A “crook with a conscience” breaks into home twice in one night

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    PHOENIX, AZ (KPHO/KTVK) — Phoenix police are investigating a home burglary that happened over the Thanksgiving weekend in north Phoenix while a family was out of town. The whole break-in was caught on camera.

It happened on November 27. The suspected burglar kicked in the back door around 8 p.m. and rummaged through the house for about 45 minutes. He then came back a second time around 11 p.m.

“He was very careful when he went through not to sort of just tear it apart. He seemed like he was pretty methodical in looking at some things, going through it, and then closing the drawer and moving on to the next drawer. So the house didn’t look trashed with the exception of maybe one room,” said the homeowner, who only wanted to be identified as Mackenzie.

Mackenzie and her family were out of town for the long weekend and turned off the notifications on their surveillance cameras. However, the burglary was still captured and recorded.

“We can see the whole, everything, from start to finish,” Mackenzie said.

A neighbor who was watching over the house discovered items out of place the next day and alerted Mackenzie.

“They came up to the house and they saw there was some clothes and some things outside that they thought was kind of weird and they hadn’t seen the previous day,” Mackenzie said. “They opened up my garage and saw that my car was missing and that’s when they called us to let us know.”

Mackenzie said the man initially started piling things outside of the backyard fence but eventually loaded up her Jeep Grand Cherokee that was parked in the garage and took off with the vehicle too.

“I call him a ‘crook of the conscience’ because the one room he didn’t touch was the nursery and when he stole the Jeep, he actually took out the car seat base and left the car seat base on the ground in the garage before he left which, while I’m grateful for, it’s just really weird,” Mackenzie said.

The second time the suspect came back, he returned with the Jeep and entered through the garage, using the remote opener that was in the vehicle.

Mackenzie said the whole situation is unnerving and they’ve gone through a wave of emotions.

“When you take things that aren’t yours and you realize someone has stolen from you, of course there are things that just make you angry. But I think when you take things that are irreplaceable, it makes you sad. We’ve definitely had an array of emotions,” Mackenzie said.

The suspected burglar stole cash, tax and banking documents, men’s clothes and family heirlooms. “My grandmother had a charm bracelet from when she was 16 years old that she’s added a golden charm to over her life and I was just gifted it last year so that one was pretty bad,” Mackenzie said.

However, the suspect also took miscellaneous items that have Mackenzie scratching her head. Not to mention, he also stopped mid-heist to feed the cat.

“When you go through and you kind of look at some things and you’re like, that seems a little off but I don’t quite remember what was there, until later you’re like oh yea I had my watch was charging on the charger, he took my alarm clock by my bedside table,” Mackenzie said. “He stole my electric toothbrush and our Listerine and all of our toothpaste, it was very strange.”

Mackenzie feels like whoever did this knew they were out of town. “We did leave lights on. We had things that we felt made it look like we were home, but I’m sure he could figure out we weren’t, even just a ring of the doorbell probably,” Mackenzie said. “It’s unnerving to sit here and have the window shades open because you don’t know if somebody was walking by casing your house to see if you’re home or if it’s a neighbor out for a walk. So yeah, I do suddenly feel really unsafe here.”

Mackenzie says if she could do anything differently, she would have an alarm system in her home and not just security cameras. “I don’t think he would have stayed for half an hour if something had been blaring. The videos are great, but they just give us footage of him doing it and don’t really tell us anything else.”

Phoenix Police are investigating this burglary. Anyone who has information should call the police or Silent Witness.

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