki.
A day after spending 15 years in prison for holding up a Toms River shoe store, Christopher Miller was busted last March after he went back to the same shop — to rob it again.
But Miller, 40 says he’s no numbskull — it was simply dumb luck.
“I didn’t even realize it was the same store until after I got arrested,” he told The Post during an exclusive interview that ranged from humorous to hopeless.
Miller was released from South Woods State prison in Bridgeton, NJ, on March 21, and says he quickly encountered problems.
“They let me go with zero money and two bus tickets, and told me the two tickets would be enough to get me to Red Bank,” where he had a mandatory visit with his parole officer.
But the two tickets weren’t sufficient to complete the 110-mile journey — and when he got on the phone with his decidedly unsympathetic parole officer, something in him snapped.
“He started getting snippy with me. Once you do that, I’m the kind of person that I turn it off. At that point I decided to go look for a place to rob,” Miller said.
People ask me what kind of work I can do. I can burglarize the hell out of a store.
- Christopher Miller
Originally from West Islip, LI, Miller, at 14, moved to Bayville, NJ — a 10-minute drive from Toms River, where he also lived for a short time in 1996.
So that’s where he went on his first day of freedom, arriving at around 5 pm that Friday.
With no friends or family who will speak to him, Miller wandered around for hours, covering about 20 miles.
“I figured I’d take my chances there. I was hoping to run into somebody I knew, something along those lines. Nothing like that happened,” he recalled.
By 4 pm on Saturday, something had to give.
“I hadn’t eaten from the time I left prison, so it was to the point where I was going to rob the place, get some money, get something to eat and a place to stay — or get caught. One of those two things.
A NJ Department of Corrections spokesman confirmed that inmates are not given any money, save for whatever they have saved in their prison accounts.
“So I started walking around looking for a place to rob and I eventually wound up in the same spot that I had robbed last time” — the Stride Rite on Hooper Avenue.
At 4:21 pm, the 6-foot-tall Miller burst in the store, armed only with 270 pounds of desperation.
He demanded cash — amazingly from the same employee (now the manager) who was working the last time Miller paid the store a visit.
“I didn’t recognize her right away. I’m all up in the moment. The detective asked me later, ‘Didn’t she look familiar?’
“I said, ‘You know what, it did seem a little déjà vu-ish.’”
This time around, he made off with $389 and the employees’ cell phones — better than in ’99, when he didn’t get a cent because he ran off as a second employee entered the store.
“It was the easiest place to rob the last time, and I guess it was just the easiest place to rob this time. It was pure coincidence,” he added. “It seemed kind of funny afterwards.”
But getting away wouldn’t be as easy. Miller said he intended to steal either the manager or the clerk’s car. But “the [clerk] was 18 and didn’t have one, and [the 43-year-old manager] had just gotten dropped off by her husband. Neither one had a car.”
Not surprisingly, he didn’t get very far.
“I had blisters on my feet from walking around all day, so I was pretty much hobbled.”
Store employees called the cops, and in about 10 minutes Miller was tracked down by a K-9 cop and his dog, Cyrus.
Miller’s back in South Woods State prison, which he describes as “laid back.”
“It’s nothing like any of the prison movies you see,” he says. “I sit back, play cards, watch TV.”
He says he’s willing to cop a plea and take six to seven years for the robbery.
“People here were not surprised. They knew if something went south I was going to do what I did.”
And he’s not surprised with himself. After all, he expects to be in prison the rest of his life.
It was the easiest place to rob the last time, and I guess it was just the easiest place to rob this time. It was pure coincidence.
- Christopher Miller
“My life as far as having any wife, children, family, all that was over 15 years ago when I did what I did. When I came in, there was really no light at the end of the tunnel.”
His life of crime began at the tender age of 12, when he was shoplifting cassette tapes and Sony Walkmen from a Long Island mall. “I wasn’t even doing it for myself. I was doing it for older people, to get their approval.”
At 14 he was breaking into lockers at Central Regional High School in Bayville, which led to being bounced around several schools, ending with his senior year at a private school for at-risk kids in Marlboro, NJ.
“I didn’t care about the consequences. When I wanted something, I wanted it now, and did whatever it took to get it.”
Six weeks after graduating in 1992, he says he burglarized a neighbor’s home, was caught, and released. So he did it again, was caught and released again, and then stole a car. “Eventually, the court had enough and they sentenced me.” On Dec. 3, 1993 he was sent to Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Annandale, where he stayed until June 14, 1994.
“I was good for 18 months,” he recalls, but in 1996 says he broke into a Monmouth County car dealership, and slapped with a five-year sentence. After about a year, he was sent to High Point State Park, a minimum security prison, from which he promptly escaped.
“It wasn’t like breaking through bars and whatnot,” he recalls. “I walked off and hitchhiked.”
He was caught two days later, and sent back to prison, where he stayed until 1999, when he says he tried to start anew, traveling to Oklahoma to meet his biological father for the first time.
“There was no hug or handshake,” he recalls.
“He gave me his credit card to go out and buy some new clothes. Maybe I went a little overboard, but I spent $1,200. He decided that was too much and he kicked me out.”
Records show Miller was busted in Tulsa for unauthorized use of a credit card.
He was now back in Jersey, staying with a friend in Toms River, who’s mother wanted him out of the house.
“I’m thinking, I’ll go do a couple of burglaries, get some money.”
But instead of doing a burglary and getting the cash he needed for a new place to stay, he toked up on some marijuana — and fell asleep. “I’m out on the street the next day.”
And that’s when a light bulb went on.
“I didn’t have any money, nothing, so I decided armed robberies would be the easiest thing. Stupidest thing — if I hadn’t fallen asleep I would have done a couple of burglaries that I know I would have gotten some money from.”
He was now out of his comfort zone.
“To be honest, robbery was never my good thing — if you want to consider that a good thing. But burglaries, I knew how to burglarize a store without getting caught. There were a lot of burglaries, obviously I didn’t get caught for.
He says he used a stolen eight-inch knife for the crimes. “The knife was purely an intimidation factor,” he notes. “A gun is harder to get.”
But he was nabbed in Nov. 18, 1999 after he took a bone-headed turn into a crowd of cop cars while trying to flee the Stride Rite.
“When they say it’s a revolving door, they’re not kidding. Once you’re in the system and things don’t work out, you just resort to what you know. People ask me what kind of work can I do? I can burglarize the hell out of a store.”