Does anyone remember the Coke Machine Bandit? After the 9th Division deactivated at the beginning of 1991, there were a bunch of empty buildings left at Fort Lewis. Each one of these buildings had a day room with a Coke machine in it. For some reason, the Coke and the money were left in these machines the whole time that the buildings sat empty. If you drove by at night, these machines were quite obvious from the street because they gave off the only light in many of these buildings. After a while, we had a long string of break-ins at these buildings where the only thing touched was the Coke machine. The machine was always opened and the money taken out. I can remember being on patrol, parked in the division area at night with all the lights off on the patrol car, positioned where I could see the Coke machine in 4 or 5 buildings at once. They even had a reward on catching this perp for a while. Anyway, I do not know how this story ends. I never heard if the Coke Machine Bandit was caught or not. Does anyone else remember this? Can anyone finish this story?
The bandit was active while I was there, 91-92, parts of. I not only broke into the coke and candy machines, he supposedly would spell out messages with coke cans and candy bars. Might be an urban myth though.
I was in MPI for a little while before getting out in '93 and if I remember correctly, the person was caught and was a civilian that was coming on post to hit the machines as well as hitting machines off post. I did help with some of the investigation and I do not recall there being any messages spelled out with the cans or candy, he was simply breaking into the machines and stealing the money, he didn't even take pop from the machines. I was in MPI after SFC Benninghoven left.
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