My Detective Skills

Thanks for all of your fun comments. GiGi and Brea mentioned "the purse" incident, so since I don't have much to write about these days, I will put the details on here about my detective skills and how I have passed them on.

Back on a Friday in April, Jennifer was getting ready to bring the girls over here when she realized that she couldn't find her cell phone in the car. She had a bad habit of leaving her purse in her car, but she always kept the garage door close,d so it wasn't a problem. She realized that the night before, Lamar had gone to the store and not closed the garage door from about 8:30 - 10:00 p.m. They live in a cul de sac close to the police department, so normally you wouldn't think anything about it.

As she looked around for her cell phone, she realized that some of the contents of her purse were on the seat, but her purse was missing. She told me when she got over here with the girls, and I told her to check her bank account online. Sure enough, starting at 9:30 p.m., someone had started using her credit card. There was a $150+ charge to a gas station close to her house and $200 to Albertson's.

She called the police, but we knew this would be a low priority situation, so we needed to take matters into our own hands. She was very smart and got her phone records. You always hope that a "dumb" criminal will be the one to steal your stuff and sure enough, she got lucky. The "dumb" criminal used her cell phone to call his friends. When she found out where her card had been used, she went to the gas station and Albertson's. She talked to the manager who had waited on the criminal and the gas station pulled up video of the sale. (He was even dumb enough to used his "gas station member card" to get credit for the sale.)

Let me stop a little bit to tell you about my day. Pops and I were leaving for Florida the next morning on an early flight. I had not packed or gone to the store to buy the essentials for traveling, which of course always includes some new clothes. To make matters a little more complicated, it was 3:30 in the afternoon and I had to be at a graduation reception at Pop's office and then go to graduation and a late dinner with the graduation speaker. When was I going to get my shopping and packing done????? Pops had some important paperwork that had to be submitted by that evening and I was in the middle of working on that also.

But duty calls. I got Jennifer's phone information and started calling numbers. Low and behold, the first person I called that answered was the perfect link to the entire case. She was in class and couldn't talk (but she did manage to answer her phone which I found humorous) and after much convincing, she told me that her mother knew about everything and I could talk to her and she gave me her address.

I googled the address and quickly made my way over to talk to Mom. I had Jennifer follow me in case someone shot me because it was a really bad neighborhood. Mom worked in the office of the apartment complex. I went in and nicely talked to her and convinced her that she didn't want "those kind of people" (dumb criminals) talking to her daughter. She was very nice and I gave her my phone number, figuring she would never call me back.

The next night, while I was in Florida, I got a call on my cellphone from Mom telling me that she had checked around, and gave me the criminals name and told me she had talked to his mom and his mom found all the stuff he had bought in a bag with the cell phone. By Sunday, with the help of the police (my Bedford police friend and his brother that works for the department that was working on Jennifer's case) the criminal was in the Tarrant County jail.

Funny how things work out, but her purse was found on the side of the road in Bedford by my Bedford police friend, and at that time, he didn't even know who it belonged to. She ended up getting everything back except some gift cards she had in her wallet.

We don't know what happened to the criminal. With my super sleuth techniques, we did keep up with his stay at the Tarrant County hotel, where he stayed for over 2 months. I am guessing that he didn't have bond money. He was charged with burglary of a habitation.

I ended up skipping the reception and graduation so I could finish my detective work and go to the mall, but made it for the dinner. When duty calls, you just have to get your priorities straight!