Posted on 08/24/2011 11:40:21 PM PDT by lowbridge
A 12-year-old amateur sleuth beat police at their own game by cracking the case of who ransacked her late great-grandmother's home last month.
Jessica Maple honed her detective skills at a Junior District Attorney camp in Atlanta this summer, sponsored by the Fulton County DA's office.
Police told Jessica, and her mother Stephanie, that whoever robbed the home would have had to have entered with a key, since such large items were stolen and there were no signs of forced entry, Jessica said.
But the curious 12-year-old knew something wasn't right. Her parents were the only two people who had keys.
She asked her mother to take her to investigate a few days later.
"I went to the side of the house and looked at the garage," Jessica told ABCNews.com
"The windows were broken. There were finger prints by the glass. Everything was ramshackled. There were clothes everywhere."
Jessica Maple, 12, is an amateur sleuth who beat police at their own game by cracking the case of who ransacked her late great-grandmother's home last month.
Not only did Jessica find a crucial clue police missed, but she took it one step further by visiting a pawn shop down the street.
Sure enough, she found her great-grandmother's furniture for sale.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Jessica isn't the amateur here; whoever missed this the first time is the amateur.
Then other times, they get very involved and try to set someone up, anyone, to be the perp(s).
I'm surprised they didn't accuse the girl and her granny of an inside job to get insurance money and that they were working with the thieves but turned them in because they didn't give them their cut of the pawn money.
Nancy Drew Ping*
You go Girl!
Our shop was robbed about 20 years ago and we called the cops, told them the color and make of the car because someone had seen them drive away. Told them the size and make of the tires because our son worked at a tire shop at the time and knew tire tracks. Actually found the vehicle and owner and told the sheriff and they didn’t do anything. They told us they didn’t have enough evidence to question them.
After this guy ripped off about a dozen homes and shops, they finally caught him but they didn’t take it seriously until then.
I think it was Margret Thatcher who said that the more government does things it oughtn't be doing, the less well it does the things it should be doing.
I'll betcha those coppers are all trained in diversity and political correctness, but aren't worth a pitcher of warm piss for protecting the public.
This is a prime example of what happens when folks are paid simply because they can convert oxygen into CO2. This investigator will be paid the same amount this Friday as he was last Friday whether he finds your heirlooms or plays Angry Birds all week, so guess which one he’s gonna do. No accountability and no need for production minimums means people get paid basically for just showing up! Union style. Investigating and arresting crooks costs money and is potentially dangerous while writing Granny a traffic citation is revenue positive. So if you get paid the same to get shot at as you do to eat donuts and write traffic tickets guess one gets done! To Serve and Protect my ass.
Maybe she should change her name to Miss Jessica Marple.
Leni
I saw the girl on the news a week or so ago. She was very articulate and smart. She was a breath of fresh air from so many young black kids these days. I predict she will do very well in life.
The police just look as if they are just lazy.
Some years ago our house was broken into while we were at relatives on Christmas day. Cops finally showed up. Didn’t both with fingerprints or questioning neighbors or anything. Just did some paperwork. Really no point in calling the cops if no one was hurt.
I hate burglars. I enjoy reading stories where they are shot by the homeowners.
Maybe you should ping a FReeper when you mention her! :-)
Years ago, my checkbook was stolen from my office by a security guard and he wrote several checks both for cash and merchandise.
The dumbass used his own drivers license as ID so we had no trouble in finding the perp.
The perp was a 6'5" 300 pound black, with a series of arrests but no convictions, as his grandmother was a big shot in local demonRAT politics, and she always got him off.
The cop {also a black guy}, knew the perp and really wanted to put him away.
The perp even called my home and left a threatening voice message {a real genius}.
With all this evidence, the day of the trial, the DA made a deal and let the perp walk with probation.
The cop was pissed and predicted that it would take a murder to get this scum off the street.
He was right, about 15 years later, the perp was killed in a drug deal that went bad.
