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One of those charged, 47-year-old Robert Bodurka of Maywood (above, left), was released from state prison three months ago after serving two years for burglary and drug convictions.
Bodurka and his alleged accomplices — Ginette Lezette, 31, of Emerson and 21-year-old Thomas Sussina of Sussex — split the proceeds while staying at the Airport Motel off Route 46 in South Hackensack, law enforcement sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
All three were grabbed at a Wayne motel around 3:30 a.m. yesterday.
Police recovered two cash registers — one stolen from a South Hackensack pizzeria before dawn on Monday after they said Bodurka and Sussina smashed a side door and the other from a Hasbrouck Heights gas station in similar fashion.
“That’s been the M.O.: Smash a door, grab the register and bolt,” South Hackensack Police Capt. Robert Kaiser told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “It’s usually between 1 and 4 in the morning.”
Little Ferry police were expected to charge both men with a similar smash-and-grab liquor store burglary in their town.
Bodurka alone is charged with two more in Elmwood Park and another in Clifton.
Elmwood Park’s smash-and-grabs occurred at a Midland Avenue liquor store just after 4:45 a.m. Dec. 13 and at a Route 46 gas station just after 5 a.m. Jan. 3, Police Chief Michael Foligno told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
He fled the first in what was described as a “landscaping-type truck” after surveillance video showed him failing earlier in the night to get in and then returning with a hand-held sledgehammer to break the glass, Foligno said.
“Responding officers located a cash tray with money and receipts on the Route 80 West ramp off of Molnar Drive,” the chief said.
Bodurka took the register, containing $200 in cash, from the gas station after breaking a window on the side of the building, Foligno said.
Surveillance cameras recorded that burglary, too, he said.
Bodurka was being held in the Bergen County Jail on a combined $125,000 bail, which was expected to increase once Little Ferry police bring their charges.
Lezette, who Kaiser said “conspired with Bodurka and Sussina and split the money,” was charged with the Hasbrouck Heights and South Hackensack burglaries. She was being held on a combined $40,000 bail.
Sussina’s bail was $45,000.
Bodurka — also known as Robert Bodurke and Peter Davaney — has a rap sheet that stretches back nearly 25 years.
It includes arrests for two January 2012 smash-and-grab burglaries and a third a month earlier, all in Maywood.
All were committed while Bodurka was on parole.
Police picked him up after surveillance cameras caught Bodurka smashing a Maywood liquor store’s front window with a hammer, grabbing several scratch-off lottery tickets and cigarettes and speeding off in a car he’d parked outside.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy SOUTH HACKENSACK PD
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