CRIME IN NORTH DALLAS

DEBBIE STEIN IS WHAI YOU MIGHT call a typical North Dallas housewife. Impeccably groomed and extremely attractive,
she could pass for a Kim Dawson model. Debbie and her husband, John, are the archetypical residents of what many
people would consider an urban Utopia. The couple’s new home, nestled near Preston wood Town Center, is flanked by
sculptured landscaping. The streets are lined with custom-built houses. Cadillacs and Mercedes fill the driveways.
Everything in Debbie’s world looks like part of the American dream. But every time Debbie takes her 10-month-old
son, Jason, for a walk down the street, the dream starts to fall apart. She carries a hammer in the back of the
stroller. She’s scared to leave the house without some type of weapon. Debbie doesn’t trust anyone anymore.

There’s good reason. Debbie and John Stein’s home has been broken into three times in just over a year. The burglars
have taken everything from childhood birthday gifts to sterling silver flatware. Debbie doesn’t plan to replace the
silver. Why bother?

The Steins’ first break-in took place when they lived in another fashionable neighborhood near Cromwell and Royal
Lane, south of the LBJ Freeway. After the third burglary, the Steins fled farther north. Most of their new neighbors
had been hit, but the Steins were able to delude themselves that they wouldn’t be victims again.

Those delusions faded one afternoon in late February. Debbie was standing in the backyard when she heard the phone
start to ring. She didn’t want to answer it. But when it kept ringing, Debbie finally picked it up on the
twentieth ring. Click. The caller hung up. At that moment, Debbie knew someone was planning to burglarize her new
home. It was only a matter of time. If she hadn’t answered the phone, the burglars would probably have come that
afternoon. Debbie was all too familiar with the hang-up calls. They were the harbingers of the Steins’ first three
burglaries.

After the first time, Debbie begged John to leave Dallas, pack it up and go back to the Panhandle where life was
slower -and safer. But now she knew that wouldn’t happen. Dallas is where the opportunities are for the Steins. And
for the burglars. By now, Debbie and her husband have accepted regular burglaries as a part of their lives.



Residential burglaries in North Dallas are reaching epidemic levels, up a whopping 34 per cent over last year. That
compares to a 13 per cent increase in burglaries in the city as a whole. The more affluent the neighborhood, the
more likely a target it is. In the Northwood section between Dallas Parkway and North Central Expressway and north
of LBJ, one out of every 13 homes was burglarized last year. Police estimate that during 1981, one out of five North
Dallas homes will be burglarized, which makes burglary a much more likely prospect than fire.

Police blame it on the economic situa-tion and on an overcrowded, overworked judicial system that puts burglars back
on the streets. Of the estimated 30,000 burglaries in Dallas last year, less than a quarter of these will be
followed by an arrest or property recovery.

Of those arrested, about half will be termed juvenile offenders. Most of them will be released to their families,
and most of them will be arrested again. First-time adult offenders will be handed two- to 10-year probated
sentences.

The burglar, if arrested at all, stands only a one in 50 chance of going to prison. The odds are on his side. Not
yours.

The victims may be able to collect some restitution. But most likely, the victims will end up absorbing their
losses. Once your home has been burglarized, your chances of another burglary occurring increase by 400 per cent.
Burglars prefer a sure bet, and once you’ve been hit, you are one.



UNTIL THREE YEARS AGO, DEBBIE AND John Stein thought they were living the perfect urban life. They lived in a lovely
brick house with iron grillwork that framed the front porch. Theirs was a neighborhood few could afford. John’s
career as a stockbroker was blossoming, and times were good. Both Debbie and John were working, spending their
weekends at home, fixing up their pretty house just like thousands of young couples dream of doing. They lived in an
area police say burglars love because it’s so settled. Most of the houses are more than 10 years old. Thieves figure
that in 10 years, a couple can collect a lot of valuables. The Steins say they never thought they had acquired
enough property to attract burglars. But since they were both working, they were both out of the house for at least
eight hours a day. For burglars who , like to work in the daytime, that’s the ideal situation.

