[skyhawk133]

On Monday, my good friend and an old co-worker of supersloth and I's was burglarized while him and his wife were at work. Being the geeks that we are, we had begun installing surveillance systems last year. Little was taken... we think they were after jewelry as they ransacked the bedroom, but walked right past laptop computers, discarded boxes of checkboxes, social security cards, etc. There was no jewelry in the house.

The video below is an edited version of what was provided to the police. The thief was in and out of the house in less than 3 minutes.

Key Points In Video:

0:24 - Suspect Approaches Front Door
1:25 - Spotter car parks and suspect walks around side of house
1:54-3:20 - Suspect tries to make entry through side window, then almost falls flat on his face trying to hop fence
3:30 - Suspect runs out of house with pillow case



I've had cars broken in to, the cushions on my back porch stolen, and when I was about 13, someone tried to come in to our house by lifting the sliding glass door off it's track at night (I was home alone, parents were on vacation).

Have you been burglarized? Do you do anything to deter/prevent it from happening?

[xclite]

I can't say I've ever been mugged or burglarized.

[souptoy]

Sorry to hear that story. Hope they catch the guys that did this.

On a semi-serious note, I've heard that something like 9 out of 10 people with American flags up at their house have a gun inside. Everyone I've ever asked that has it up has said they have one. Doubt those guys would even think about that, though.

[Craig328]

I had a thought. Does your friend have a wi-fi network that the dude's cellphone might have tried to automatically connect to while he was busy standing at the front door? If so, might the router's log have retained a MAC address for the device attempting to connect to it? If you had that, maybe there's a way to use that ID to track the guy down...either through the web or perhaps through a cell provider?

I know next to nothing about such things but there will also be a cell record somewhere from that dude being on his phone talking to his lookout in the white shitbox. You should be able to isolate the tower and since you have a definite timestamp and perhaps a reasonable guess as to the call duration...that ought to be something inquiries to the local cell providers can search their own access records against and come back with a number and billing address.

[macosxnerd101]

My mom and brother were at the movies ordering at the concessions stand. She laid a twenty down while talking to some friends she saw. When she turned around, the twenty was gone. I can't believe she didn't call the cashier on it. The next time she went to that theater though, she mentioned it to the manager with no expectation of being reimbursed. Not long after that, that particular cashier was no longer there.

[BenignDesign]

Last month, someone picked the lock on my parents' front door and entered the house while they were home and in bed. Nothing was taken because the dogs met them on the other side and chased them several blocks down the street.

[Craig328]

LOL! That was my first thought when the assclown in the video makes it around to the gate to the back. "Where's the dog?"

[tlhIn`toq]

When I was young, starting out and truly poor I lived a totally crappy dangerous neighborhood for a couple years.

I taped a gun range target to the front and back doors, showing 5 tight shots to the face, 5 to the heart and 5 to the groan.

In marker I simply wrote, "I'm as poor as you, nothing in this house is worth your life."

I never had a problem


Decades later, in a nice home in a nice neighborhood of Las Vegas my 2nd wife and I were robbed. They came in the basement rear door where they wouldn't be observed. They didn't finish the top floor when she and I came home, and they ran out the back.

It was a stereotypical haul where they grabbed the pillow cases and filled them with all the small, easily fencable items like watches and jewelry and a 35mm camera (old school film back then). They didn't bother with computers or TV/stereo equipment.

A display case in the back had several autographed movie prop guns from Star Trek, Star Wars and so on. The case was open, the props moved, but not taken. I imagine they saw "guns" and got excited, then lifted up these weird resin sci-fi ray-guns and said "WTF?"

That was at the height of my involvement in a Klingon fan club, social things like fund raisers and so on. Basically when way too many people were aware of us being away from our home because they knew we would be making appearances, doing events and so on.

This post has been edited by tlhIn`toq: 18 May 2011 - 08:49 AM

[Rhymer]

Quite some time ago when my daughter was in junior high, she had a boy 'friend' who came into our house when we were away. I believe my daughter allowed him to enter the house. Unbeknownst to her, he took a CD of 'Crash Test Dummies', a very old 12" speaker (with a weak magnet probably 4 ohm), 4 silver dollars, an inexpensive ring, and my wife's rather expensive ~$400 gold necklace. At least those were the items we knew that were missing.

About a week later a teacher saw a girl wearing this necklace which would not be typical of a young girl to have something of the quality of the necklace and asked the girl where she got it. Apparently the boy gave it to her. My wife volunteered at the school (we had 3 kids there) and so the boy was confronted about the necklace. We got the necklace back but not the other things. We did not press charges but I told my daughter not to associate with the boy.

Lesson: never leave a visitor unattended in the house.

[souptoy]

Rhymer, on 18 May 2011 - 08:53 AM, said:

he took a CD of 'Crash Test Dummies'

I haven't heard that name in a long time...

[supersloth]

i'm still impressed that he managed to buy a fence made out of twizzlers.

[Craig328]

Nice enough house but it's not like it stands out as being possessed of more stuff to steal than any other house on the street. They likely surveyed that street before (probably in the evening when everyone was home) and noticed his car was missing from the side of the driveway. The foliage along the left side of the house makes it nearly impossible for anyone to see what he's doing so that doesn't help either and none of the other neighbors on the cul de sac (likely chosen for lack of random traffic) had such coverage to their backyards.

Covered access to the back of the house, the missing car, a relative lack of traffic on the street and close to major 4 lane road.

Your camera worked great but oddly enough, had they noticed it, they might have passed on his house.

Edit: some company called TowerCo Assets owns the two closest cell towers to that addy. Seriously consider having your friend contact them and see what a search of call activity around that time of day shows.

This post has been edited by Craig328: 18 May 2011 - 09:18 AM

[dorknexus]

the guy robbing the place was almost defeated by that gate. how the fuck did they manage to pull off a robbery?

This post has been edited by Dark_Nexus: 18 May 2011 - 09:32 AM

[xclite]

Wtf was he wearing?


Where I lived as a kid it wasn't a problem to leave doors and windows open all day - most people didn't own much and everybody knew everybody. Another motivator to keep the fuck out was my great dane/lab mix. I miss that dog.

[dorknexus]

i think that fedora gave him the strength he needed to tear down the gate.