Cop-killer who twice looked for love online is busted for shoplifting while on lifetime parole

A convicted cop-killer who looked for love online before he was released on parole has been arrested three times since — most recently for trying to shoplift from a Manhattan Target last weekend, The Post has learned.

Bruce Lorick, 66 — on lifetime parole for the 1980 murder of NYPD Officer Joseph Keegan – was busted Nov. 18 after he allegedly attempted to snatch $286 worth of items from the Target on the Upper East Side, according to police and sources.

The loot included shrimp, chicken, Jimmy Dean frozen meals, candy, Colgate toothpaste and Tide laundry detergent, the law enforcement sources said.

“Guess he was shopping for Thanksgiving,” a police source quipped.

It marked the third time that Lorick — who was known to frequent inmate dating sites while in lockup — was arrested since being released in 2021 after spending nearly four decades in prison for Keegan’s murder, according to sources.

Lorick was 22 on June 19, 1980 when he tried to evade the fare at the 59th Street-Columbus Circle station, prompting the 41-year-old on-duty cop to jump into action.

Bruce Lorick was busted for shoplifting.

But Lorick turned on Keegan, grabbing the officer’s gun and shooting him in the head before fleeing into Central Park.

“My uncle was executed,” the slain cop’s niece Noreen Keegan-Connelly told The Post in 2011. “He was begging for his life. Witnesses heard my uncle plead, ‘Please don’t shoot!’ and [Lorick] shot him anyway and ran into the park where he was caught hiding in a tree, like an animal.”

Lorick was sentenced to 25 years to life on a second-degree murder charge and spent nearly 40 years in state prison, from June 1981 until April 2021, before being sprung on lifetime parole, online records show.

When he first became eligible for parole in 2005, it was revealed that Lorick had placed a personal ad on prisonerlife.com announcing his intention to find a potential wife, writing he was looking for a “female between 30-57 who is unafraid of being herself and desire[s] to be loved totally.”

Describing himself as an “emotionally secure gentleman” who is “humorous, witty, romantic, loyal, a good listener, excellent lover and a true friend,” Lorick specified at the time that his ideal partner would be “any Christian woman who does not consider herself a fanatic.”

“I cannot compete with God, but I can be a best friend or a husband with your help,” he wrote.

The ad infuriated the slain officer’s family — which includes 13 NYPD cops with more than 150 years of service total between them.

“I’m angry — my whole family is still angry,” the victim’s brother, Frank Keegan, who himself served 23 years as an NYPD cop before retiring from the 34th Precinct in 1978, told The Post at the time.

“This dirtbag put out on the Internet that he’s getting out and wants to marry a Christian woman — and never once did he apologize to my family.”

Joseph Keegan was killed in 1980.

Ten years after Lorick’s first bid to find love, he joined the dating site meet-an-inmate.com — “looking for friendship or possibly more” — ahead of a 2015 parole hearing, The Daily News reported at the time.

“Your race, weight, and looks are not important to me because all women have something special about them, plus I am looking for love instead of trying to find faults in you,” he wrote at the time. “I have no hidden identities, so you can be yourself.”

Lorick, apparently confident that he’d be freed, shelled out $35 for a year-long subscription to the site — but made no mention in the profile of the heinous crime he’d committed, the News reported.

“It’s just not fair that he has a chance to live a life and Joe is in the ground,” one of the cop’s relatives, who asked not to be named, told the paper at the time. “He still sees his family, and Joe doesn’t. The fact that he still has all of these liberties in prison and still may get out is sickening. We’re praying that he doesn’t get out.”

Lorick was eventually granted parole, and prior to his arrest this month, had also been busted twice since, though those cases were sealed, sources said.

“Apparently you could shoot a cop in 1980 and be out and be arrested three more times,” one source said.

In the most recent case, Lorick was stopped trying to leave the Target on East 86th Street near Lexington Avenue just before 11:30 a.m. with a basket full on the unpaid goods — but was stopped by a security guard, according to the criminal complaint against him.

Family and friends of Keegan demand that Lorick not be paroled.

Dan Brinzac

He charged with petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, the complaint said.

At his Manhattan Criminal Court arraignment the next day, Lorick pleaded guilty to one count of disorderly conduct, a deal that allowed him to be sentenced to time served, meaning that he does not need to spend any additional time in lock-up.

In 2011, about 40 relatives of Keegan’s — who served 15 years in the NYPD and was planning to take early retirement so he could get married — flooded a Manhattan parole office to passionately lobby for the heartless shooter to stay locked up.

“We’re coming from Orange, Rockland and Westchester Counties and Queens and The Bronx,” the officer’s niece said at the time. “We re-lived this as children — and now our children are seeing us re-live it again.”

“It is an ongoing heartache, but he has no business being out while we continue to suffer,” she added.

Lorick’s Legal Aid attorney, Edda Ness, declined to comment to The Post on her client’s behalf Wednesday.