The Steins will never forget the day it happened. As they came home from work they both noticed the house looked
different somehow. When they walked into ! the dining room, it was obvious what had happened. The china cabinet was
wide open, empty. Boxes were scattered across the floor. The gun collection, which hung; in a case in the den, was
gone. They walked nervously to their bedroom. When Debbie saw the condition it was in, she-began to cry. A window
was open, glass scattered on the carpet. Dresser drawers! were hanging out. Boxes from the closets were lying on the
bed and on the floor. Shoes were scattered. The bedspread had been pulled back at one corner, and a pillowcase was
missing from one pillow,

Debbie and John were overwhelmed by the sudden feeling that they were not invulnerable in their own home any more.

When the Steins inventoried their losses, they discovered that all of their! sterling silver had been taken. The
burglars had taken John’s gun collection, which included a rifle he had received from his parents for his twelfth
birthday. It was worth $75 at most. The jewelry that had been kept in the master bedroom was gone, including a
diamond necklace John had given Debbie for Christmas and a charm bracelet her mother had given her. She says it
couldn’t have been worth more than $30, but her mother had been adding to it for nine years.

Those were the losses they could tabulate immediately. Later, they would discover that other things were missing –
long after the insurance claim had been turned in, long after the police reports had been signed.

The police arrived within a half hour after the Steins telephoned them. Inspectors took fingerprints, explaining to
the Steins that the prints would probably turn out to be their own since professional burglars wear gloves. Then
they told the Steins how it had happened.

The thieves entered through the window in the master bedroom. The Steins had a large fenced-in backyard, giving the
burglars privacy to work by. None of the neighbors even heard the glass breaking.

Once inside the house, the burglars began working in the dining room, leaving the bedroom for last. (The
professional burglar wants the bedroom to be his last stop so he can get out-quickly if anyone comes home.) The
burglars sorted through the china and silver in broad daylight, right in front of a ceiling-to-floor window. The
dining room drapes were wide open. The silver plate was left behind. Too cheap. Next, the burglars made a quick tour
through the house. That’s when they found the guns and the citizens band radio. Then they cleaned out the valuables
in the bedroom. Game boxes and sewing boxes in closets had been rummaged through and then hastily tossed back.

After an investigator noticed the missing pillowcase on the bed, the police started shaking their heads.

“I’ll bet I know who did this job,” said one investigator.

“Yeah,” agreed the other. “That’s the way Stephen Mackinaw and John Ermine work.” (After the Steins’ second and
third burglaries, a pillowcase would again be missing. Stephen Mackinaw would be out on bail for a separate burglary
charge.)

The Steins, encouraged by the discovery, asked when the police would make the arrest.

“Can’t,” replied an investigator. “Not until we pick up some evidence. That’s the law.”

John started to get mad. There’s no feeling of hopelessness like standing in your home after the crime, looking at
the mess, and knowing that the people who did it are running around somewhere in the city. Physical retribution
comes to mind.

The Steins’ second burglary occurred 16 months after the first. The burglars came one Tuesday and took all the
silver plate that had been left behind before, plus things the Steins had replaced, like John’s guns. They took off,
apparently in a hurry, because something had scared them. Then they came back on Friday and ransacked the bedroom
for jewelry. It was obviously the same burglars; they didn’t stop to look in the den on Friday. John had already
replaced one of his guns from the second burglary. It was left hanging there.

Being burglarized twice in the same week was just too much for the Steins.

Debbie told John she believed that the burglars were in their house more than they were. They decided it was time to
move to another neighborhood.

Altogether, the Steins lost about $25,000 worth of personal property in the three break-ins. After they collected
from their insurance company, the money went straight into the bank. It seemed useless to replace what had been
taken, since it would just be taken again. And of course there were the things (like the birthday rifle and Debbie’s
charm bracelet) that could never be replaced.

Debbie says she has built up an immunity to becoming attached to things. “And even if you do replace something, it
loses the meaning it had,” she says. “I don’t have anything left in this house now that has special meaning to me,
nothing except my pictures. They took everything.”

The Steins do say their three ordeals made them feel incredibly pro-police and pro-burglar alarms. They feel safer
in their new house because it’s equipped with an alarm. (Many builders now include alarms in the house just as they
would a doorbell.) Debbie keeps it on whenever she’s at home alone with Jason. She knows it would do very little to
stop a professional burglar, but at least it makes her feel like she’s doing something.