This street cop really cared but the "legal system" mixed with demonRAT politics, eventually cost this thief, drug dealer and killer his life.
Cops don’t consider theft a crime.
My daughter recently had her house broken into and her TVs, computers, several guns, and other items swiped.
He got home in time to snap a cellphone photo of the thief’s pickup truck clearly showing the license plates and several identifiable items of her property in the back with her house clearly showing in the background.
The police did nothing. They told her that the thief only recently got out of prison and that he’s trying to go straight and can’t get work and besides, nobody was hurt.
This happened in a well known gambling hot spot in Nevada.
Did I mention that the cops also told her that he was an illegal Mexican just trying to feed his illegal family?
More like Keystone Cops.
I have often said that the writing on the back of police vehicles that say’s State Police, should be changed to Highway Patrol, since that’s about all it does.
The exception of course is when they dress up in their soldier outfits to make a raid on someone’s home.Last year they were sent to a home for a military man who was threatening suicide. They saved him the trouble by having a police sniper shoot him.
Mostly for Theft around here, they take a report, seldom bother to take fingerprints, and you never hear from them again. Then again why bother, as the courts just turn them loose with a stern warning.
Many moons ago, I was sitting in the left turn lane when my light turned green and I preceded into the intersection. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older Suburban come flying through the intersection in front of me traveling right to left. As he flew by, I caught a glimpse of his face and I noticed bits of rubber flying through the air in his wake. When he passed, I cleared the intersection, falling in some distance behind him and I watched as he drove at high speed around the bend and out of sight.
A few seconds later, I heard sirens and could see a couple of police cars coming up behind me, so I pulled over. As I started to pull back on to the road, I heard a few more sirens and I pulled back over and along comes a few more police cars. When they blew past me, I pulled back on to the road and continued in the same direction, realizing that all these police cars were after the guy in the Suburban. As I drove along, I could see the trail of fresh rubber in the road from this guy’s truck (apparently he had run over a deployed spike strip earlier) and then I started hearing more sirens and saw two police cars coming from the opposite direction.
As I approached the next side street, I saw a large piece of tire on the edge of somebody’s front lawn on the far side of the turn and that drew my attention to the obvious fresh scars in the pavement that appeared to be left by tire rims. The scars were making a swooping turn to the right onto the side street. So... I hit my blinker and turned in to the neighborhood.
As I slowly made my way down the older tree-lined neighborhood, at about 7 or 8 houses in, I saw a few more fresh scars in the road pulling into a driveway. The driveway led down a steep incline and off to the left to a carport behind a few trees. And there, in the carport, was the Suburban I saw just minutes earlier plowing through the intersection.
I continued down the street, and after a few blocks saw a police car speeding toward me, I slowed to a stop and waved my hand out the window. He braked and pulled up to me, rolling his window down. I told him that if he was looking for a tan Suburban, go about 3 blocks down on the left and look down the driveway and he’ll find it under the carport. He rolled up his window and sped off.
Out of curiosity, I turned around and headed back that way and the police officer was in front of the house and 3 more patrol cars were rolling up. I stopped a couple of driveways up the street where I got a good view of the police and the house and within minutes, there were 10 more police cars from the state, the county and our local town. As they went to the front door to arrest this guy, I got out and was talking with some of his neighbors. Apparently, he had been layed off from a white collar job, wife and kids left and down on his luck, we found out from listening to the police radio on a patrol car sitting a few feet away, that he had just robbed a bank.
The funny part came when they hauled him off and a few officers were all standing around and one guy came up to the guy I flagged down and was smiling and reached to high-five him and said, “I heard YOU found him! YOU DA MAAAN!” The cop had a broad grin as he turned looking in my direction and I just smiled, shook my head and left.
Are you sure it’s Maple and not Marple?
One problem with that attitude is that when things do not go smoothly during the crime, violence often results. We often hear about a murder "when a burglary went bad."
Incidentally, the fact that no force was used does not necessarily mean that a key was used. Most locks are frighteningly vulnerable to a simple technique called bumping.
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