Shameful truth about Channing Tatum’s blockbuster new movie. Jailhouse interview exposes the vile ‘sociopath’ that Hollywood turned into a hero

Jeffrey Manchester was in the television room when his fellow inmates started yelling at the screen.

Channing Tatum was whizzing in wheeled sneakers and hotpants through the aisles of an empty Toys ‘R’ Us; a pink inflatable pool tube around his waist. He stopped to do a theatrical shimmy.

‘Jeff!’ the inmates shouted. ‘It’s you!’

They weren’t joking. Tatum’s new film Roofman – out on Friday and being heavily trailed by Paramount Pictures – tells Manchester’s tale. ‘Based on actual events. And terrible decisions,’ the filmmakers tease, with Tatum’s Manchester depicted as a loveable rogue; a misguided man just trying to do the best for his family.

But those who lived the real story say the Hollywood version isn’t quite what it seems.

‘He’s a sociopath,’ said Sgt Katherine Scheimreif, the commander of the Charlotte, North Carolina, task force that eventually captured Manchester. ‘He’s not stepping out of Sherwood Forest. He’s not a hero.’

In an exclusive prison interview with the Daily Mail, Manchester, now 53, insists he is not dangerous. 

Perched on a stool behind Plexiglas, inside the cubicle where visitors can speak through metal grates to the inmates, the California-born convict claims that he is truly repentant, and reformed. Nine years in solitary confinement, he says, gives you plenty of time to think. 

It’s the first interview he has given since he began speaking to the Oscar-winning Roofman director Derek Cianfrance four years ago. After a year-and-a-half of letters, phone calls and requests, Central Prison in Raleigh – the state’s oldest and only maximum security site; home to the fifth largest death row population – granted the Daily Mail permission to visit.

Manchester, lean and fit looking in a tight gray sweater; a green baseball cap covering his curls, claims to be embarrassed at his fellow inmates seeking his autograph, and nicknaming him ‘Hollywood.’ Some are only now learning of his story. The guards all want to know when Tatum himself will visit – especially, he says, a ‘real sweet’ female officer. Injured while filming a Marvel movie, Tatum said he might try and come before Christmas.

Secretly, Manchester must be loving the attention.

But not everyone is such a fan.

One of those was a female sheriff’s deputy who was guarding the Charlotte Toys ‘R’ Us to earn extra money.

Manchester had taken up residence in a well-concealed corner of the store in June 2004.

He was on the run after being arrested for armed robbery three years earlier. He had escaped prison, and fled to Charlotte.

In December 2004, Manchester struck again – this time inside the Toys ‘R’ Us he had called home. He stole her gun and forced her to the floor at gunpoint.

When he was finally arrested several weeks later, he crossed paths with her inside the police station.

‘I was a smart ass, and told her she needed to clean her gun because it was dirty,’ he said. ‘She didn’t think it was funny.’

Scheimreif pointed out the incident is one of many ‘Hollywoodizations’ of Manchester’s story. 

In the film the deputy is a man – Scheimreif said that Cianfrance, the director, told her that he had to change the gender ‘or I’d lose my audience’. Scheimreif said the woman was so traumatized she never worked as an officer again.

Cianfrance also made the wife of Manchester’s pastor, Ron Smith, into a black character, and Manchester’s wife Latina: Smith, played by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, doesn’t object, but guesses it’s a Hollywood way of signaling that his church was open and progressive.

Scheimreif said: ‘It’s fun, it’s happy, it’s sad – but there’s not a lick of it in the movie that’s real.

‘Channing is so stinking cute and so handsome, and everybody just wants to see him. So his face was in everything. And that meant they made him out to be a hero. They made him out to be amazing.

‘Jeffrey Manchester is not a hero, and he’s not amazing. He’s a sociopath. So that’s where it’s misleading.’

An Army veteran from Sacramento, Manchester had settled near Fort Bragg, where he had been based with the 82nd Airborne Division, specializing in parachuting and ‘forcible entry operations’. He was recently divorced from his wife Talenya and their children: twin sons Justin and Chris, now 33, and 31-year-old daughter Becky.

In the late 1990s he began robbing a string of fast-food restaurants, earning the moniker Roofman for rappelling down from above. He would apologize to the frightened staff before herding them at gunpoint into the freezer, and taking the till. After fleeing, he’d call the police to let the hostages go.

The film claims he carried out 45 such robberies; Manchester says that’s a low estimate. There’s suspicion he carried out similar crimes in California and beyond.

In May 2000 he was arrested by North Carolina police after a McDonald’s heist and was subsequently convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping, for the freezer roundups.

‘At the time I justified it to myself by saying I wanted to provide for my family,’ he said. ‘But in reality that was nonsense. I owned a house, and had been paid a good Army salary. It was just greed.’

He was sentenced to 47 years, two months and 15 days in prison. It was a hefty sentence for a 28-year-old, and one which focused his mind.

‘I had this mantra which I would repeat three times every morning,’ Manchester explained, tapping the table inside the visitors’ booth for emphasis. ‘I will escape. I will escape. I will escape.’

And, he did.

In June 2004 Manchester clung to the bottom of a truck to sneak out – the real-life truck driver plays himself in the film.

He made his way from Brown Creek Correctional Institution in Polkton to the city of Charlotte, 45 miles away, and found a hiding place inside Toys ‘R’ Us, where he would end up living for the next six months.