The Steins also feel that the police are as frustrated by the rise in crime as the victims are.

“They really can’t do anything,” says John. “That’s the nature of the crime. Low risk, high profit. The
police’s hands are tied by the bureaucracy that’s swung the pendulum to favor the criminal. I mean, two hours after
your burglary, you know that burglar is selling your wedding ring to a gold and silver exchange. What can the police
do?”

John becomes furious when he hears talk of a citizens’ review board for Dallas police, or laws forcing officers to
live within the city limits.

“How much are these guys making? Maybe $1200 a month? Do you blame them for not wanting to put up with all that
crap?”

“You know, I think we’re all browbeaten,” says John Stein. “Between taxes and this protection of the criminal more
than victims, all we really want to do is lock the door, turn on that burglar alarm, just live our own lives, and
tell the rest of the world to leave us the hell alone.”



Marjorie Doyle lives alone. She’s 65 years old and has been widowed for three years. Her house is a lovely white
flagstone ranch near Inwood Road between Royal Lane and Walnut Hill. Mrs. Doyle loves her home because it is filled
with the memories of her husband and the children they raised together. When her husband died, she promised herself
she wouldn’t leave her home until she was too old to take care of herself. Her daughters thought she would be all
right alone. But that is changed now, because of what happened over the holidays.

While Marjorie Doyle was out of town visiting one of her daughters, her house was broken into. Whoever did it left
behind a mess. Mrs. Doyle had planned on a three-week vacation. The burglary was discovered on the fourth day she
was gone. Now all those memories about the past when her husband was alive and the girls were at home are shrouded
in fear.

“You don’t understand,” she says. “This had never happened to me before. I’ve lived in this house for 28 years. I
just started locking my doors a few years ago. This isn’t New York or Chicago. This is Dallas.”

A neighbor had come over to routinely check the house for her and pick up her mail and newspaper. The house was in a
shambles. Every mattress had been pushed to the floor; every box in every closet rifled; drawers turned upside down.
The burglars even went through the flour and sugar canisters in the kitchen. They took foreign money, silver
dollars, and costume jewelry, as well as good jewelry. That included heirlooms from her grandparents and the first
rings her husband had ever given her. The burglars took gold chains that had been given to her by her daughters, a
diamond watch, and a small cocktail ring she never wore because it no longer fit over her arthritic knuckles. The
ring had five generations of wedding stones set in it.

The burglars got in through a sliding glass door in her bedroom. Mrs. Doyle now has so much trouble sleeping in that
room that she has hired an off-duty police officer to live with her temporarily.

“I hear a noise during the night and I wake up, petrified. I keep thinking someone’s coming in. I can’t even bathe
without hearing sounds like someone’s breaking in. I know they told me whoever it was probably won’t come back while
I’m at home, but I can’t help it. They might figure me an easy mark.”

She says she gets more rest now in a motel than she does in her own bed.

But Mrs. Doyle was fortunate. She had lent all of her silverware to a daughter in Denton who needed it for a
Christmas party. Otherwise, she says, she wouldn’t have anything left. The burglars also left behind a collection of
antique porcelain. That, she says, proves they didn’t realize its value.



ON THE BOOKS, TEXAS LAW IS TOUGH ON burglary. Any type of burglary is considered a felony, meaning it carries the
threat of a penitentiary term. And in this state, burglary of a household carries the same sentence as murder or
rape.

The crime is divided into three basic categories. Third-degree burglary carries a two- to 10-year prison sentence.
It involves theft of property, such as stealing a car or bicycle.

Second-degree burglary, burglary of a commercial building, carries a two- to 20-year prison sentence.

First-degree burglary, or burglary of a habitation, which can be anything from a house to a motel room, is by far
the most serious. It carries a prison term of five to 99 years.

Under Texas law, there is no distinction in the magnitude of a crime, although this may factor into sentencing. If
the laws against burglary are so strict, one might ask, why is burglary such a problem in Texas?

Police will tell you it’s hard to catch a thief because the odds of victim confrontation are very low. If nobody
sees the thief get into your house in time to stop him, nobody can identify him. And since only an outright idiot
would leave his fingerprints in your house, identification is next to impossible.

