A suburban mother who reportedly embarked on a two-day crime spree in Ohio says she had “everything that any woman would ever want” — except excitement.
Melissa Bergman (Warren County Jail)
Melissa Bergman, 30, was a stay-at-home mom living in a $475,000 house in Mason when she committed a series of thefts in July 2017 that will require her to serve jail time, news station WLWT reported.
“I felt like my life was going nowhere,” Bergman told the news station. “I felt like I had nothing to look forward to in life.”
Bergman, who is an Army veteran, said that she landed in the hospital that summer after a suicide attempt.
Days after her release, she found a delivery mistakenly mailed to her home. She returned the package to the rightful recipient at their house, but noticed there were several other deliveries seemingly disregarded on the doorstep.
“I’m like, ‘Oh he doesn’t want these,’ so I took one, and I put it in my car,” Bergman said.
Immediately, Bergman felt a certain thrill opening the stolen packages, according to WLWT.
“It’s not like I was selling it, not like I needed it,” she said. “Just the excitement of looking to see what was in that box and knowing, ya’ know what, ‘Since he didn’t want this item, this item can be donated to someone that actually really needs it,’ and that was the thought that went through my head.”
But things reportedly escalated from there. “That’s when the urge started getting worse and worse and worse, and I couldn’t control it,” Bergman told the news station.
Within two days the mom said she drove her minivan to a dozen homes, swiping more packages off porches.
She said that she later consulted a psychologist who suggested that her service in Afghanistan may have played a role.
“He’s, like, ‘Melissa, you were doing so much at one time and then it just stopped. So you doing this, gave you that excitement that you once had back in Afghanistan.’ You got excitement out of this just like you did in Afghanistan, but it was a different type of excitement,” Bergman said.
The mom was found guilty last month on 12 misdemeanor theft charges. She was ordered to serve 30 days in jail for the crimes.
“There’s no words that I can ever say to describe how sorry I am for what I had done,” Bergman told WLWT. “It hurt tremendously, and I just want to go and give them a hug and say, ‘So sorry for hurting you.’”
By Jackie Salo
Source: NYPost
