by Mark Hall
I sat straight up in my chair. Jeff turned back around and looked again at the man who caught the thief known as the Ninja Burglar but more importantly solved the greatest private theft in history. I walked right over to him and shook his hand as well.
I never doubted what Chris stated but asked anyway. “You are that Captain Dean?”
“The same”, he replied in a throaty voice, “have we met?” he asked Chris.
“No, sir, but I have shared that case with other people so many times I lost count. I am guessing they weren’t too happy about your walking out of the hospital, were they?”
“Not a bit. But we have a good deal more to do if we are going to find this guy if we ever can” Captain Dean said while pulling off his wrist bandage.
“What is going on?” Jeff asked then offered coffee and we each took a mug. Captain Dean settled back into the office chair.
“What do you know about the Ford heist?” he asked me. I admitted to not knowing much; I sure knew of the case but not the particulars.
FIVE
Captain Dean continued, “For years in the Eighties down in Palm Beach on the wealthy side of town there was a string of large home burglaries. Jewelry every time: eighty thousand dollars’ worth at this house, one-twenty at this other one, none much more than three hundred. They were spaced out about every four or five months then in the early Nineties, they stopped”. He rubbed the front of his head.
“Alarm system, dog, a safe, locked door, none of this mattered to this guy. Only common thread was that no one was home. He would spend weeks watching a house and doing his homework before breaking in a place” he said, pausing to take a sip of coffee.
“Impressive” Chris added.
“Impressive?” Jeff asked, “you admire a thief?”
“This one, yes” Chris replied, “but I much more admire being able to catch such a careful and meticulous thief as this one. Please go on, Captain”.
“Gino was the one who caught him. In March of ‘96 he stole about $250,000, then again that October he hit a few houses all in one night. But in January of ‘97, he slipped into a gated community and into the house of Kathleen Ford. He got seven or eight million from her”.
Jeff whistled, “Million?”
“Million. Kathleen Ford was the widow of Henry Ford II. The next month one of our patrolman, Gino Sylvestri, slipped up on him trying to open up a safe he had taken from a house. One of those small ones. Anyway, Gino got a good look at him and was able to put together a description we were able to match”.
“So you picked him up, then?”
“No we didn’t. We knew he had to be putting all of the jewels up somewhere with somebody, and then we got a tip from a jeweler in Atlanta. This jeweler up there recognized that he had been sold some of the Ford jewels so he got in touch with us. The fence who sold it to him was a guy named Barry Marshall. We tailed Marshall and found out he was meeting Valdez behind a Dunkin Donuts. We had cameras on the two of them and that is all we needed. That was in ‘97”
“Who is Valdez?” Jeff asked.
“Alvaro Valdez” he looked at Chris “is the guy that was called the Ninja Burglar because he dressed all in black – head to toe. Valdez came over from Cuba as a teenager. We were never sure if he was the same guy from the early Eighties though. Same name but that might be coincidence”, he paused to take a drink from his mug, “The problem for us now is that Valdez is in jail down at Everglades and has been there since he got picked up again in 2007.”
“But you still expected someone and who was it that tapped you on the head?” I asked. “I thought Chris said you retired?”
“I retired in the newspapers and said I was going into coaching. Then I worked with the FBI and the Fords to track down the rest of the jewelry. After we picked up Marshall and his wife, as part of the plea deal she led us to their hiding spot. The stairs in their house had a hallway on one side and the garage closet on the other. In the closet was a false front that opened up under the stairs. We kept bringing jewelry out of that place. Over twelve hundred pieces, mostly Ford jewels but some others, too. It seems that Valdez did construction when he was younger and showed Marshall how to fix up that false front.”
“So that explains putting something behind the tile by the pool” Chris added.
“What tile!” Captain Dean sat up.
“He knocked out a tile in the room with the pool. A hole had been cut in the plywood backing; what was there or how he got it in behind the tile in the first place, we don’t know”.
“I was right then” Captain Dean said almost happily, “see, Valdez got out of prison in March of 2007 and we followed him for weeks hoping he’d lead us to the couple million that had not been recovered. He slipped us a few times but we know he went back to Atlanta for about a day. On the way back down to Palm Beach, I think he got an idea we were following him and he pulled off here in Warner Robins. We had put a GPS monitor on his car to follow him. We are not sure where he went altogether but I know I saw him coming out of the construction site.”
“Construction site?” Jeff asked.
“Of the Squadron Inn.” Chris answered.
Chris continued, “He stole the jewels in ’97, hid some or all of them with Marshall presumably in Atlanta before he got caught in ’98. He got out in ’07, drove up to Atlanta, then pulled off Interstate 75 and drove into town, specifically the Squadron where he could slip in and use his past construction experience to hide jewels. He must have recovered them from somewhere in Atlanta, maybe even another location in the Barry Marshall house.”