Victims will tell you the police are spread thin these days with very few out there actually patrolling
neighborhoods. In the northeast division, for example, which stretches as far south as the R.L. Thornton Freeway, as
far west as the Dallas North Tollway, and north past Campbell Road to Piano, 30 to 35 policemen will be out on a
given night patrolling. Those same officers will be handling all the calls, accidents, disturbances, and even
driving suspects downtown to jail. At best, half those cars will be responsible for patrolling that entire division.
It’s impossible for them to make it down every residential street even once a night. If you call the police in an
emergency and get a patrol car to your house in less than 30 minutes, you’re extremely lucky.

The only way to trace a burglar is through the stolen goods. But again, that’s difficult to do. Most cautious
burglars melt down silver and gold, making it completely unidentifiable. Some even start melting it down in the back
of a van while driving away from the house they’ve just looted. Even if it isn’t melted, it’s still difficult to
prove ownership unless the pieces are marked or engraved with the owner’s license number. You may have lost a
complete set of Sir Christopher silverware, for example, but someone else may have lost such a set in a burglary
last year. How can you prove that a few teaspoons of that pattern that are sitting in the police property room are
yours? You can’t.

If the burglar is arrested, he has the right to a grand jury hearing. Then, if an indictment is handed down, he gets
shuffled into a system that is so overloaded with other crimes, it almost cannot handle one more.

One of the handiest ways to dispose of cases is with guilty pleas or through plea bargaining. Chief Career Criminal
Prosecutor Mike Keasler says plea bargaining is a necessary evil. It helps unstack the criminal system. Prisons are
overcrowded, and no one seems to want a new one built in their community. If every convicted burglar were sent to
prison, they’d be living 50 to a cell.

But the chances of a burglar ending up in prison -even if he’s been convicted before -are infinitesimally small.
About 2100 suspects were actually brought to trial last year, although 30,000 burglaries were reported. The district
attorney’s prosecutors are quick to tell you that 93 per cent of those suspects were convicted. What they are not so
quick to point out, however, is that only 240 of the convictions resulted in prison terms. You don’t have to be a
statistical genius to determine what those figures mean: Each time a burglar breaks into a home, he has less than a
one in 100 chance of going to prison as a result of that burglary.

Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Jerry Banks thinks the courts are doing the best they can do. But he’d
like to see the law changed to allow prosecutors to bring up a burglar’s past record at the sentencing phase of the
trial. Too often, he says, burglars and their attorneys lead the jury into thinking they are first offenders, so
they end up with probated sentences. The only way a prosecutor can get around this is by calling in character
witnesses who say they know the defendant has a bad character. Prosecutors have to hope the jury will get the
message.

Both Banks and Keasler believe the best deterrent to crime is swift justice through a speedy trial. Dallas County
often disposes of some types of criminal cases in three to four months. But burglaries often end up at the bottom of
the priority list because juries and prosecutors tend to try violent crimes, such as rape, murder, and robbery
first. Consequently, many suspects who have been charged with a burglary stay out on bail for months before their
trial takes place.

IT SEEMED LIKE SUCH AN EASY JOB. A nice ranch-style brick house on Webb Garden Drive. Swimming pool in the back. No
alarm system. A piece of cake. The owner was in California on business on that cold day in January 1978 when the
thieves broke in.

They obviously felt they had plenty of time to work. One man sat at the kitchen table, carefully sorting out the
silver to be sure not to bother with the silver plate. He left a large cigarette burn on the wooden table where he
had worked. The burglars helped themselves to cookies in the kitchen before proceeding to the other parts of the
house. They performed a thorough search of the bedroom, even going through the pockets of blue jeans and slacks in
the closet. The burglars obviously liked the homeowner’s taste in clothes; they helped themselves to relatively
inexpensive items like her beige wool sweater with a silver fox fur collar. By the time the burglars were ready to
leave, they had quite a haul: color television sets, a $25,000 silver tea service, silver can-delabras, a silver
champagne bucket, $50,000 worth of furs, and assorted other valuables. The haul was certainly worth the half hour or
so it took to clean out the house.

