She describes herself as a makeup and hair designer, a marketing pro, a construction manager, a “dreamer,” and a “lyrical genius.”
In her spare time, police say, Sunny McDonough is also a serial thief.
McDonough has apparently made a profitable side gig out of breaking into mailrooms at residential buildings — usually overnight — tearing open packages meant for other people, and stealing the good stuff, police from Tewksbury to Wareham allege.
The 45-year-old East Bridgewater woman was arrested in September after an alleged summer crime spree at the Redbrook development in South Plymouth. Police say she was caught on video rifling through packages and walking out with merchandise, including designer sunglasses, swimsuits, and a blender.
It wasn’t the first, second or even the 10th time McDonough has been accused of stealing packages.
She has allegedly been caught on video surveillance cameras multiple times — she has a “tribal flower tattoo” on her lower back that gives her away — and has been charged at least 15 times since 2022, according to court records.
Neither McDonough nor her lawyer, William Franzese, would comment on the current or previous charges against her. She has denied the allegations.
What McDonough does with all the merchandise is not entirely clear, but she has held “pop up sales” through her Facebook group “Couture Closet,” and hosted yard sales and posted items for sale on Facebook Marketplace and other web sites.
“There is ALOT of great pieces,” she posted on Facebook in April 2022, advertising a sale.
“I have woman’s [sic], men’s, kids, baby, clothes and shoes as well as accessories, baby gear, household items all of which are new or barely used,” she wrote. “C’mon down, items are priced to sell and we’ve been working around the clock to get it all together!”
In another post, she implored customers not to question prices or engage in “negativity.”
“I do not set the prices,” she wrote on March 17, 2022. “The owners of the piece set the smallest amount they’ll accept and that’s what I post the item for.”
In January 2024, she posted for sale on Facebook Marketplace a “brand new Weber Spirit 310 Grill that was sent by accident. I was told if I wasn’t contacted by Weber that I could keep it,” she wrote.
When she was arrested by Plymouth Police on September 17, she was already on probation for similar cases out of three courts – in Concord, Wrentham, and Wareham.
Over several weeks in July and August, McDonough allegedly entered the locked Redbrook mailhouse on Wareham Road wearing a medical mask and using a key fob assigned to a resident, who told police it had been lost.
After the videos of her inside the room were circulated to law enforcement officials, a Wareham probation officer identified the person in the images as McDonough, saying she was “100 percent sure.”
She knew who she was because she was McDonough’s probation officer.
McDonough pleaded not guilty to the Plymouth charges and is due back in court on Nov. 20.
When she was identified as a suspect in the Redbrook thefts, Plymouth police, as well as officers from Westford and East Bridgewater who were also investigating her, descended on McDonough’s East Bridgewater home on Sept 17.
Police searched her house, her Infiniti SUV, (which was in an auto body shop) and a rental vehicle parked in her driveway, the police reports said.
They found a treasure trove of stolen items and incriminating evidence, according to East Bridgewater police.
They spotted the same clothing that she was allegedly seen wearing in surveillance videos, police said.
They discovered “tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of various merchandise with the tags still on the items in almost every room of the home,” police reports said. They included sneakers, appliances, cosmetics and handbags.
They also found several key fobs — one for an Audi; one labeled “Ply” — believed to be the Redbrook fob — and another with the word “fox.” Police contacted Foxborough police, who said there had been recent package thefts in that town.
Inside her rental car, police found an Alpha Magnetic alarm device in a purse. It’s used to remove security tags from merchandise — the kind that set off alarms to prevent shoplifting.
But documents filed in court show that only 20 items were recovered from her house, including three pairs of sneakers, athletic pants, a black LL Bean jacket, a key fob, sweatpants, sweatshirts, and a kayak in a box.
“I had my sunglasses stolen in July,” said Cynthia Letourneau, one of several Redbrook residents who had packages stolen from the mailroom.
“When Ms. McDonough was arrested, I was so excited that I may actually get the sunglasses returned, especially when I learned how much merchandise had been recovered at her home,” Letourneau said in an email.
“I check my email every day waiting for a notification from the police. So far, nothing.”
Besides the Plymouth case, McDonough has faced larceny charges in Quincy, Ayer, Lowell, Cambridge, Woburn, Wrentham, Concord, Brockton, and Wareham courts, records show. She has also been a suspect in thefts in Norwood, Easton, Westford, Natick, Foxborough, Hudson and even Nashua, NH, where she allegedly tried to return a stolen item to a HomeGoods store for credit, according to police reports.
But until recently the charges against her seemed more of a nuisance than a deterrent.
McDonough has appeared in courts from Wareham to Lowell. But if she was worried about being in legal peril, her alleged behavior didn’t reflect it.
She kept her side hustle going even while she was on probation, according to police.
Until recently, most of the cases against her — including those in Quincy, Ayer, Lowell, Cambridge and Woburn — were dismissed quickly, or as a trial date approached.
Victims often didn’t show up, so prosecutors couldn’t move forward.
In recent months, however, McDonough has faced some consequences, albeit minor ones considering the number of felony charges she has racked up.
She has spent roughly two weeks in jail, sent there by Wareham District Court Judge Edward Sharkansky.
While on probation out of Wareham District Court for stealing packages (including a mattress and a motorcycle seat) from a Middleborough apartment complex in July 2022, she was twice accused of stealing packages from an apartment complex in Tewksbury — the Lodge at Ames Pond.
A hearing was held on March 20 to determine if she violated her probation.
“Have you ever been to the Lodge at Ames Pond?” Sharkansky asked her.
“Never,” she answered.
She swore she was on a plane to the Bahamas when one of the thefts occurred, a claim seemingly bolstered by her lawyer, who produced a boarding pass.
On an audio tape of the hearing, McDonough sounded confident that her alibi would save her.
So when Sharkansky said he was sending her jail based on Tewksbury police reports identifying her as the suspect in the thefts, she started to sob.
On March 25, she was released and ordered to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.
A month later, the conditions were relaxed, and the bracelet was removed.
But the reprieve was short-lived, court records show.
On Sept. 17, after she was charged with the Plymouth thefts, she faced a new probation violation charge out of Wareham court.
This time, Sharkansky ordered her held at the Suffolk County House of Correction for a few more days.
She also tested positive for cocaine three times in September, court records say.
Sharkansky handed her a six-month suspended sentence, turning her previous charges – which had been continued without a finding – into guilty dispositions.
He also ordered McDonough to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet until March 26, 2025, and to participate in a court program that included drug and alcohol screening.
McDonough has been open about her struggles with drug addiction, describing her journey toward sobriety on a November 2019 Internet radio show called “Melted.”
She said that through hard work and devotion to Narcotics Anonymous, she had become sober.
When she was using drugs, she told the host, “I pretended and manipulated and lied constantly — you get so wrapped up in it that you don’t realize what you’re doing — who you tell what to.”
“I never want to feel the way that I felt when I was at my best or at my worst. I still feel better today than my best day in my addiction,” she said.
The show aired two years before McDonough was first suspected of stealing — in December 2021. That’s when Middleborough police received a call that packages had been taken from The Woodlands — an apartment complex.
Items reported stolen included AirPods, clothing, boots, and a Christmas outfit for a dog, according to police reports.
Law enforcement authorities – including Plymouth police – and district attorneys declined comment, citing the pending cases.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.