Chris turned to Captain Dean, “So that is why you worked as a night manager at the Squadron, knowing he wouldn’t make an attempt at recovering what he hid during daylight, and why after the fire you had the same job at Candelwood. That would also mean that the fire was set intentionally rather than by a stray cigarette in the bushes like the papers said. Whoever this was couldn’t get into the hotel with you there each and every night and since the fire hasn’t been able to because of the attention given to the site. He set the fire to get you out of the way. The problem was, you didn’t stay away enough and with the demolition about to happen, he needed to take chances.”
“I’ve been at the Squadron every night since ’07. We knew if he didn’t come back for them then he would get someone to do it for him.”
“That’s a long time without a day off. This means that we need to be very careful tonight to be sure that we allow him to recover the other hidden jewels before we arrest him” Chris added.
SIX
Jeff looked surprised. “How is it you think there are more jewels and that he’d go after them tonight?”
“I have to give it to you, other than someone working directly on this case, you clearly know as much about it as anyone else. Our problem is that he might have already recovered all of them”, Captain Dean mentioned, “and we don’t know where the second or third or fourth locations are.
“Sure we do” Chris grinned, “edificios gemelos, or the twin buildings, was on the second part of the note you snagged in your tussle last night. And I know which twins.”
“How could you possibly know what twin buildings that note is talking about?” asked Jeff, “none of the hotels around are duplicates.”
“Doesn’t have to be hotels” Chris answered, “the note just suggests twin buildings. Specifically, twin buildings that were under construction in 2007 and in all probability close to the Squadron.”
“I think I know” I jumped in, “there are two office buildings right on Osigian Boulevard right behind the hotel. I don’t know if they were built in ‘07 but they are identical. There’s a hair salon place and a tutoring business in one and a couple doctor’s offices in the other.”
“They were built in 2007, I just looked it up online” Chris turned to Captain Dean, “we know this isn’t the original Ninja Burglar because he is in jail. But we do know this is someone close to him and someo
ne who speaks Spanish because the note was written in Spanish. He hasn’t been in either of the twin buildings yet because we would have heard from the tenants of a wall being knocked out or something else that would be noticeable if he hid them like the others.”
“It sounds to me that you know as much about this as I do.”
“How are we going to go about this?” Jeff asked, “We have got to catch this guy.”
“We’ve got to recover whatever else he has, too” I added.
Chris laid out his plan. “We need to be in a position to see him leave the building with whatever is in there. If we pick him up too soon, we won’t recover what’s in there. But if we miss him leaving, we lose him and the jewels.”
“So we’ll make sure he can’t leave without us” I said.
Captain Dean added, “You can’t have a police presence anywhere near this place. If this one is anything like Valdez, he’ll be watching the place for a couple hours before he goes in”.
Captain Dean stood and felt the knot on his head. “I like it. How will we look after the two buildings, though?”
“The front won’t be a problem. We can set up inside the Cantrell Center across the street. That building has a big glass front we can look out from without being seen from the outside. I doubt he comes in or leaves from the front of the buildings anyway because of the street lights” Chris said.
I grabbed my Carhartt coat and said, “Let’s ride back over to the Squadron, there are still law enforcement cars out there and one or two more won’t make a difference if he is watching the place. We can see what is behind the twin buildings from the inside hallway”.
We rode back over to the Squadron site and walked in by the registration desk down the hallway to the first room that faced the back of the twin buildings. As we looked out, we remembered the cul de sac that ran between the twin office buildings. On the far right was the back of Kipper’s and the karate place section of the shopping center.
I jumped in “there you go, Chris. That dumpster behind Kipper’s will work as a blind, won’t it?”
“Sure would have but it’s Saturday and the trash runs on Thursday and it would not be empty. Sending a truck to dump the trash out of that dumpster would bring too much attention. Besides, the dumpster and the office buildings are separated by a drainage ditch on that empty lot. That lot was about one hundred fifty yards of uneven ground with mounds of dirt and holes scattered throughout.”
“Hmmm” I said. I thought it was a good idea but it had gone bad.
Frito delivered outdoor gear as we waited in the burned-out hotel. Captain Dean spoke to Chris. “I am impressed with how much you know about this Ford case and how you figured it was me that was involved. Have you worked down in Florida?”
“No,” Chris answered, “I have never been down to Florida. I guess I was interested in the case when it came out and remembered what I read about it then”.
“Yes but that was fifteen years ago. You also said you talked about it several times to people.”
Chris looked over at me. He had cracked the door open to whatever past life he had before witness protection and alarm bells were going off with the police detective’s questions.
“Shoot, Captain”, I said, “everything is on Google as it is. He had been sitting at the computer for a couple hours before you came in to visit with us. Let me ask you, though, how do you think this guy is connected to Valdez?”
“That has me a little bit” he replied, turning his attention from Chris, who was relieved. “He could have given someone in prison all the information and the note for when they got out. But I am not sure he would trust anyone with that kind of money, especially if he could get ratted out”.
“But maybe we can ask him tonight, Marshal”.
“I sure hope so, Captain”.