The next day Doris Grimes got a call from her secretary.

“Are you sitting down?” the secretary asked.

“Sure,” Ms. Grimes said. “What’s happened?”

“I think you better get back to Texas,” the secretary said. “Your house has been robbed.”

When Doris Grimes saw what they had done to her home, she felt filthy. Something about the fact that they had calmly
sat there in her kitchen, eating her food, made her skin crawl. She went on a rampage, throwing out every jar and
box of food in the house. As she worked to clean up her house, the young divorcee found herself making a vow to get
even. “I worked my tail off for those furs,” the owner of an aircraft parts company said. “I’ve worked hard for
everything I have. And they just came in here one night and took it all.”



Mrs. Nelva Reed was sipping tea and munching a sandwich at a church luncheon at the home of one of her lifelong
friends. Suddenly her attention shifted from religion to a shiny object on her good friend and fellow church
member’s hand. The attraction was more than the shimmering beauty of the 13 sapphires and 24 diamonds on the ornate
ring that Mrs. Mozelle Trout Wilcoxson was wearing. It was something else.

“Mrs. Wilcoxson,” said Mrs. Reed, “could I have a word with you in private please?”

The two women stepped aside. Mrs. Reed then confronted her hostess with a rather pointed question.

“Where did you get that ring?” asked Mrs. Reed.

“Why, I got it from my ex-husband.”

“That’s my ring,” said Mrs. Reed. “It was stolen when my house was burglarized. My husband had it made for
me. I’ll bet my initials are still inside it.”

“Okay. I got it from a nice young man I know,” said Mrs. Wilcoxson.

“What’s his name?”

“I couldn’t tell you that, dear. I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble. Listen, let’s not discuss this right now.
Let’s wait until everyone leaves and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

After the last guest had left, Mrs. Reed was shown a wealth of treasures – all the other nice things the young man
had sold Mrs. Wilcoxson. Silver tea services. More than a dozen sets of sterling flatware, and a beautiful set of
silver candelabras.

Mrs. Reed agreed to buy back her ring from Mrs. Wilcoxson for $1000. It was a fraction of its real value; and even
though Mrs. Reed had to pay for it, at least she was getting back an object of great sentimental value, something
she thought she would never see again. But after Mrs. Reed got home that day, she began to think about what she had
done. Should she have paid to get back what was stolen from her? She called an old family friend, Judge Robert Cole,
for advice. He urged her to call the police, which she did.

Based on Mrs. Reed’s account of what had happened, police searched Mrs. Wilcoxson’s spacious North Dallas home and
arrested her. The detectives who arrested Mrs. Wilcoxson will never forget her. She was the only person they’d ever
put in jail wearing a full-length mink coat and a mink hat.

On questioning Mrs. Wilcoxson, the police found that she had received the ring and the silver from a man named
Stephen Mackinaw. She had a lien on his home and he was giving her silver and other objects in lieu of payments.

Mackinaw had done time in Alabama for burglary. He looked like a good prospect to be the thief who had hit Mrs.
Reed’s house and probably scores of others. The police obtained a search warrant and searched Mackinaw’s home on
Townsend Street in North Dallas.

When Mackinaw’s home was searched, police found a false interior wall. Behind it was shelf after shelf of silver,
jewels, television sets, radios, and other valuables. Part of it was later identified as the property of Mrs. Reed.
Other items belonged to Ms. Grimes. And part of the property belonged to some of Mackinaw’s neighbors, John and
Debbie Stein.

Mackinaw was arrested and charged with the burglaries of several North Dallas homes. The Steins, Mrs. Reed, and Ms.
Grimes were all elated. But Mackinaw’s attorney quickly defused that elation. A typist at the county house had left
a word off the warrant used to search Mackinaw’s house. The charges against both Mackinaw and Mrs. Wilcoxson were
dropped.



Doris Grimes is not the type of woman who easily accepts defeat. She’s a fighter. Her instincts told her there had
to be something she could do to get even with the thieves who had violated her home.

On the advice of her attorney, she filed civil suits against Mackinaw, a man named John Ermine whom police believe
worked with Mackinaw, and Mrs. Wilcoxson.

