The NFL is narrowing down a list of suspects who could have been in the Patriots locker room at the time Tom Brady’s Super Bowl game jersey was stolen.
Yahoo Sports reports the league has narrowed it down to a 15-minute time frame — 10:05-10:20 p.m. Central time — during which the jersey likely was taken from the Super Bowl MVP’s duffel bag inside his locker.
The report states the following categories of people had access to the locker room during that period: Patriots players, team officials and employees, family of Patriots executives, NFL employees (*cough* Roger Goodell *cough*) and security. Media was allowed in for the final few minutes of that time frame.
Brady stepped away from his locker to talk with others and take a photo with family members of a Patriots employee, in the aftermath of his thrilling fifth Super Bowl victory.
Yahoo described the investigation as “inching along.” The current hope is security video of the walkways outside the locker room will provide potential suspects, though it is unclear if that video exists and how helpful it might be. (There is no surveillance footage from inside the locker room for the obvious reason: People get undressed there.)
“Video might be the only thing that could show who went into the locker room [during that time],” one source familiar with the investigation told Yahoo. “At this point, that might not even exist in a form that is helpful. Other video from [reporters] inside the locker room might be something [sought]. There may not be any video at all from the period of time before media got access.”
After discovering his jersey missing, Brady and equipment managers frantically searched for it to no avail. Ken Goldin of New Jersey’s Goldin Auctions told Bloomberg the jersey of the Super Bowl MVP could be worth up to $500,000.
“Whoever took it has to be scared as [expletive],” an NFL source involved with the investigation said. “They had no idea what they were getting into. Now it’s everywhere. If that thing is worth $500,000 like some people are saying, that’s prison time. It might not even be easy to give it back at this point.”
The Texas Rangers and the Houston Police Department are both using significant resources to track down the stolen jersey.
“We deem this a pretty important case. We want our top investigators on this case,” Houston Police Department Executive Assistant Chief G.T. Buenik said at a press conference on Tuesday. “Hopefully we’ll make an arrest but more importantly, recover that jersey for Tom Brady. There’s really no leads at this point. We are piecing together different sets of information.”
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
