On Monday, January 5, my so called vacation came to an end and back to work I went. I set up the camera and had Kat turn it on before she left for work. I came home and started to review the photos. We had it set to capture a picture every 10 seconds and the camera was on for just over 9 hours. Do the math – that’s over 3,000 photos to view. You would be amazed how quickly you can look at pictures, especially when all you are looking for is something that is different from one picture to the next. You can easily view 5 or so per second. After flipping through several hundred in rapid succession and only seeing a squirrel, who ran up and down the telephone pole next door at least 15 times before noon, I was thinking this was a colossal waste of time. Nonetheless, I kept scrolling through the pics. The time stamp showed 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 and right at 3:58:42 there is a picture of a guy going into the house next door! I had gotten home that day at like ten minutes after four, but now it was just before 5:00 p.m. I thought it was likely that person was still in the house.
I grabbed my cell phone and called Det. Wethington and asked him “what would you do if I told you I have a picture of someone breaking in the house next door? He asked me how I got that and I told him about my little set up. he laughed and then I said I think the guy may be in the house right now and that I was going to go over there. He said he would be right over and he was. He brought a patrol officer with him and they both went in. Again, no one was in the house but a different bicycle was in the kitchen. In fact, it looked like the bike Kat saw on New Year’s Eve. He asked if I had a digital camera he could borrow and snapped some pics of the bike. I e-mailed him those photos and the photo of the guy going in the house. Now the police had pictures of a suspect and his mode of transportation. He left the bike and the house unlocked with the hope of catching this scumbag in the act. If only had watched the photos from most recent to oldest, we may have caught the guy that day. 
So now I am really fired up about this. The photo wasn’t good enough that you could positively ID the person, but it was evidence. So I decide to search for higher resolution cameras, particularly ones that have a zoom lens. I choose the Microsoft VX-6000 and ran to best Buy and dropped $70 on one. I hooked it up to the PC and the picture quality was noticeably improved and the zoom was pretty powerful. I knew this was gonna help me catch a scumbag! Then I tested it with the time lapse capture software and ran into a snag. When I used the time lapse, it reset the camera which meant the lens would not stay zoomed in. DAMMIT. I decided to run with it anyway since it did have higher resolution. I also decided that I was going to take a picture every 5 seconds now.
On January 6 we went through the same routine. I set up the camera and Kat turned it on before she went to work. This time when I came home I had over 6,000 pictures to sort through, but this time I started at the most recent and worked to the oldest. We again got pictures of three different people coming on to the property next door. I e-mailed them to the detective. Wednesday was pretty much a repeat. So each day I get pics of people coming onto the property. We call the police again and a patrol man comes out and reviews the pictures and checks out the house. Every time we deal with the police they are very nice and seem genuinely concerned and wanting to take action. Still, I am getting frustrated that I keep seeing people on the property and still on one has been caught. I start checking the house several times per day.
On Thursday we went through our routine and when Kat went to set up the camera, she noticed that the blinds in the window closest to our house are now missing on the house next door. They were definitely there at 10:00 p.m. the night before. I was at work and she called me and told me and then she called 911. Now I was thinking maybe the criminals knew we were watching them so now they are watching us. I bolted out of work and got home to meet three Woodson Terrace police officers at our house. One of them was a guy who I went to high school with. Again, they were very accommodating and we all went next door and now the bike was gone from the kitchen and now a lawn mower was there. Obviously they are stealing stuff and stashing it in the house. There is also evidence that they are partying in the house.
Now for a brief interlude. Right after we discovered that our house was broken into and that some of our stuff was found at the vacant house next door, I called the Realtor who had the house for sale. The agent’s name is Tom Azar from Able Real Estate and I thought he would want to know that the house had been broken into and people were still coming and going. I also wanted him to know that his sign and information box was broken and strewn across the yard. I would think any responsible Realtor would want to present the property in the best light possible so they could get it sold and earn a commission. That would be in your self interest not to mention the fiduciary responsibility you have to serve your client who is paying you. Man was I wrong. This dickhead Tom Azar tells me he doesn’t care and that I should be a good neighbor and do something about it myself and hangs up on me. Of course he will not answer any more of my calls. (I get back at him in several ways – more later)
More to come........
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