PALMDALE – Lt. Cory Kennedy of the Palmdale Sheriff’s Detective Bureau contacted the Bee to set the record straight on a recent burglary case his department solved.
The burglar who broke into Naughty By Night Adult Toys and Smokeshop twice in December 2013 was caught through the detective work of Palmdale Sheriff’s deputies – and not through a store employee’s efforts to push forensic experts to collect evidence at the scene, as reported earlier.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested the man, and Lt. Kennedy later checked with the deputies to see if any other burglaries had been committed in that area. As they quickly discovered, the dental office break-in was similar to the adult toy store burglary.
“I had noticed that same day that Naughty by Night had been burglarized – about a week earlier,” Lt. Kennedy said. “And the way he had got in, breaking a window with a brick, was similar to the guy they had in custody that morning.”
After studying the Naughty by Night surveillance video from the break-in, Lt. Kennedy recognized how the burglar “looked an offal like the same guy that was arrested that morning.”
Detectives followed up on the similarities and found that the suspect was wearing the same “really funky-looking” vest during the burglaries. Detectives not only found the identifying vest when they conducted a search at the parolee’s house, but “he copped out to doing both of the Naughty by Night jobs,” Lt. Kennedy said.
And there were others.
“We found out he had also done another burglary at the Carl’s Jr. there on the corner. He copped out to that one, too,” Lt. Kennedy said, explaining that when he broke into the fast food place, he took the time to make himself a chicken sandwich.
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The break-ins were perpetrated by a “burglar of opportunity,” according to Lt. Kennedy, and not a violent gang-affiliated individual.
“Basically, this guy was a one-man crime wave,” said Lt. Kennedy, revealing that 19-year-old Henry Abarca recently plead guilty to three counts of burglary and received four years in jail.
Lt. Kennedy said that fingerprints and DNA evidence never came into play with the arrest of Abarca, noting that such forensic evidence normally takes much longer to process.
“This case was solved by the work of the early morning patrol deputies and the detective that looked into it as soon as we got the break we needed,” he said. “Unless it’s a homicide case, we are not going to get results from anywhere between three to six months.”
Lt. Kennedy said the way it works is that if they suspect someone they have arrested has committed a burglary – and if prints at the crime scene are available, “We call the crime lab and give them the name of who we’re looking at, and they will do a hand search. Other than that, fingerprints that are obtained at a crime scene are thrown into a database and are circulated – and we may not get results from anywhere between three and six months. DNA is about the same way.”
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Lt. Kennedy said that it usually takes a “good break” to solve a case like this – or the public’s help, but he doesn’t know how the other story originated from the Naughty by Night employees.
The Bee called Naughty by Night to address the discrepancy in stories. According to Victoria Alba, who works at the Palmdale shop, forensic experts did show up to collect evidence at the store, and that is what she believed led to solving the case.
“I saw the woman here taking fingerprints,” Alba said. “She came in after the fact – after Alex called. That’s when she showed up. Yeah, they got the fingerprints.”
Lt. Kennedy explained to the Bee that the lab experts probably did show up, but it will still take a few months to register a hit in the system.
“I’m only disappointed they didn’t give us an opportunity to say what really happened,” he said, noting that he had written a commendation to his captain for the detective that investigated this case.
After calling back to the store, Alba told the Bee that her co-worker, Alex Poulin, did not wish to comment on the story, saying that “he is not going to argue with the cops about what went on.”
Calling back to the store on a separate occasion, the Bee was told that the store’s owner was not available for immediate comment.
