Criminal Continuum: Teen Criminal Investigation Unit - Ch 19

Five Finger Discount

The end of the Christmas holiday season brought Kelly’s thirteenth birthday with it on the fourteenth of January, a milestone in a teenager’s pathway into the future. The next few months saw the dawn of spring approaching like a long missed friend walking slowly in the distance. School days were filled with homework, report writing and tests, but finally Easter vacation arrived and with it an intellectual criminal to baffle the minds of police and the community of Berkeley.

“Another burglary,” Mr. Dance said, reading the headlines from the newspaper during breakfast, “That’s two this past week.”

“Is it similar to the one the week before?” asked Mrs. Dance.

“Yes, same M. O.”

“Is this that robber who writes the poems and riddles?” Robert questioned his father.

“Burglar, Robert, and yes, this is the one.”

Kelly addressed Robert to remind him, “Burglary is a non-confrontational crime while robbery is a confrontational crime.”

“I meant burglar, but I mix the words up sometimes.”

Kelly continued, “Burglars are usually in their mid-twenties or younger and take items that are easy to sell. Robbers, on the other hand, use violence and intimidation to perpetrate their crimes and intimidate their victims.”

Dad continued reading, the commented. “This burglar, or burglars, produces clues as to the next crime they intend to commit by sending poem-like riddles to the police to be solved a few days before the next burglary.”

“So, there could be more than one person involved, dad?” asked Rebecca.

“It isn’t known how many are involved at this time. It may be only one person, but the police keep all options open when it comes to the number of perps involved in crimes like this.”

“There could be a person casing out the prospective burglary locations, another writing the riddles, another with inside information about the locations and one or more who commit the actual burglaries,” Kelly said, “But, usually, there is only one lone criminal involved in these types of crimes.”

Mr. Dance stated, “Seventy-five percent of burglaries involve some type of forced entry and most occur in the daylight hours when homeowners are not home. These crimes have other commonalities: unoccupied residences and businesses, easy access and escape routes, good cover where they are least likely to be seen by anyone and the targets contain items that can be sold easily.”

“Dad, this one seems different because of the riddles that are sent to the police and the times of the burglaries. Is that why there may be more than one criminal involved?” Robert asked.

“Yes, son, it’s possible that more than one is involved, but I rather doubt that myself.”

“Why is that?” Rebecca asked, attempting to pick the brain of her father who possessed years of experience with police work.

“Just a gut feeling, I guess. The pace of these crimes and the composition of the riddles seem to indicate a lone perpetrator, someone who has planned this for a while.”

“I see,” said Kelly, “The person has planned certain locations, written the clues in riddles and then systematically sent these to the police before each crime is perpetrated.”

“Those are my thoughts exactly, dear.”

Rebecca asked, “What have they taken, does it say?”

“No. No information about what was taken, that is interesting though.”

“Why is that so interesting?”

“That is usually the first question you ask yourself during the investigation, ‘What was taken?’, if it was normal household items, or quick sale items like televisions, radios, laptops, that would help the investigator with profiling the crime. If the burglar took personal items, they may have a fetish problem, or if they took specific items in a specific category they may be planning to use those items in the commission of another crime.”

“The content of the stolen items helps determine the profile and probable motive of the burglar,” commented Kelly.

Dad agreed, and after being questioned by his children additionally about the type of locations of the burglaries, he said, “Only businesses have been targeted so far.”

Robert questioned, “Why do you think the newspaper hasn’t printed any of the riddles, dad?”

“I can only assume that the police haven’t provided the newspaper with copies of the letters because they are evidence in an ongoing crime spree. They also do not wish to give any notoriety to the criminal, or criminals involved quite yet.”

“They probably don’t wish to alarm the public either,” surmised Rebecca.

“Well, I think that won’t work so well anymore,” replied Robert, “now that the public knows about the burglaries and the letters sent to the police.”

“I think you’re correct, son. Another thing to keep in mind is that if this type of criminal is surprised during the commission of the crime by someone they could turn to violent behavior.”

“That’s because they feel trapped,” Kelly said, “and they want to get away at all costs.”

Robert, Rebecca and Kelly had planned to spend their Easter vacation reading some of the books they had in their library and visiting with friends from school, but now it appeared they would need to include assisting with solving these recent burglaries to their list of things to do while on vacation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Shortly after breakfast Robert heard a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” he said.

“Thanks, Rob,” his mother replied.

“Caroline is here, Becca,” Robert shouted to his sister.

“Coming!”

“Come in, Caroline.”

“Thanks, Robert.”

“So you and Becca are going shopping I hear?”

“Yes, to look for some new blouses and stuff.”

“Sounds like fun... NOT... at least not for me that is.”

“Hi,” greeted Rebecca as she rounded the corner in the hall, “I’m ready.”

As the two girls opened the door to leave, Rebecca yelled back to her mom and dad, “Bye, I’ll be back later.”

“Ok, dear, bye.”

Kelly was busy reading in the quiet basement environment, so Robert decided to get a pair of scissors and go through the past two weeks newspapers and cut out any articles he could find related to the recent burglaries.

