Ep. 253: This Country Life - Thievery and Miscommunication

stories to share. Thievery and miscommunication, skullduggery is afoot, and I'm on the case of a missing game camera and a ransacked bar bait barrel. Just when I thought I'd retired from investigating crimes, they pulled me back in. I cracked this case with the help of a friend, and maybe, just maybe I made some who ones too. I'm going to tell you all about it, but first I'm going

to tell you a story the Church Burglars. I'm dipping back into the old law enforcement case files for a lesson about thievery and believe it or not technology On this week's episode. It involves a couple of ne'er do wells that operated in three adjoining counties in southeast Arkansas back in the mid nineties. These cats went on a

Christs free where nothing was all limits. They met in a reform school in Saint Louis, Missouri, whereas juveniles they served time together, each having been sentenced for stealing, but because of their ages, instead of going to prison, they were sent us to a few months of what was described as refined and supervisious. They were admitted as wards of the state of Missouri, and they couldn't leave the

grounds and had to attend daily classes and such. But it was actually only slightly above being grounded and sent to your room, now, a punishment I always thought was kind of dumb. My room was where all my stuff was, all my books, my hunting magazines, my knives, and games. A far more legitimate punishment would have been to sent me to the utility room. There wasn't anything in there I was interested looking at, or place to sit down.

In my room, there was also a window that I could slip out of, and I did on multiple occasions. I know y'all are shocked, but you shouldn't be. My adolescence was an exercise and feudal attempts to thumb my nose at authority, resulting in a litany of consequences. And repercussions, all of which I learned valuable lessons from Eventually. Now

I told you this before, but it bears repeating. Miss mary Anne Mobley, my sixth grade teacher, a lady that was in her first year as an educator and got me and a fellow sophistic get equally determined to stick it to the man every chance we got in her home room as students, And when she'd heard that I'd become a police officer, she always said, I always figure Brent would be involved in law enforcement, but I thought it would have been from the other side. Well, she

had plenty of reason to believe that. Anyway. Back to the bulls from Saint Louis. They were each released on the same day, and as eighteen year olds, they were free to go where they wished. The money they were released on got them a bus ticket each and they wrote it to Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Pine Bluff they bummed around for a while, sleeping where they could lay their heads and paul in anything they could steal for a little, spending cash for essentials like cigarettes and maybe

a little food. These two were presentable young men and were well versed in manners in etiquette, and they could put the biggest cynic of all at ease with simple conversation. Neither one of them was over five seven, they had no facial hair, and you could stick both of them in a toasac together it wouldn't have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. There were a couple of runs, and they used it to their advantage. They talked to an older fella into letting them test drive a little compact

car he had for sale in his yard. Several hours later, when he called the Sheriff's department in Pine Bluff, it wasn't even to report his car stolen. He was worried that they broke down somewhere and needed help. That part of the store still makes me mad, and it's been

thirty years ago. They took advantage of him. They headed south, and it didn't stop until they found an old deserted house in Drew County where they could get in and out of the weather and hide their little crime move the car house, neither of which were visible from the main road. It had been deserted for years and was owned by descendants who lived out of state and never

visited the property. There was no local caretaker, And if you didn't know there was a house there, it would have been hard to know there was one even standing in the front yard. It was that grown up, and these clowns were lucky enough to have stumbled upon it. They started making round stealing everything they could get their hands on, and they specialized in rural churches. Now you have to understand that a lot of small rural churches don't employ his staff or even have a full time preacher.

The pastor could be the local fire chief, or a school science teacher, a farmer, or a full time preacher that works on a circuit holding church services at different locations throughout the month. Each Sunday they'd meet at a different small community church, leaving some of the church buildings unchecked for two to three weeks at a time. They also didn't have alarm systems or security devices any kind outside of you know, maybe having a night light that

shined outside at night. Now, these knuckleheads that found the absolute easiest way to steal things and not have it reported as missing until way after they'd gone. Also, who steals from a church? Even though I was in the business to witness the terrible things people would do to one another. There were some things that folks just didn't do, and stealing them from a church was one of them, or so I thought. Now, that's a bob sled straight

to the home of the original eternal flame. As far as I'm concerned, they were hitting one rural church after another in a three county chrimes free that was driving us all nuts. There was no pattern to what they did, and they were doing it mostly during the middle of the week, when the call volumes were normally slow and the fewest deputies were on duty. Now, these counties wouldn't have had more than one or two cars patrolling to

cover the whole county. You get one disturbance or an accident somewhere, and that left no churches out in the county getting checked until the call was cleared. You're bound to be asked, well, what in the world could they have been stealing from these little old churches out in

the middle of nowhere. PA systems. Nearly all of them had some type of public address system or musical instruments, or freezers with food that was kept on hands for events, the latter being something that the church would have given them had they asked for it. But they didn't ask anybody for nothing. They took it, and what they didn't take they tore up. Nearly every church they broke into.

