Suffolk police arrested a Mastic man on Thursday who allegedly robbed pharmacies at gunpoint or with scissors for methadone, a drug used to treat heroin addicts, between November 2004 and February 2005.
William Kolkmeyer, 34, was charged with five counts of robbery and one count of attempted robbery and will be arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip on Friday.
Major Case Investigations Unit detectives said Kolkmeyer robbed in 2004 the Village Chemist Drug on Middle Country Road in Centereach on Nov. 10, Shirley Drug and Surgical on William Floyd Parkway in Shirley on Nov. 17 and Tompkins Pharmacy on Wheeler Road in Hauppauge on Dec. 27.
Kolkmeyer also robbed the Medicine Shoppe on County Road 83 in Farmingville on Feb. 4 and Feb. 22, 2005, police said, and attempted to rob the Selden Pharmacy on Route 25 in Selden on Dec. 14, 2004.
In all cases Kolkmeyer either displayed a handgun, scissors, or pointed what was believed to be a handgun through clothing, police said.
“He tells us he’s kicked his addiction to heroin,” said Detective Sgt. Robert Doyle, commanding officer of the Major Case Investigations Unit, explaining why there have no similar robberies, which he described as acts of desperation, in four years. “He’s been behaving himself,” said Doyle, adding that Kolkmeyer had been working as a garbage man for a private sanitation company.
Police connected Kolkmeyerto the robberies using DNA evidence that was gathered at the scene that was a match with a DNA sample he that submitted to his probation officer, Doyle said. Kolkmeyer was on probation for an unrelated charge of criminal impersonation after he gave a false name to a police officer, he added.
Detectives also said Kolkmeyer was implicated in three other crimes, but the statute of limitations have expired on those cases. These include the burglaries for cigarettes of CVS pharmacies in Smithtown in 1999 and another in Ronkonkoma in 2000 and the robbery at gunpoint of Holbrook Pharmacy and Surgical on Union Avenue in Holbrook for methadone on Nov. 2, 2004.