Texas law allows a burglary victim to file a civil suit against the burglar for the recovery of the victim’s stolen
property. It’s a laborious legal process for which most people do not have the patience -or the resources. They’d
rather collect the insurance money and let the burglar keep what he’s stolen. But not Doris Grimes.

After a lengthy legal process that cost Ms. Grimes $17,000 in legal fees, she won judgments against all three
defendants. She settled out of court with Mrs. Wilcoxson by obtaining the lien on Mackinaw’s house (which Ms. Grimes
sold, netting $28,000), plus having Mrs. Wilcoxson pay Ms. Grimes’ $17,000 legal fee. From Ermine, she obtained a
warehouse full of loot, including dozens of cameras and nine Sony color TVs. Ms. Grimes’ legal methods hit Mackinaw
the hardest. She was awarded a $115,000 judgement against him. She not only got his house, but other items like his
furniture and even his wife’s jewelry. Mackinaw begged Ms. Grimes to let his wife keep her wedding ring, which had a
two-carat diamond on a gold band that belonged to her father. It had a lot of sentimental value.

“Isn’t that too bad?” says Ms. Grimes. “I told him that if he could return everything he took from me, absolutely
everything, I’d drop the charges. But of course he couldn’t. He’d sold my property.”



Stephen Mackinaw has a certain athletic, graceful look about him. Short and muscular, it is not difficult to
envision this man as a dancer or perhaps a track star. Or a cat burglar. The latter profession looked more likely
the day I met Mackinaw. He was wearing starched prison whites and sitting behind a steel visitors’ table at the
Texas Department of Corrections’ Eastham State Farm near Hunts-ville. He spends his days doing farm work and
thinking about the 70-year sentence he is serving for possession of stolen property-a sentence which stemmed not
from the Grimes burglary but from a theft that occurred five years ago.

Mackinaw is what the police consider a career burglar. He doesn’t characterize himself that way. When he came to
Texas from Alabama in the early Seventies, he planned to go straight, he contends. He went into the home improvement
business. But he didn’t stay in the home improvement business. One day he received a speeding ticket that carried a
$50 fine. He didn’t have the money, but he remembered seeing a fine silver serving tray in one of the houses he’d
worked on. So he went to the house, broke in, and took the silver. After a quick stop at a gold and silver exchange,
he had more than enough to pay his fine. Soon he was stealing again on a regular basis.

For a while he used his home improvement business as a perfect front for burglary activities. He got to see the
inside of dozens of houses. He especially liked going back to hit homeowners who had quibbled about the cost of
their repairs.

Eventually he dropped the home repair business, concentrating on a full-time burglary career that was netting him
$60,000-$100,000 a year for one or two nights of work a week. It was easy enough to sell the silver at gold and
silver exchanges. The need for identification from all their customers made little difference. Mackinaw had a fake
driver’s license, which he and a partner were making and selling on the black market for $100. Everything was going
smoothly until Ms. Grimes came along.

“She wiped me out,” Mackinaw told me in the prison visitors’ room. “She got everything we had. 1 had no insurance
coverage for what she did to me. 1 would have been tickled pink if the Dallas police had broken into my house and
taken everything. But now I have nothing left.”

Doris Grimes didn’t quite get everything. Mackinaw still has a simple gold wedding band he wears in his prison cell.
But he has no doubts that Ms. Grimes, who keeps a picture of Mackinaw on the desk in her office, would get the ring
if she could.

“More people ought to do what I did,”says Ms. Grimes. “That would hit theburglar in his main weakness -greed.
Butmost victims are afraid to do anything likethat because they are afraid the burglarswill come back and get them.
What theydon’t realize,” she says, “is that burglarsare basically cowards.”

How to Burglarize a Home

It’s an easy, low-risk, profitable profession. By working just a few hours a week, you can earn from $60,000 to
$100,000 a year, tax-free. Consider this: If you’re caught, you have a one in 50 chance of going to prison. But your
chances of getting caught at all are much slimmer than the average home owner’s chances of becoming a victim of
burglary.