They did some kind of damage where there was the damage from kicking the door in, knocking out windows, busting up sinks, and not to mention the water damage that was done because of it. Now, the one thing we did have was fingerprints, So did the surround the counties on several of the burglaries. But with the state crime lab backlog with more serious and crimes that were of higher priority than a burglary, getting identified then was more of an arduous task than it is today. What they

did wasn't funny. How we caught them was mcfarlin's Grocery in the small community of Banks in Bradley County. My county was the only grocery store for about twelve miles in either direction, sitting almost exactly between Warren and Hampton, Arkansas. My grandfather delivered chickens and eggs of this old country store that had been there for way before I was ever a glint in my daddy's eye, and probably before

he was a glint in my grandpa's. It was an old store over, but with the advent of do it yourself security cameras, they bought a camera and they hooked it up to a VCR, both of which were obvious to anyone that walked up to the counter. It came with a motion detector, and even in the mid nineties, when all that was just getting to be affordable to some small store owners, it still looked out of date. The store owner discovered that they'd been broken into where

they were getting ready to open one Saturday morning. The store owner was walking around taking the inventory after they called us and we got there and he was looking and making a list of everything that was missing, and I asked him about the security camera. He said they'd cut the wires from the camera that led to the VCR. I looked on the counter and there laid a pair of wire cutters that the burglars had taken off a shelf of the store that hung right behind the counter.

Right in front of the camera. Was the camera in the VCR working, I asked him. He said, yeah, as far as he knew, but they cut the wires. Well.

Asking if they'd taking the tape, and he said, you know, I didn't check with a gloved hand I pushed the e jeck button and out popped a VHS tape, and we took it back to the Sheriff's office, put it in a VCR, and watched as two want to be cat burglars walked up to the counter with ski mask on, staring at the camera and both of them raising their mask revealing their faces to get a better look at the security system, before one of them grabbed the wirecutter off.

The shif smiled at the camera and waved goodbye as he clipped the wire to which the video fit stopped. Apparently they thought that was all they needed to do. It was not. We sent their pictures out to the surrounding counties and lo and behold, they were already in jail for shoplifting and Drew County, the county just east of Hours. Several stores and twenty some odd churches had been burglarized by these clowns over three counties, and when I interviewed them, I asked them, how do you boys

sleep at night? One of them looked toward the floor or the interview room before he answered. I thought, Yep, his conscience was finally catching up with it. I could tell he was putting some thought into his answer, and then he looked up at me and said, well, if it was raining, we slept in the car. That roof of the old house we broke into leak like I saelv and the only room in there that didn't link we had full of the stuff we stole from all them churches. Well, at least he was honest. They went

away for a long time. That trip that they took to the penitentiary wouldn't be described as refined supervision. And that's just how that happened. So what in the world has me talking about thievery and miscommunication? I'll tell you someone stole my game camera and wrecked the bear bait. I had been counting on that spot to give me an opportunity to poke a hole and let all the air out of a big old Arkansas black bear. But it won't happen in that spot, not this year anyway,

And it was all one big misunderstanding. I spent the last two weeks traveling for work, going back and forth to Montana to host the Media Radio Live show, and to Northwest Arkansas for the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. Now all of that left little time for me messing with the bear bait I had going in the north central

part of the state. I was relying on my cell camera to keep up with my bait, and I had just enough time to get it set up in the barrel out right before I left for the meat eater office and bonesmen started getting pictures of the day I left and had a small bear coming in. No worries. Small bears, just like big bears, get the set of bait on their feet and when they walk away, they leave a cent trail that leads right back to the barrel for

all the other bears in the area to investigate. I was getting coon picks at night, and after the second return to the small bear of the day after his first pictures, all the pictures stopped. Now no bears coming in, isn't that unusual? But no coon's coming in night after night? That is I figured something had happened to my camera since I didn't have it in a bearproof cage. I assumed a curious little bear or maybe a different one,

and knocked it off the tree. The signal was weak at best in that hollow where my bait was, and it wouldn't take much at off to lose it, especially if a bear knocked it to the ground or chewed it up. It's happened to me before in that same area a few years ago. Now, this was my first time coming back, and I had high hosts for a good bear, since it was an area no one else hunted and I was the only one with permissioned the bear hunt there. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one with

permission to be there. I got home from the nine days away and as fast as I could, I made the two hour drive up through the mountains, check the camera and see what caliber bear I had coming into the bait, I didn't think i'd ever get there. When I finally did and unloaded my side beside, the last couple of miles into the base seemed to take the longest. The old cable that was stretched across the lane where I'd gone in with my host had been moved before.

