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Seemingly interested home buyer attacks Realtor

Julie Roberts, 48, was pistol whipped and robbed while showing homes in St. Petersburg to a man that represented himself as a DEA agent relocating to the area.

By ROBERT FARLEY
Published March 5, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - The man gave every appearance of a serious and motivated home buyer, certainly not a would-be attacker.

Well-spoken, clean cut, and dressed in a black leather blazer and dress pants, the slender young man told Realtor Julie Roberts that he was a Drug EnforcementAdministration agent relocating from Naples and had only a few weeks to find a home.

Roberts, 48, ferried him from house to house Friday afternoon. He measured rooms. He talked about financing. He had her call a listing agent to see if there were hardwood floors beneath the carpets.

"There were no reasons to raise any red flags," Roberts said.

She even took him back to her crowded real estate office. He parked in front. He chatted with a few agents. He helped himself to some water from a cooler and sat looking through listings on a computer.

He picked a few places to look at, and they set out again, in separate cars. He said he wanted to return to one house, 1220 14th St. N. After four hours, she was getting annoyed, Roberts said, but he assured her that the effort was worth her while, that he would make an offer that night.

He needed to measure the master bedroom again, he said, to make sure his entertainment center would fit. Roberts pulled out her measuring tape and, her back turned, started to measure the walls. She heard him take two hard steps toward her - too hard.

He blindsided her with a crushing blow to the head with a pistol. Roberts fell hard to her knees. She turned to see him holding a gun and a 12-inch hunting knife.

He began a series of commands that all ended with the threat "or I'm going to kill you." Be quiet. Empty your pockets. Hand me your keys. Put your arms behind your back, "or I'm going to kill you."

He pulled plastic cable ties from his pocket and tied her hands behind her back. She struggled. She cried.

"Are you going to kill me? Rape me? Or rob me?" she said.

"This is a robbery," he told her calmly.

He took her keys and headed toward her car, a 2003 Cadillac, where her purse was locked inside.

With him outside, she realized she could wriggle her left hand free. She shut the bedroom door, locked it and headed for a window to escape. But the window lock was tricky, and before she could open the window, he re-entered the house and pushed in the bedroom door.

He again struck her in the head and knocked her to the floor.

"I need your ATM numbers, and they better be right, or I'm going to kill you," he said.

He took her into a smaller bedroom and got on top of her, to hold her as he tried to bind her arms with duct tape. The gun lay on the floor, and Roberts lunged for it. But her arm was weak, and she couldn't get a good grip. He knocked the gun from her, sending it flying across the floor.

She pleaded for her life.

"I don't care about my stuff," she said. "Just take my stuff and go."

He put her in a closet and told her not to move, that he would check on her. A couple of minutes later, he did.

"See, I'm not leaving," he said.

Roberts started counting, but when she heard him leave the house, she opened the closet door and again made for the window, this time getting it open. She threw off her heels, climbed out the window, passed through a gate and ran down a back alley.

She came to a neighbor's home with two dogs and two trucks parked out back and cried for help. As the neighbors called police, she hid beneath the tailgate of their truck, fearful that the man would return. Neighbors said her car was still there; his was gone.

Police arrived shortly after.

"Doesn't that sound like a movie or something?" Roberts said.

She was not sure if she did the right thing, struggling like she did. But she's alive, so she figured it must have been right. She could not have done nothing, she said.

Her car was ransacked. Some of her jewelry was taken. And he used her ATM card for several hundred dollars. She was taken by ambulance to Edward White Hospital and released. She will see another doctor today.

Normally, she said, she would get a copy of a person's driver's license before showing him homes. Some real estate agents copy down license plate numbers. She bet that every agent in the Tampa Bay area will get a copy of buyers' licenses today.

And that, she said, is largely why she is speaking to the media.

"I don't want him to do this to anyone else," she said. "And I think he will if we don't stop him."

Roberts vowed this will not stop her from showing homes.

"I want to shout this from the mountaintops," she said. "I don't want this to happen to anyone else."

She described the attacker as a slender, white man about 26 years old, 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds, and with brown eyes and a medium complexion.

Anyone with information should call the St. Petersburg police robbery unit at (727) 893-7263 or the communications center at (727) 893-7780.

[Last modified March 5, 2006, 21:14:02]