The Elusive Cat Burglar – Part 2

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Last week Ken Fischer walked us back to early Lakewood, telling of a mystery burglar who seemed to disappear like a ghost. The story took a turn toward danger. It was a new level, personal contact instead of pilfering purses. Chilling.   

(This is part 2 of 2 parts. Go back to start with Part 1? Here.)

By Ken Fischer

Who is this guy? The question took on a new urgency. In the quiet early morning hours, I was one cup of coffee into processing this unit, realizing I needed to do a good job lifting any possible prints from this guy. We are moving in a new direction and it is way past cat burglary with this case. I got the victim/witness calmed down enough to effectively interview her. Not much. Hands clear – no gloves – possible break. 

Lab print search developed nothing, frustrating. He’s never been printed. 

The other curiosity to me was how this kid moved around in a ten by ten block area of the city without being seen at one to five AM. He had to be walking. In each case we stopped everything that moved for the next hour. Frustrating. No other jurisdiction had anything similar. Minimal broken English when he speaks, high degree of agility, picking his victims, taking only money. 

The pieces of this puzzle seemed not to fit, but as our mentor Mr. Brooks taught: Back up, look at the big picture, often very small bits of an investigation which seem unremarkable can turn the case. 

Recall the “Son of Sam” was caught with a parking ticket.

We had missed a large clue which had no direct association to our investigation on its own elements. Big picture – pay attention!

About a week later, a sharp midnight sergeant was cruising a secondary arterial street about 2 A.M. We are taught to rotate our glances from front to side to side. While rotating his head back to center street, something caught his eye in a vacant field to his left. He flashed he spotlight and observed a standing subject drop out of sight approximately 40 yards into the field. 

A perimeter was set and an area search initiated. Good police sense. Don’t rationalize. At this hour, many Agents may pass it off as someone crossing via shortcut or a worker going home after bar work or a variety of rationalizations for the behavior. Savvy Cops follow hunches and pursue curious or questionable but not always illegal behavior. Thank God Sgt. Hutchins followed his cop sense. 

The subject was located two blocks away attempting to low crawl through a fence in a backyard. He was 16, Vietnamese, belligerent in broken English, and under the influence of marijuana. He was booked for misdemeanor marijuana possession, trespass and released to his mother. 

They lived six blocks away. Chris was a product of the of the streets of Saigon, where he had grown up and developed an “artful dodger” profile. At sixteen he was an accomplished grifter, con man, procurer of merchandise and drug runner. His stepfather was an American civilian working for the government in Vietnam. He met and married Chris’ mother and brought her out of country. He had given Chris his name but could not get him out with his mother. It was just within the past few months that they were able to bring him to Lakewood. Boat people. Missed it. 

Chris had a serious marijuana problem – clearly illegal back then – and was able to buy on the street, usually at a near high school where he was hugely overcharged. He would sneak out and execute well planned crimes in the early morning hours roaming a ten-block area which began at his family’s home. His movement, true to his Saigon experience, was never on a main street but via gulch, drainage canals and back yards, but never on a sidewalk. He would never be seen and was a master at hiding, especially in the dark. 

An FBI serial rapist seminar would later identify a geometric process which would normally identify the suspects residence within the perimeter of his crimes. The process was available in 1975 but young detectives weren’t aware of it. Later plotting of the site information would prove the method worked. Missed it. 

Chris’ palm print was an identical match to a partial palm which I lifted from the window sill of the most recent burglary. Chris was not enrolled in school. He was old enough that he would qualify for alternative high school and was to begin in 1976. 

During his arrest interview, he advised that he had climbed a tree and stayed up there for hours after fleeing the apartment. I believed him as he was also able to describe what I was wearing while I took the prints from the window. . 

Chris did a few months of juvenile time and was back with his family within the year. He went on the commit a number of late night/early morning sexual assaults in the area-always on foot-never apprehended on scene and always wearing thin plastic gloves. 

He did hard time for about twenty years and was back to Lakewood as late as 2008 when he followed a couple home in southwest Denver. He had observed them from afar at a dive bar and noted them to be highly intoxicated. 

Once home the male poured the female into bed upstairs and went to the basement to sleep. An hour later, the male heard pounding from his girlfriend’s bedroom, went to determine the problem, switched on the light and found the suspect in bed with his comatose girlfriend. 

According to the report, the suspect calmly exited the bed, got dressed and with minimal verbiage advised the male to “ask your girlfriend” what was going on. The male initially was confused by the calm demeanor but eventually believed his girlfriend when she advised she had never seen him before and in the dark in her stupor, thought it was her boyfriend. Our special enforcement unit assisted Denver in apprehending Montano. 

In the ensuing investigation, it became known that Chris had been involved in two other similar stalking situations where the cases were derailed and he was let off, prior to his completing the early morning assaults. According to interviewers he was still calm, soft spoken, showed no emotion or regret. He featured the same “dead eye, shark eye” image he had 30 years earlier. I believe this criminal is in prison where he belongs. 

He was one good cat burglar from whom I learned a lot. 

Ken Fischer holds a Master’s Degree in Education from the University of Iowa and was involved in organizing Iowa’s first Law Enforcement Training Academy. He was on the SWAT Team in the Lakewood Police Department, and retired as a Senior Sergeant. A longtime resident of Southern Gables, he is an experienced woodsman and now runs a firewood business. 

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