We'd bought our house in June, 2007, in a little town called Murray Hill, population 630. It's a bedroom community built on the rolling hills of an old potato farm in the early 70s. Fences are banned, contributing to a more collegial atmosphere. Rather than chat with my neighbors over the fence, we mosey out in the middle of the undulating greensward between our homes. No one really knows where one property ends and another begins.
Murray Hill for a brief period of time had it's own little private police force even though the worst crime in these parts was when someone's dog left a pile of Lincoln Logs on someone else's lawn. The private police force was quickly voted out when it became clear the only thing the officers were doing was ticketing residents for rolling through the stop sign.
The place was considered so safe that many people kept their garage doors open and even left their back doors unlocked. That is, until recently.
That's why it was so shocking when, on a July Sunday evening two years ago, The Loved One and I were aroused by the sound of a police helicopter overhead. Murray Hill Pike was teeming with citizens carrying flashlights and holding back dogs straining at their leashes. One neighbor who's a Jefferson County Sheriff's deputy rode his bicycle up and down the pike wearing flip-flops, a T-shirt, cutoffs, and his holstered service revolver.
I asked my new neighbor Captain Billy what was wrong. "Ah, some little son of a bitch broke into somebody's house," he said. "The woman left her purse near the window and the kid musta saw it, broke through the screen, reached in and took it."
The Loved One and I chuckled. It was as though we were now living in Mayberry.
Ever since then. I'd been hearing about the Burglar Who Was Terrorizing The Area. Word circulating through the crowd at Dick's Pizza was that people were beginning to shut their garage doors and lock their back doors. It wasn't quite the reaction Chicago had when Richard Speck was on the loose for four days in July, 1966, but it would do for a small town.
Then one night last week as I sat at the bar at Dick's enjoying a diet cola, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Mayor Judy. She's actually the garbage commissioner of the adjoining town of Goose Creek but she gets a kick of me calling her mayor.
"Didja hear?" Judy exclaimed. "They caught the burglar!"
Suddenly it was as if a cloud had been lifted from over Dick's. I could have sworn there was merriment in the air. Everybody started talking at once.
Here's the story as Mayor Judy told it: "Yeah, they caught him. Just a kid from down near Westport Road, you know, where it's not so nice. They got him on 61 counts. He's been doing it for years. He says he was doing it to support his family's drug habit. He doesn't do drugs himself. He wasn't hurting anybody, just reaching inside most houses to grab money or a purse."
Later, I caught the story on the local news. It seems the lad, 22, was less than superlative as a desperado. Toward the end of his reign of terror, he would swipe keys from some houses and then drive the victims' cars home. When the cops started finding the stolen cars in the same neighborhood, they figured they knew where he lived.
One night last February, he broke into a home in St. Matthews, sat in the living room, turned on the TV, and ordered some cable porn. He sat there for more than an hour hoping the residents, who were upstairs sleeping, would come down and shoot him. He was tired, he later told the police, of his life of crime.
The kid got tired of waiting for the residents to come down and put him out of his misery so he walked outside and hailed a cab to take him home. He paid the fare using money he'd grabbed from the house.
He's in custody now. Murray Hill, Goose Creek, Barbour Meade, and the other villages of the East End are now safe. Still, I don't think people are going to be leaving their back doors unlocked again.
