Man Released
By Bob Gielow

 

By Kiki Pepper, Staff Writer
February 29, 2021

STROUDSBURG — A Bartonsville man has been released from jail after initially being charged with multiple thefts of wine from a Stroudsburg liquor store.
Timothy Wiegol, 71, of 924 Wigwam Park Rd., Bartonsville, had pleaded guilty at his arraignment Friday in Monroe County courthouse. After briefly being held at Monroe County Correctional, he has now been released after the owner of Penn Stroud Beverage, Russell McIntyre, indicated that he would no longer be pressing charges.

According to Mr. McIntyre, Mr. Wiegol had been employed at Penn Stroud Beverage for almost 18 years, working his way up from stocking shelves to tracking and managing the store’s inventory. Mr. Wiegol was described as a “model employee … always showing up on time and being friendly to the customers.”

According to McIntyre, May of 2017 was when he first noticed that Penn Stroud was missing bottles of Robert Mondavi Sauvignon Blanc wine. At the time, Wiegol was the employee who reported to McIntyre that shipments being received from their preferred wine distributor were “shy six bottles,” or one case. All other products from this distributor were properly accounted for and the delivery driver found no evidence that one case had been damaged in transit.

 

The shipment for June of 2017 was correct, but the deliveries in July, September, and November were again missing one case of Robert Mondavi Sauvignon Blanc. This pattern of one missing case every other month continued. After complaining to and seeking compensation from both the wine distributor and the delivery truck company, McIntyre canceled his contracts with both firms in January of 2020.

McIntyre indicated that he was “shocked when a case of white wine went missing again in April of 2020.” Though he complained to his new wine distributor, McIntyre began to “suspect that one of his employees was stealing” one case of wine every two months. Without telling anyone on his payroll, or even his wife, Mr. McIntyre hired a firm to set up a hidden camera system in the coolers where the white wine is stored. When Wiegol reported to McIntyre that one case of wine had again gone missing in July and October of 2020, McIntyre “scoured those CCTV tapes, but found nothing suspicious.”

Last week, after returning from a three-week bereavement leave after the death of his wife, Wiegol confessed to McIntyre that he had been stealing white wine from Penn Stroud Liquor Store. According to McIntyre, “Wiegol admitted that he had been stealing the wine” for several years “as a treat for his wife who was suffering from breast cancer and undergoing debilitating chemotherapy treatments.”

“Wiegol told me that his wife loved Robert Mondavi Sauvignon Blanc and that her half-glasses in the evening were one of her only comforts. He couldn’t afford to buy a case of wine every couple of months given their medical expenses and he thought that Penn Stroud would simply write off the missing bottles.”

McIntyre reported that he “was so mad and embarrassed” when he first found out about Wiegol stealing the wine, that he “demanded that the police arrest him.” Then, after thinking it over for several days, and thinking “about what a good employee Timothy was and what he had been going through,” McIntyre decided that he “could not in good conscience press charges.”

Stroudsburg police Sgt. Larry Holmgren, speaking briefly only to this reporter, confirmed that charges were being dropped. He said that “though I cannot condone victims allowing themselves to be systematically robbed like this, I understand why Mr. McIntyre has chosen to drop these charges.”

Mr. McIntyre indicated that he would be open to re-hiring Mr. Wiegol on the condition that he write a letter of apology and, also, verify how and when the cases of wine were stolen, and why he could not see any theft occurring on the CCTV footage so that he can avoid having a theft like this occur in the future.

 

Bob Gielow from U.S. writes fiction using non-traditional formats. A college administrator by day, Bob (he/him) spins tales in formats we all use when communicating with each other: text messages, emails, fictional Wikipedia posts, and diary entries all allow him to be clinical and thorough in describing his characters, their thinking and actions … without diminishing his ability to explore the resulting human emotions. Bob utilizes these epistolary styles, and others, to tell tales that frequently explore the most common of human experiences, death.