Tools of the trade. You’ll need a flashlight, tight-fitting nylon gloves, an ice pick, a pocketknife, tear gas or
mace in case you encounter a guard dog, a screwdriver, a BB gun, and a phony driver’s license to use when you sell
the loot. That’s it. No big initial investment required. You could buy a cross-reference index to look for
prospects, but why bother? Our consultant, convicted burglar Stephen Mackinaw, tells us that all real estate offices
have them, and he’s never encountered an office yet with a burglar alarm.

Step one: The beat. Drive around some choice neighborhoods where it’s obvious the homeowners have something worth
stealing. Mackinaw suggests keeping an eye out for burglar alarms. Anyone with an alarm has something to protect,
and it’s easy enough to beat an alarm system. Police say daytime burglaries are quite popular, with so many working
couples who leave their houses unoccupied for eight hours a day. If you prefer to burglarize at night, holidays and
vacation periods will be your busiest seasons. Anyone can spot the clues of a good house to hit: no garbage in the
garbage cans, lights left on all night long, lots of mail and newspapers piled up on the dining room table by a
well-meaning friend, or piled up outside. (That’s a big clue for the daytime burglar – mail sitting in a box all
afternoon, letters and flyers attached to front doors for entire afternoons.)

Next, check the addresses in the cross-reference index. Get the family’s name and phone number.

STEP TWO: Getting in. Synchronize your time with a buddy. Have him call the targeted house while you’re outside in
the backyard. (Those with high fences are your best bet.) Listen for the rings, say eight to 10. If you’ve done your
homework right, no one should answer. Now all you’ve got to do is get in.

Find a window, preferably the master bedroom window. Mackinaw says if anyone’s home, that’s where they’ll be, and
you’ll know it immediately. If there’s a screen, just cut it or remove it. Shoot a hole in the center of the window,
just over the latch, with your BB gun. Pry the latch open carefully with the ice pick.

Open the window and climb in.

If the house has a burglar alarm, try the roof. Most North Dallas houses have wood-shingled roofs, and it’s easy to
pry up some shingles and get in through the attic. Most wood-shingled roofs have no sub-roofs under the shakes. And
who’s going to see you on the roof at three in the morning?

If the house has a patio sliding glass door, and if you have time, stand on the back fence and shoot a single hole
into the door. If it’s safety glass, it will slowly crumble into tiny chips. Come back in 30 minutes and walk in.
This is also another good way to beat a burglar alarm.

Burglar alarms can be tricky, but Mackinaw claims almost any of them can be sidestepped. He suggests
short-circuiting the telephone line outside to stop the call-out system, since many alarms are wired to the phone.
You can also find the electric box, pull the lever, and shut off the electricity in the house. That will kill the
audible alarm. Don’t use the BB gun on a house with an alarm. Take out the entire windowpane carefully, then crawl
through the window. Many systems go off when glass is broken, or when the window locks are tampered with.

Step three: Get the goods and run. Once you’re in, work swiftly. Pros don’t bother ransacking the house because it
doesn’t bring that much extra revenue and takes more time. The dining room should be your first stop. Find the
sterling flatware. If there’s a complete set in a box, you’ve already made a few thousand dollars, maybe more. Check
the silver items to see if they are sterling or plated. Next, look for a den that might have a gun collection. Then
head for the master bedroom, where you came in. Check the top dresser drawer first. You’ll most likely find the
jewelry, silver coins, and extra money there. Don’t dump the drawers; tumble through them. Most women hide things in
their lingerie, so check that. Check inside shoes, old ones first. If there’s time, check the odd places: boxes,
trinkets, canisters. Put everything in a pillowcase from the bed and get out. Mackinaw says he tried to close and
lock the doors after he left. That way neighbors may not figure out what has happened when they check the house.

Step four: Turning your loot to cash. Get rid of the merchandise quickly. Your best bet is to melt down the silver
and gold. Mackinaw says he had a smelter in his garage. Remove the diamonds from their settings. Any jewelry store
will buy diamonds or melted gold. Look in the newspaper, and you’ll find plenty of people eager to buy gold, silver,
and diamonds, “no questions asked.” (Victims say if the gold and silver exchanges were put out of business for a
month, the burglary rate would plummet.) When you have to give identification, use your phony driver’s license. You
can have your first payday less than 24 hours after your first burglary. It’s that simple.

