Two jailed after claiming lost purse

Rebecca McMichael                    Jeffrey Saxby

Article contributed by The Journal Record

By Michael E. Palmer
Staff Writer

HAMILTON - Two people from South Carolina were charged with felonies after a woman left her purse in a shopping cart at the Hamilton Walmart Supercenter. 

Rebecca McMichael and her boyfriend, Jeffrey Saxby, were both charged with fraudulent use of a credit card, theft of lost property, and theft of property. 

According to a report from the Hamilton Police Department, the case began on Wednesday, Sept. 5, when an unidentified lady left her purse in a shopping cart after she had unloaded her groceries into her vehicle. 

After arriving home, the lady realized she  had left her purse and returned to the store to retrieve it. According to the report, Walmart employees notified the lady they had given the purse to someone else that claimed it. Upon further investigation, the report says, an unknown male and female had watched a citizen take the lost purse to the service desk. The unidentified male then entered the store to claim the purse for “his wife.”

The male and female then purchased a phone in the amount of $495.09. Investigators obtained a vehicle description and the tag number of a black Jeep Cherokee that the employee associated withthe suspects. Investigators ran the vehicle tag number and traced it to a suspect that was in Guin as part of a crew performing contract work on power lines.  

Investigators made contact with Saxby at a job site on Highway 43 in Guin on Sept. 12. According to the report, Saxby confessed to the crime and implicated his girlfriend, McMichael. 

Saxby told investigators that she could be found in room 210 of the Hamilton Holiday Motel. Officers were dispatched to the motel whereupon they arrested McMichael and took her to jail.  

The stolen purse was located in the room and the phone was located in the bottom of a trash bag in a dumpster at Mac’s Mini Mart.

McMichael had disposed of the phone in the women’s restroom two days earlier, the report stated. 

Both McMichael and Saxby remain in the Marion County Jail on a bond of $15,000 each.  

(When a defendant is charged with a crime, the charge is merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.)