When we were in there, it was barely above the ground. I had driven over it easily at the urging of my host, who had permission to hunt there. You'd been hunting there for several years and got permission from absentee land On. Now this was different, but there was no phone service to contact my friend unless I drove back two miles of my truck, or if I crossed the cable and walked on up the mountain to my bait where I had sent a text out to my brother

Tim today. I set the bait out almost two weeks ago. From there I could get an answer. But now, had I known what I was about to find, I absolutely would have went back to my truck, but at that time I was still under the impression I could be there. I stepped over the cable and up the mountain. I went every step I took, reminding me why I love the river bottoms and flat ground so much, but also knowing I was getting closer to checking my bait and

see what happened to my camera. Finally, to the top and over the other side, I walked down the trail to my bait, and my barrel was what I saw first. It was on its side, with the lid removed and nearly all the bait gone. I left it strapped with ratchet straps topping bottom to a gum tree. It's not unusual for bear to pull a barrel off a tree, but they don't usually toat the straps off when they do, and the straps were nowhere to be seen. Oh, I immediately smelled a rat and I looked over to where

I'd hung my moultree. I saw that it was gone, something else bears don't usually do. I've had them chew on cameras and absolutely destroy them, but seizing them for evidence and taking them back to their bear office, well, that ain't ever happened, not to me anyway. So what

do you do in a case like that. Well, Brent from back in the day would have been mad as a mashed cat and declaring war on any and everything I could kick, punch or cuss at until I found what was going on, and maybe even more so afterwards. But that wouldn't have done any good. It would have been different if it had been on public land. Anything you leave laying around, hung up, parked, or even locked on public land as subject to disappear. Like my dad always told me and I repeat to my kids, a

lock keeps an honest man honest. It doesn't matter to a thief like the two I talked about in the story at the beginning of this episode. A lot to those folks is merely a hurdle to get across to get what they're after, which is anything of value the lock is supposed to protect. But this wasn't public land. It also wasn't in a place where a lot of folks had permission to be, so the suspect list was

going to be pretty small to begin with. Now you add the fact that someone had raised the cable to keep me out, had my spider sense tingling from the get go. Maybe I was the one trespassing. I called my host to granted me his past to bait the spot and explained what had happened, and he was floored, embarrassed, and like me, he lived more than an hour away. He vowed to find out what was happening in the following day, and I drove the two hours back to

the house more disappointed than mad. I was hoping I hadn't done anything wrong, and I also felt bad for my friend who so graciously invited me to hunt there. He's an absolute pillar of his community, in a well respected career professional who retired from education with an exemplary record. It wasn't like I had met some random guy at a gas station and he offered to take me into a place that had no history with and said go get him. He was also a landowner in that vicinity

and had been hunting those hills for years. And the next day, after he drove up there and talked to some locals made a few calls, he in turn called me, Now, y'all want to guess who was trespassing? Go ahead, I'll give you a second to the side. Times up. No one one was trespassing, and he had my camera. Now, I didn't see it the day before when I was there, but the person who removed it from where I'd hung it at the bait side hung it on the opposite end of the cable from where I'd driven across it

when I first established that bait. It was there when I tried to go in, I just didn't see it. The person that dumped my barrel and moved my camera leased the land from the landowner they had hunted it before, and quit, moving off to another property. Afterwards. My friend was given ridden permission. The landowner didn't tell the least folks about my friend, and my friend didn't know the old crew had moved back and just leased it again.

They came up to the property the scout for deer season found a fresh bear bait and camera that wasn't theirs. Now I'd had probably done the same thing. My friend explained our side of the story. They invited me to bear hunt there. Now I thought it was very gracious of it, and I'm gonna take them up on it next year. Now, some may call this hunt a bust if you score it by the bear, I'm not gonna have an opportunity to hunt this year, and I'd have to agree if that was the criteria. But I ain't

looking at it like that. I was granted an opportunity to make a decision on how I reacted to something that went against what I had set out to do. Even cost me some money. Very bait ain't exactly cheap. And I may not live to see another bear season to use what I'm gonna have to store up from this hunt. I may not live to see Breakfast. You may not have lived here this podcast. Nothing is guaranteed. But I've come to the part of my life that

smart folks arrive at sooner. But it's come upon me in the last few years that everything is a test and you have the capacity to pass it. For film and any opportunity to pursue the things I would like to do and make new friends in the process. That's a win for everybody. They invited me to come back and hunt, and I'm going to. I'm going to get to know those guys a little bit better. Thank y'all so much for listening to this country life and bear Grease.

It is truly a blessing to hear from so many who enjoy the content, and I do my very best to respond to all the messages. Keep sending those stories into my tcl story at the meat eater dot com, and remember they can be about anything related to your country life, even if it happened in the city limits.

The Meat Eater Radio live show I hosted the last two weeks are available on the YouTube podcast channel, and there's a new one coming out every Thursday the twelve pm Central Time, with different hosts each week until next week. This is Brent Reeves sign it off. Y'all be careful