Fighting Back



IF A BURGLAR WANTS IN YOUR HOUSE, there’s nothing you can do to stop him, period. But there are a few things you can
do to slow him down, or minimize the loss you’ll suffer once he does get in. In burglary protection, the name of the
game is to make it hard enough for the burglar that he breaks into your neighbor’s house instead. Here are a few
steps you can take to fight back.

1. Call-fowarding service. This can be a lot more valuable than it might sound. Most professional burglars look up
their victims in a cross-reference directory and call to see if anyone is home before they break in. With the
call-forwarding service the telephone company offers in many parts of the city, you can have your calls forwarded
when you’re away, and all the caller will know is that someone answers the phone when it rings. Ma Bell can also
trace those hang-up calls that frequently precede a break-in. If you are getting a lot of hang-up calls, contact the
phone company.

2. BURGLAR ALARMS. These won’t stop a real pro. Some burglars look for houses with burglar alarms, since it
is a sure sign the house has something worth protecting. But a good burglar alarm will make you off-limits to the
amateurs. A burglar alarm system can cost anywhere from $1500 to $20,000, depending on how sophisticated it is. Only
about 2 per cent of the houses in America now have burglar alarms. Manufacturers expect that figure to hit double
digits during the next five years. In areas with cable TV hookups, you can get a burglar alarm wired to the system.
It will automatically notify police when the alarm goes off.

3. NEIGHBORHOOD PATROLS. For $22 amonth, you can join the Neighborhood Co-opPatrol, which operates in most North
Dallasneighborhoods. Co-op president Phil Glascowcontends the patrol can help do more than thepolice because it has
the resources to assignpatrol cars to residential streets, a luxury theDallas Police Department can’t afford.
Glascow contends that homes protected by the service have a one in sixty chance of a break-in,compared to the one in
five chance other NorthDallas homes have. Dallas police don’t all agreewith those figures, however. “I’ve answered
alot of burglary complaints for houses that wereco-op members,” says one police officer. “Andoften I’d get there
before the co-op patrolcar would.”

4. Nosy neighbors. There’s no substitute fora good busybody who’s home all the time. The city of Richardson actually
lowered its burglary rate by 7 per cent last year through an intensive program that involved residents
watching each others’ houses and reporting any suspicious activity. People were asked to interview their neighbors
and then write down their normal activities on a printed form. When the neighbors saw any activities at a particular
house that weren’t covered by the form, they called the cops. Sound like Russia? Maybe so, but it works.

5. IDENTIFICATION. Victims repeat it over andover again: Have all your belongings markedwith your driver’s license
number. At leastyou’ll be able to recover your property if itis recovered.

6. INSURANCE. This is your only real protection. Be sure to get a special rider on your policy that covers expensive
items like jewelry or camera equipment. Most policies only cover from $100 to $500 on jewelry losses unless you pay
extra and get a rider. You’ll want to make an inventory, including serial numbers of all items that have them, which
you can use when you file your claim. It doesn’t hurt to save your receipts when you purchase an item like a TV set.
Some insurance companies can get cheap about reimbursing you for items you can’t prove you owned. Another good
inventory method is to take a picture of every room in your home. They make good “before” shots, which will help you
determine what the burglars got.

7. Hide your valuables. If you keep your jewelry in your bedroom and your silver in a cabinet in the dining room,
you can kiss them good-bye. Many North Dallas families have started keeping their silver and other valuables with
private safe deposit box companies that have sprung up in the city. It doesn’t hurt to hide the valuables you keep
in your home. A burglar we interviewed for this article used to keep his wife’s jewelry in his son’s toy box when
they went out of town. If a burglar has time to spend in your home, he can find your hiding places. But most
burglars want to get in and out of your house quickly.

8. A good watchdog. The American Kennel Club says Doberman pinschers and German shepherds now rank second and third
in national popularity (behind the ever popular poodle) because people want guard dogs for their homes. Companies
like Jamars Dog Obedience School in Garland train dogs to bare teeth and go for the throat. Even a professional
burglar who carries a tear gas spray will think twice about fooling with 85 pounds of frothing Doberman. An
attack-trained pinscher or shepherd costs anywhere from $650 to $3500. Business is brisk.