Richard Weishaupt Jr., of Saugerties, was sentenced on Friday to two and one-third to seven years for theft and endangering the welfare of a child. The crime? Weishaupt and his 14-year-old son broke into the pool house of the old IBM Recreation Center in Ulster and stole 36 chairs.
Sounds pretty harsh for a bunch of abandoned chairs. But it looks like convenience stores and stray bits of scrap metal everywhere will rest easier with Weishaupt behind bars. Mid-Hudson News says he'll be serving a concurrent sentence for lying to police:
Weishaupt also pled guilty in July to an unrelated charge of making an apparently false sworn statement for an incident that occurred on November 18, 2008 when he drove his truck into the Quick Food Mart on Leggs Mills Road, causing $10,000 in damage.
When confronted by police, he told them the truck had been stolen.
And there's this, from a 2008 Woodstock Times story (hooray, Google cache):
According to police, Weishaupt allegedly removed scrap metal from the transfer station, intending to sell at a local scrap yard; allowed scrap metal to be removed by unauthorized persons; let unauthorized people dispose of refuse at the station; and altered employee records.
"Since that individual has left, we have managed to reduce the [cost of] operations of the town's transfer station by about 30 percent," said Woerner, citing efforts that actually began prior to Weishaupt's departure.
