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As homeowner is kept busy, thieves clean house

0 Comments | Patriot Ledger, The; Quincy, Mass., Jul 28, 2010 | by John P. Kelly

Braintree

Ronald Vinton realized that not locking the front door was “idiotic” only after three men sped off in a gray pickup truck with his mother’s jewelry and $3,000.

The daytime heist at Vinton’s Liberty Street home on Monday was the fourth in Braintree in less than two months in which a burglary crew lured a homeowner outside to distract him as the house was pillaged for valuables.

“This is definitely an organized group,” Deputy Chief Russell Jenkins of the Braintree Police Department said. Despite variations in the descriptions of suspects and getaway vehicles, police believe the scams are the work a single band of criminals, Jenkins said.

The first was in early June. Then, two weeks ago, homeowners on Glenrose Avenue and Addison Street reported similar scenarios within hours of each other. Suspects in one case were white men in their 20s; the others were described as Hispanic.

In the first case, a man told police he found jewelry missing after a stranger asked him to step outside to discuss a utility pole in need of replacement. In the second, police believe a woman arrived home and startled the burglars while her husband was outside looking at trees a neighbor supposedly hired the faux contractor to remove.

Vinton, 66, said he had just returned from an early afternoon trip to the grocery store on Monday when there was a knock on the door. An unshaven man in his late 30s or early 40s identified himself as a contractor who installed his neighbor’s new swimming pool and asked if he could discuss cutting down trees in Vinton’s back yard.

For 15 minutes, Vinton said, the man wound the conversation from landscaping to building a fence to Italian food. A few times he spoke into a two-way radio in a foreign language.

“It sounded like Italian,” Vinton said. “I got suspicious.”

But the gig was soon up.

A van that delivers meals to Vinton pulled up, blocking the pickup truck, and the imposter “took off like a jackrabbit” for the driveway, Vinton said. Two other men jumped in and the delivery driver, unaware that anything was amiss, moved the van as the getaway proceeded.

The driver later recalled that the truck had Maine license plates.

Inside, rooms had been ransacked and cash had been swiped from a locked antique dresser. A dresser drawer had been pried open
house cleaning