Police on Thursday afternoon arrested a 21-year-old New Britain man by warrant in connection with a bizarre prank call made to a local bank in October.
Cory J. Roath. Photo courtesy of the New Canaan Police Department
Cory J. Roath of Odonnell Road was charged with second-degree harassment.
At about 10:45 a.m. on Oct. 17, officers were dispatched to the Wells Fargo on Main Street on a report that an employee at the branch had received a harassing voice message, police said.
In a voicemail that had been left at 1:03 a.m., a caller indicates that a murder has taken place and the body hidden, according to a police report. Further, the caller says in the voicemail that he himself was involved in the crime, that police actively are searching for him and that if they find him, he’ll kill himself, the report said.
The call was made from a blocked number, so there was no way to phone him back, it said. The employee at the bank who received it was upset and concerned about whether the murder described had taken place, the report said.
The New Canaan Police Department Investigative Section took over and was able to obtain the phone number from where the call originated, the report said.
With help from New Britain Police investigators, Roath was identified as the person who had left the message, it said. Police found through their investigation that the murder did not actually occur and that, according to Roath, the message amounted to a prank all.
He turned himself in to police on misdemeanor charge at about 3 p.m. on Dec. 14. Police released him on $10,000 bond and scheduled him to appear Dec. 27 in state Superior Court in Norwalk.