Burglar climbs to notorious status

Investigators say he has committed at least 133 burglaries over the past 4 1/2 years, stealing jewels, cash, credit cards and the occasional laptop computer.

Now police believe Spiderman has been unmasked.

AP PHOTO Derrick James, a former Army paratrooper, is suspected to be the "Spiderman," who committed more than 133 robberies.

Derrick James, a muscular, 33-year-old former Army paratrooper, was arrested and jailed without bail on charges of breaking into the ritzy Bristol Towers on Miami's Brickell Avenue. Investigators are working to tie him to dozens of other Spiderman burglaries.

James has pleaded innocent. His lawyer, Ellis Rubin, disputed allegations that James is Spiderman, saying his client is in the business of buying old houses, refurbishing them and re-selling them.

Spiderman has become something of a folk hero like other Florida jewel thieves such as Jack "Murph the Surf" Murphy, the surfing champion who stole the 563-carat Star of India sapphire in 1964, and John Henry "The Lizard" Coulthurst, who in the 1970s would pull up to waterfront homes in a skiff, scale balconies with a padded hook and a boat ladder and crank up the air conditioning inside his victims' homes to drown out the noise.

Spiderman used his agility and in credible upper-body strength to climb quickly from one balcony to the next without ropes or hooks, just his hands, investigators said. He would climb down the same way, carrying jewels with him.

"One slip and he would have been history," said Miami-Dade police Sgt. John Petri. "But he had the strength to do what he did and he did it very well."

One reason Spiderman was successful, investigators said, is that few people expect criminals

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