He admits he had fun in his new hideout. He learned how to switch off the surveillance cameras at night, so he could roam the store on a bicycle. He would go on to the roof and run laps, or hit baseballs. Inside his den he slept on baby mattresses beneath a Spiderman poster, comfortable with the air conditioning and water he had siphoned off. He built the Millennium Falcon Lego set; played on a PlayStation; shot hoops with a basketball. A movie fanatic, he spent hours watching DVDs. His diet was stolen from the store – mainly baby food and Peanut M&Ms.

Don Roberson, the manager – played by Peter Dinklage in the film – noticed items missing, and bike skid marks on the floor. Overnight alarms would sometimes go off, and staff schedules mysteriously changed. He thought there may be a ghost.

Manchester, meanwhile, was growing bored, and was drawn to a nearby Presbyterian church, where Ron Smith was the pastor.

‘I was raised a Catholic and always enjoyed the feeling of being inside a church,’ said Manchester. ‘So I hoped I could just sit at the back and listen to some music and sermons. But by mistake I walked into a Bible study group.’

Introducing himself as ‘John Zorn’ who ‘worked for the government’, he quickly befriended a recently-divorced mother-of-three, Leigh Wainscott, and the pair began dating. Kirsten Dunst plays Wainscott in the film.

‘I told myself not to get close to anyone,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t help it.’

He began spending more and more time at her home, and charming her three children. He showered gifts on them – all, naturally, from Toys ‘R’ Us.

She told him he needed to get a car, so the pair went to a dealership and Manchester plonked $5,000 in cash on the table, telling her he was putting the green Chrysler Concorde in her name. She was stunned, but delighted: the pair shared it.

Once Manchester was pulled over by the police, but swiftly segued into talking about his Army time and got away with a warning. Another time, he was even more bold: walking into the police station, dressed as the Easter Bunny for a Christmas party at the church. Manchester says he asked the police to borrow their scissors, so he could cut a hole in the costume to access his pockets for candy.

‘It was bravado, and arrogance,’ he said. ‘My tactic was always to switch the conversation as soon as possible to my Army background, because then I could speak fluently. And Fort Bragg is a huge institution in this state.’

Manchester claims he had a plan: his friend ‘Steve’ was working to get him a fake passport, and when Steve returned from active duty in December 2004 he intended to give it to Manchester to escape to another country – one without an extradition treaty.

But Manchester couldn’t resist a final robbery, on December 26: the Toys ‘R’ Us where he was hiding.

A fingerprint was found and he was revealed to be the escaped convict; his photo was all over local news, and members of Smith’s church told police of his regular presence.

In January 2005 a shocked and devastated Wainscott was coaxed by police to lure him to her home.

He was arrested, and sent back to prison, where he will remain for at least another decade.

The film shows him at the airport, about to fly away, then coming back to say goodbye. That is another Hollywoodization – he wasn’t at the airport. But he did want to say goodbye, even stopping en route to Wainscott’s house, trailed by Scheimreif’s team, to buy her flowers.

‘I don’t regret going back to see her,’ he said. ‘Even though it ended the way it did.’

Remarkably, Wainscott has now forgiven him: in May, she and Pastor Smith – now retired from the ministry and writing basketball histories of the University of North Carolina – went to visit Manchester in prison. She has remarried, and Manchester said he considers her a friend.

‘For many years I’m ashamed to say I shrugged off the idea that I hurt anyone except Leigh,’ he said. ‘I would tell myself it was OK, because I didn’t kill or physically hurt anyone. But I’ve now realized that I traumatized people. I pulled a gun on them.’

Manchester is now reconciled with his children, but still estranged from his ex-wife.

‘My son Chris is in the Army now, and one of his friends saw the trailer and said, “Your dad was cool!” And I didn’t like that.’

Few visit him, though.

Smith, 69, comes when he can and considers Manchester a friend who, despite his violence and lies, should have been freed a long time ago. Manchester’s sister and father remain in California. His brother died while he was in prison; his mother passed away a month ago.

‘My dad was the only one who was a bit skeptical about the film,’ he said. ‘I thought, well, they’ll make it with or without me from all the public records, so I may as well be involved.’

He insists he has not made any money from the film, citing the 1977 Son of Sam laws designed to stop criminals from profiting from the story of their crime. But Paramount declined to answer whether any of Manchester’s family members have benefitted.

Manchester’s fellow inmates all want to know if he’s now rich.

‘Derek said he’d hire me when I eventually get out, to just hold a boom or sweep floors or whatever – I’d love that,’ said Manchester. ‘Or I’d want to do something in the arts. I do lots of paintings here and make bracelets and jewelry; I won a competition with a waterfall painting I did, and some of the guys have asked me to do art for them. I’m a librarian here and I’m always keeping busy.’

He fails to mention that he’s also always trying to escape. His prison record shows failed attempts in 2009 and 2017.

Is he a bad person? He pauses for a long time.

‘I’ve done a lot of bad things. And I made a lot of mistakes. But I’m really trying to be a good person now,’ he said. ‘I saw that there was some documentary with a police officer saying I should spend the rest of my life behind bars; that if I got out I’d go and murder someone.’

He rolls his eyes.

‘I do feel like I’ve served my time. Diddy only got four years. I want to be able to start again.’

And maybe Hollywood is waiting. It would be an absurd second act – but for the mercurial Manchester, perhaps not Mission: Impossible.