CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Things continued to go well for me. I was constantly on the go. Two years had flown by. By then, along with my Honda Rebel, I had purchased a mid-sized car and a work van. It turned out that I needed it on some of my jobs, to pick up larger items, like gun safes.
If a person’s home was a safe distance from their neighbors, I would come back with my van and try my best to fill it with as many valuables as possible. I became comfortable and confident in my work.
People are creatures of habit. If they think their homes are secure, they leave a lot of their valuables just lying out in plain view, in open jewelry boxes on top of dressers, on top of makeup shelves basically, completely unsecured. Those habits made my job that much easier.
If people left their house at night to go to dinner or a movie, I knew that I had at least two hours before they would return. Now, even though I knew how to defeat even the best security alarms, I made it a point to break into homes without any security systems. I like to leave those with alarms alone in order to give them a sense of security. Many of them were my customers.
There I was, roaming the neighborhoods during the day, putting up flyers and scouting homes, and no one ever suspected me.
I did have one close call however. Well, close call is not a strong enough word to describe what happened.
I almost got shot. Well, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration.
Before I tell you about that, let’s bring you back for a minute. Back to when I was a Senior in high school. Bear with me now, I’ll get to the point.
You see, there was this strange group of kids, sort of outcasts. They were anti-military, anti-government, pretty much anti-everything. I remember one of them causing a big uproar in the school when he called the American flag a piece of rag that was only good for wiping his butt with.
Now these guys weren’t hippies or tree-huggers or activists. They were part of a Christian sect (or cult) called the Jehovah’s Witnesses. All I know is they were a very religious group.
They didn’t participate in any of the school activities or celebrate any holidays. I remember this one guy always sitting alone at the back of the class whenever we celebrated anything.
They were an odd bunch, and a lot of the kids liked to ridicule them for their beliefs. I never heard anyone accuse any of them of anything bad or dishonest. I respected that.
I spoke with a few of them and learned that every Saturday a group of them would go around to local neighborhoods, passing out their literature, watch tower magazines and tracts. That got my gears turning.
Up to that point, I had done all of my surveillance work at night, under a cloak of darkness. It had become routine, and I was ready for something new and exciting. Of course I was a dumb seventeen year old kid.
My thoughts were that if I went along with these guys, or at least dressed like them and passed out their literature, it would give me the opportunity to scope out potential targets during the day; that is, on Saturdays and Sundays.
So, I went to their church to learn everything I could about them. Well, they didn’t call it a church. They called it a Kingdom Hall, they called their services meetings. I attended them for a few months.
I understand why they were called a cult; they had their own way of talking to each other. Members knew who other members were, just by his words and phrases they used. For instance, while everyone might say, “the world,” they would say, “this system of things.”
Their methods of teaching are textbook—brainwashing 101. They even went so far as to call all of their teachings, ‘The Truth.’
Regardless of their beliefs and eccentricities, though, the group was thought of as trustworthy. They would be the perfect cover for me during the day.
So, I learned their lingo. I put on their mandatory uniforms; a suit and tie, and loaded up a briefcase with a couple of their books and a lot of their literature.
Two months of preparation was all I needed. I started hitting the neighborhoods in the early morning. I figured that most people were still in bed from partying the previous night or, that, they were going to some kind of church services on Sunday mornings.
Whenever I approached a house, I would act as if I owned the place, not looking side-to-side or sneaky in any way. I would always give a firm knock on the door and then wait for a minute or two while listening for any type of activity from inside: a dog, children, television, anything. If I didn’t hear anything, I would try the door, rattle the knob first, then knocking again.
Sometimes the door would be unlocked. If it wasn’t I would pull out my pocket knife and jimmy the lock. If I couldn’t get it open in about ten seconds, I would walk away.
When I did get it open, I would quickly access everything and make a decision whether to go in or not. I would listen for sounds, breathing in the home’s air, testing for any smells, opening my senses to the vibrations all homes had.
Once I was sure that the house was unoccupied, I went in, got what I wanted, then exited, always trying to take less than five minutes. My goal was to get in and out in around two minutes.
Sometimes, I had to deal with stairs, and sometimes I would find myself in a home that did not follow a standard floor plan and it would be like a maze.
If I stumbled upon a locked bedroom door in the house, I always assumed there were people in there, perhaps sleeping. If that happened, I would leave immediately.
