Robbery suspects found on MySpace

Relying on old-fashioned detective work, high-tech surveillance cameras, and an Internet social networking site frequented by teenagers, the MBTA Police arrested four alleged gang members for a string of Orange Line robberies.

MBTA Police said Jared Mathena, 18, of Brighton was arrested at State Station on Dec. 20 when he and three others tried to rob a man.

The man resisted and held Mathena down until police arrived, but the three other suspects fled, police said.

When investigators questioned Mathena, he gave them partial descriptions of the three accomplices.

He said he kept in touch with them through MySpace.

The detectives called up Mathena's Web page, and matched up pictures on the website with surveillance video.

Police said that in one picture, found on a friend's Web page that was linked to Mathena's, three of the four suspects posed together and flashed hand signs consistent with the Crips gang.

Some of the statements on the Web page referred to their connection with that gang, said MBTA Lieutenant Sal Venturelli .

In the past two years, cameras have been installed at every MBTA subway station and many bus stations, helping authorities solve more than a dozen crimes.

"There was definitely a domino effect," Venturelli said yesterday. "In this case, their zeal to put out information about their association led to the demise of their criminal operation, or at least the start of that demise."

But the detective work wasn't done because police only had nicknames gathered from the Web pages.

Acting on a hunch that the suspects had previous brushes with the law, the detectives visited the Department of Youth Services, where officials were able to put names to the faces of two juveniles.

As detectives worked to solidify their case against the suspects, there were two more robberies: one at Community College Station on Christmas Day, and another at Sullivan Station that followed two days later.

After the Community College Station robbery, authorities again matched a suspect to an individual seen on surveillance tape fleeing from the first robbery.

A 16-year-old juvenile was arrested Dec. 25 following a brief foot chase in the Community College Station robbery , and police recovered an iPod that he allegedly took from the victim, as well as a knife.

Thomas Haywood, 20, of Dorchester, who attempted to stab the victim , fled the scene, said Dan O'Toole, an MBTA detective.

Then, on Dec. 27, Haywood and the other juvenile, who has turned 17, allegedly robbed a commuter of a cell phone at knifepoint at Sullivan Square Station.

Police arrested the two within days, having built a case from the initial State robbery.

Haywood was charged with three counts of robbery and Mathena was charged with one count in Boston Municipal Court.

The juveniles were each charged in Boston Juvenile Court in Charlestown with two counts of robbery.

Haywood and the 17-year-old suspect are also facing separate robbery charges in Malden, and authorities are looking into whether they are connected to any other crimes.