The witness awoke and went to get a drink of water at 11:30 PM. Through his window, he saw a man across the street kick in the front door of a neighbor’s house. The witness called 911 and described what was going on to the dispatcher.
The witness went on, “He’s bringing out the TV and putting it in his back seat.”
The dispatcher was relaying the information to the patrol officers who were in route.
“Now he’s putting the VHS player into the back seat.”
On a third trip, the burglar came running out with a bag of some kind.
The burglar was just pulling away from the curb as responding officers turned onto the block. After a short pursuit, the burglar gave up and pulled over. The officers arrested him and recovered the stolen property. The bag was a pillowcase stuffed with jewelry and items from the dresser.
I was the shift sergeant and I also processed crime scenes on my shift, so I responded with my officers.
Nobody was home and we needed to contact the homeowner. There were wedding photos and a few family photos of the young couple and a toddler. I found documentation on a desk that the man and toddler had just moved to Plano from a New England state a few weeks earlier. I’ll call them Mr. John Smith and little Johnny.
I learned from a couple of newspaper clippings on the desk that the wife had died a tragic death just months earlier, which was apparently the impetus behind the man and his son’s recent move to Plano. The man’s grief from his young wife’s death had led him to bring his little boy to Texas to start over.
But nothing in the house gave a clue where they might be that night. We couldn’t secure the house because of the shattered front door and doorframe, but neither could we leave the house unattended.
I found a Rolodex by the desk phone and flipped through it. Every contact was from their hometown in New England. On the last page of the Rolodex in a childish scrawl in pencil, I found a boy’s first name and a local phone number, “Bobby – 424-XXXX.”
Apparently, little Johnny was now in kindergarten or maybe first grade and was learning to write. Was this the name and number of a new friend he had made in Plano? It was the only information in the entire house that gave any clue whatsoever to any local contact.
By then, it was 2:30 AM. We needed to find the owner and clear the scene. In desperation, I phoned the number. A woman answered, less than half awake. I introduced myself, “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour. I’m Sergeant Wertheim of the Plano Police Department. The home of Mr. John Smith has just been burglarized and I’m trying to locate Mr. Smith. Do you know where I might find him?”
“Uh huh,” the sleepy woman muttered.
And then immediately a man’s voice came on the line, also fogged with sleep, “This is John.”
Apparently, Mr. Smith’s grief wasn’t as devasting as I had thought. He and little Johnny were both doing a sleepover at Bobby’s house!
To this day, they are probably still baffled as to how I knew where to find Mr. John Smith, but the truth is that it was one of those bizarre coincidences that all cops stumble into once in a while.