Hoping for some help here Ags -

My future in-laws' house in West Des Moines, IA was burglarized this past Saturday night. They were at a funeral two hours from home when they got an alert from their home camera system that people were in the house trashing it and stealing from them.

They smashed the back door window to get in, smashed picture frames looking for cash, pried up flooring and dug into walls looking for safes, and ripped through mattresses looking for hidden valuables.

They took numerous items of financial and sentimental value. They took the only remaining memories of their youngest son who passed years ago. They also took all the jewelry, which I think was of cultural significance to her family, that my fiance was supposed to wear for our wedding celebration this coming May.

Her parents are first-generation immigrants who worked their asses off to earn a house and a good life for their kids and these bast@r3s smashed up their American dream. The only person I've ever wanted to hunt down more than them was Osama Bin Laden.

I am hoping that you know someone who can help the Urbandale police find the two men who broke into my future in-laws' house. The Urbandale PD FB post has a video of the men looking through items in the house. Any help is greatly appreciated. Let me know if you need any additional information.

https://www.facebook.com/UrbandalePD/posts/1719769078065354?pnref=storyHelo

If you have friends or relatives in the Des Moines area, please forward this link to them.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Staff, sorry for the cross posts. Just trying to hit as many eyeballs as possible.

I've got a feeling the OB will come to a solution very quickly given some of the resources available. Hope they are found quickly and punished severely.

Edited for me being a over reactive fool

Got it. Sorry, I'm unfamiliar with the outdoor board and it's LE ways. too much time reading boards where that GIF is a sarcastic reply!

Appreciate that explanation, and any and all help that can be offered.

I emailed all the major news outlets yesterday and several of them have started running the story.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2017/10/17/home-security-camera-shows-urbandale-burglars/772243001/

I've been scrolling through a Facebook search like crazy today. Several "similar" faces, but none that I'm super confident in yet.

In

Surveillance Van said:

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Got it. Sorry, I'm unfamiliar with the outdoor board and it's LE ways. too much time reading boards where that GIF is a sarcastic reply!

Appreciate that explanation, and any and all help that can be offered.

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OP... Check out this this thread for better reference for Bazooka Joe's post. This was some MIGHTY FINE sleuthing by some regulars that post here. (and quite entertaining for the rest of us mere plebes)

https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2890927

Poster of this thread is an OB regular and runs a pawn shop (or several?) in the Dallas area. Let's just say the results of that thread should result in Brando sending Dallas PD an invoice!

Oh, and before I forget!

IN!!!

Ear bud? Third person on watch outside?

in!

CS78 said:

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Ear bud? Third person on watch outside?

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I had this same theory.

This one is going to be rougher. There is no license plate or vehicle described here. At least on the pawn shop deal, we had something to go on.

I hope they find em, and lock em up, so they can steal from others in the pen!

looks like george zimmerman

Update:
Fiance's uncle is a LEO and has said these guys don't appear to have hit any of the Des Moines databases. There is a strong assumption that these guys are from out of town. They're hoping the FBI will let them use their database.

If these guys are out of towners, they could from other Iowa towns, or even from another state. Kansas City is only about 2.5-3 hours away.

Any thoughts on branching out my search to other cities is greatly appreciated.

As a previous poster said, all we have to go on is a face, which makes this search really tough. At this point, it seems it's best left to whatever LE entities want to be involved. But I'm not too thrilled with that answer. I want to know what else I can do.

Does anyone else in the neighborhood have cameras that might have caught these guys vehicles?

Not that I know of. I was pushing my fiance pretty hard about checking with neighbors on other streets, etc. She said the cops already went around and checked with all those folks.

Their house is on the corner, which limits the amount of nearby neighbors, and frankly makes entry and exit pretty easy.

Pull up to curb on the major thoroughfare which is basically along the property line and jump out, car pulls away. Break in and leave, car pulls up to the same spot and you're off.

You mentioned the family was away at a funeral. One angle to work is who had knowledge of the event and the fact they would be there. This gets tougher if there was an obituary in the paper that anyone could have seen and linked to their house, though.

Very similar situation happened to my family 15 years ago. Grandmother had passed away and my mom was in a local bank branch sorting out financial details, closing accounts, transferring large sums of money, etc. She noticed at the time that the person she was working with was acting very strange, was gone with personal docs for long period of time, etc. Two days later our house was burglarized (I was home and the perps scattered when I came into the room they were rifling through). Coincidence on the bank thing? Maybe. However, never underestimate the potential for inside jobs at places we normally trust and think about any recent transactions, conversations, or other tipoffs that could have made their way to bad actors who would jump at the opportunity to take advantage.

I second what AK suggested. I find it very coincidental these *******s came in for a long period of time during the day. Somehow, they had to know your family was going to be gone.

If the family was listed I the obituary as "survived by" all the dirt bags needed was a news paper.

As for surrounding towns... Council bluff