He completed that portion of his project, then went down to the basement and set up the information on both sides of their whiteboard. The time-line was fairly easy, though rather incomplete due to the fact that the dates the burglar delivered the riddle letters to the police was distinctly absent. Without knowing those dates, he would be unable to ascertain a probable link between each letter’s composition date and the occurrence of its prospective burglary.

Upon observing Robert’s efforts, Kelly informed her brother, “I’m reading about burglary, burglars and related profiling techniques used to identify probable suspects. It’s fascinating.”

“Fill me in a bit, ok?”

Robert and Kelly spent the next couple of hours conversing in depth on the topic, including numerous visits to law enforcement Internet sites searching for additional, more detailed, information. Robert wrote down all pertinent information, but wished they had more facts to work with.

“Finding out what was taken and when the police received the letters would be a great help,” he commented, but for now they would need to work with only what they had.

Later that afternoon Rebecca returned from shopping, so the family went for a walk down to Telegraph Avenue to get an early dinner. After dinner they stopped by and said hello to George Walkinhawk before heading back home for the evening.

After the rest of the family had gone to bed, Mr. Dance made a few calls, digging up a few more details concerning the burglaries. He wrote the information down on a notepad in the kitchen before heading off to bed.

Sunday morning Kelly awoke early and hurried to the kitchen to get some milk. She noticed the notepad on the counter and thought that her parents had possibly left a message. They do that on occasion if something special was planned for breakfast and did not want anyone eating before they got up.

“Oops,” she thought to herself after reading its contents. “This must be dad’s, I had better put it in his study. It’s not nice to read other peoples messages.”

However, given the quality of Kelly’s memory and quick reading skills, it was doubtful that a single letter on that notepad was not already registered in her computer-like brain.

When her father woke up, Kelly informed him that she put his notepad in his office. He politely thanked her and did not say another word about it. Kelly wondered if this meant that he had left the notes for her or her siblings to find, or if it was just a fortuitous accident.

Later that morning the Dance children perused the articles related to the burglaries with great concentration and focus on details. Unfortunately, details were sorely lacking. Robert included the information Kelly read from their father’s notes on the whiteboard and Rebecca typed up everything and saved the file on their computer.

While discussing the crimes they heard the basement door open, “Kids,” their mother shouted, “we are going over to Uncle Kevin and Aunt Sara’s for lunch soon, in about fifteen minutes, ok?”

“Ok, mom, we’ll be ready,” shouted Rebecca.

“Maybe you guys can bring your walkie-talkies and play with little Philip, or something.”

“Good idea, mom,” Rebecca shouted again.

“That is a good idea,” Robert agreed, “We will be able to try out a few more things to test some of the abilities and limitations of our walkie-talkies.”

“Sounds great,” Kelly replied, “I think Philip will have a blast pretending to be a secret agent, spy, or something like that.”

“He sure will,” confirmed Robert.

That afternoon the four kids roamed the entire area of Albany Hill. They searched for one another using the GPS feature on their walkie-talkies.

“This Global Positioning System is great,” Robert said, as the four kids regrouped before playing twenty-first century hide-and-seek again.

“The GPS is operated and owned by the U. S. Department of Defense,” Kelly commented, “and involves the use of twenty-one GPS satellites circling the earth, four of which are always above the horizon no matter where you are around the globe.”

Robert commented, “It sure beats the old days of using standard radio triangulation methods, a whole lot.”

“Oh, there are also three extra satellites up there for spares in case they are needed,” added Kelly.

“Cool, satellites,” Philip said, “But what is trangulation?”

“It is called triangulation, Philip, tri - an - gu - lation. Triangulation,” Kelly informed her cousin.

“Tri-an-gu-lation,” he said proudly, having learned such a big word.

“Tri means three,” Kelly continued, “and the angulation part of the word means the angles, or locations; it means that it uses three angles to search from.”

“Is that good?”

“Yes, it is,” Kelly put a small stone in the center of the group, “Here, like this. Now if we are all standing in different locations around the rock we all can observe the rock and tell each other about the rock from our view of it.”

“Ok.”

“If we were all far away from the rock we could sneak up on it by each one of us telling the other what we see and moving closer to the rock.”

Philip remarked, “Oh, like what we are doing now,” feeling as excited and as one feels when the lights go on in their brain and they ‘get it’ all of a sudden.

“Yes.”

“We are all in different locations around Albany Hill. With the walkie-talkies we can find each other because they have this location thing built inside.”

“Yes, Philip, that’s correct,” confirmed Rebecca.

“I think I sort of get it now.”

“These walkie-talkies have a built-in triangulation computer program that gives its location to three or four of those satellites that are up in space over us now.”

“I’ve seen satellites in space,” Philips interrupted, “when we went camping in the mountains my dad showed them to me. We had to lay very still on our backs to look for them.”

“That’s great,” said Rebecca.

Feeling that the conversation may be getting a bit boring for their nine year old cousin, she ended the topic with, “Practice makes perfect!”

“And perfect is good,” replied Philip.

Next Chapter

Chapter Twenty: Poetic Injustice