Now, in some cases when the front door was dead bolted, I would get a feeling that the house was worth looking into and I would go around to the side or back, depending on the amount of cover that was available and what the neighbor’s sightlines were. In every one of those instances, I would pick up a very good amount of valuables. In one of those homes, I found seventy-five thousand dollars cash hidden in a shoe box in a closet.
I didn’t bother to try homes with alarm systems. At that time, I didn’t know very much about them, so I left them alone. But, once I decided to break into a home, I was getting in, no matter what.
My pocket knife was all I needed to get past a lock, but I also carried a nine inch pry bar to lift up on a sliding glass door or pry loose the door to insert the knife blade easier.
If there was no other way to get in, I would use a rubber welcome mat from the house of one that I kept in my briefcase for those types of situations, and break the glass on the door or a window by placing the mat over it and striking it with the pry bar. The mat would muffle the sound of breaking glass both in the inside and outside.
So, my day escapades were pretty exciting. Breaking into a home in broad daylight always gave me a huge adrenaline rush. I was gambling. Yeah, I was careful, but still, I felt as though it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out and I was caught. And it did almost.
I was making my rounds one morning. I’d already hit a few homes and was getting ready to call it quits for the rest of the day. I walked up to the last house on the block, the last house of the day. I knocked on the door and waited.
Looking back, I think I was probably in too much of a hurry and let my guard slip, what with my day being almost over and such.
Well, I listened at the door and didn’t hear anything, so I proceeded to Jimmy the lock. When I opened it, the homeowner, a woman who looked to be in her forties or fifties, was standing inside, about fifteen feet from the door.
I don’t know who was more shocked, me or her. My jaw hit the floor. As my eyes met with hers, I saw that she was looking down at my hands and that the blood drained from her face, leaving it very pale and sickly looking.
My eyes followed hers down to my hands and I realized that she was staring at my pocket knife. In an instant, without even thinking, I calmly said, “I think I’ve got the wrong house,” then stepped slowly backwards through the doorway. As I started to close the door, I looked behind the woman and saw a gun cabinet standing a few feet from the fireplace in the living room. My heartbeat sped up considerably at the sight.
After I closed the door, I turned and quickly walked down the driveway, turned left onto the street and headed away from the house, not going in front of it and getting away from the woman’s line of sight.
I moved as quickly as I could, walking briskly, then breaking into a swift jog with my body erect so I would appear to moving toward something and to avoid looking as if I were running away.
Still in flight, I tried to appear calm as I looked for police or security patrols while I was heading to my car. After a few long minutes, and several turns up streets and down avenues, I made it to my car.
I continued to jog right up to the driver’s side door and slid gracefully into the car. I had already glanced around to make sure no one was following me or watching from any nearby windows.
Once I got in, I quickly took off my coat and tie, throwing them under the passenger’s seat, and placing my briefcase under my seat. I started the car and drove out of the sub-division, trying to stay calm and look like a normal person out for a drive. It took a lot of discipline not to push the gas pedal to the floor and rush out of the area, leaving a cloud of dust and burnt rubber behind me. My heart felt like it was about to explode out of my chest.
It only took me a minute or two to get out of the area. Ten minutes later, I was back home and safe.
A few days later, I drove back to that neighborhood and picked up the loot that I had stashed in a wooded area behind some houses in the western section of the sub-division.
Man, I’ll tell you. Talk about a wake-up call! I thought I was being brave and daring, and all the time, I was just being plain stupid; just wanting to be caught; tempting fate.
When I broke into that house that morning, that woman could have surprised me with one of those guns, or maybe there had been someone else in the house, in the living room, who could have grabbed a gun and come after me, shot me, maybe even killed me. I could be dead, or worse. I could have been shot and injured, then gotten caught and taken to jail. Not good. Not good at all!
It was a good time to rethink and reassess my risk versus my reward. My daytime ‘jobs’ were just not worth getting killed or going to jail over.
No, I would just stick to what was working so far. If I got bored on Saturdays or Sundays again, I figured I could always learn to cross-stitch or basket weave down at the local YMCA. (Haha!)
Now, the reason I mentioned all of that stuff was to show that I’m not perfect, but also that I learned from my mistakes.
Ok, so I got over being bored pretty quickly, and even with my screw-ups, I still managed to steer clear of the law. But, that snake was about to rear its’ ugly head and bite me on the butt.