Crime Doesn't Pay: Suspect Arrested in Time Warp Robbery

It’s the lesson taught by most comic books: Crime doesn’t pay.

This axiom held true for the thief who broke into Time Warp Comics and Games, at 3105 28th Street in Boulder, early on Friday, July 28, smashing through the glass front door with a hammer and absconding with a reported $14,000 worth of comic books. Just two weeks later — on Friday, August 11 — a suspect was arrested by the Boulder Police Department

The man in custody is James Wear, 35, a resident of Nederland. On August 11, Wear was booked on five charges, not all of them related to the Time Warp robbery: one count of second-degree burglary, one count of theft, a criminal mischief charge, and two criminal violations of a protection order. According to Time Warp owner Wayne Winsett, Wear may be arraigned as soon as Sunday, August 13.

“I just got the call Friday night from the Boulder detective working the case, letting me know they got him,” Winsett says. “She’s been on top of it, which has been great. It’s just good to see something actually happening, to see the case being worked on and solved, at least so far.”

That “so far” refers to the sad fact that at this point, only two-thirds of the stolen comic books have been located. Ten were found at KaPow Comics and Coffee in Colorado Springs; owner Martin Davidson only realized he had some of them when he read a news story detailing the theft and the list of the missing comics. “I saw an article that said something about Time Warp being robbed,” Davidson says, “and at the bottom of that article was a list of what was stolen. I realized some of those were books I’d just bought the previous Wednesday. I’ve known Wayne for almost thirty years, and I immediately texted him to let him know I’d bought some of his books, and since I’d written the guy a check for them, I knew his name, too. It was pretty easy to figure out who the kid was. We just looked him up on Facebook and, boom, there he was.”

Wear’s Facebook profile has since been taken down.

According to Davidson, Wear told him that his store and the Iron Lion were the only two stores in the Springs currently buying books — so Winsett called up the Iron Lion to see if any of the stolen comics had turned up there. “When I got in touch with a manager there, they confirmed that they’d bought seven of them, and wanted to do the right thing in getting them back to us," Winsett says. The Iron Lion is cooperating with the investigation; it had already sold one of the seven books — Daredevil 168, with the first appearance of Elektra — before realizing that it had been stolen.

Wear reportedly used the alias Christopher Hitchens at the the Iron Lion; he was with a woman from Nederland who has not been charged.

Winsett gives customer Rita Rollman a lot of credit for getting the word out; she contacted every comic book store in the state as well as many media outlets to let them know about the Time Warp theft, and blasted out the list of missing comics that Davidson eventually saw. “I’m so grateful to Rita,” Winsett says. “What she did on behalf of the store was incredible, and definitely key to where we are now in this process. Without Rita’s efforts, I don’t know that Martin at KaPow would have ever seen what he did and connected the books he bought to the books that were stolen.”
Winsett says that his insurance company has promised to work with him on everything but the stolen cash. “But I don’t have any idea how that’ll work,” he adds. “At least some of the books were damaged in the theft. How do you deal with insurance when an $800 book is now a $300 book? Will they cover that? I just don’t know.”

And it’s not just the comics and the cash — Time Warp is still getting the glass replaced in the front door, as well as in the case where the comics had been kept. The shop has already upgraded its camera systems. Rollman and other Time Warp friends have started a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of raising $5,000 to help offset the losses and beef up security for the store.

“It takes a village, I’ll tell you,” concludes Winsett. “Our customers at Time Warp are just the best. We’ve had people donating money, donating books. People have really reached out. That’s the thing that’s been really satisfying about this whole thing. They tell us that the store is important to them, and that’s been absolutely heartwarming.”