At 3:15 on a recent morning, Carol Lastoczy awoke to find a dark figure peering through an unshuttered window into her family room.
On her sofa, where she had fallen asleep earlier, Lastoczy lay frozen, terrified, watching the man. She was hoping he couldn’t see her.
Lastoczy was apparently looking at an elusive and highly wanted burglar.
“I guess before me, they hadn’t had anyone see him in action,” she said. “This is as close as I guess they had gotten.”
For more than 20 months, the man police describe as a cat burglar has been preying on the northwestern metro area. With five more new cases this week, metro-area authorities now believe the cat burglar is responsible for as many as 180 burglaries in Broomfield, Arvada, Golden, Westminster, Thornton, Lafayette, Louisville and unincorporated Jefferson County.
He strikes only at night, mostly between midnight and 4 a.m. He prefers houses that back up to greenbelts or open space. He is adept at climbing fences. He sneaks in through an open window or sliding-glass door on the ground floor, rather than forcing his way in. He goes straight for a purse or a wallet, taking cash – sometimes as little as a dollar – and nothing more.
And always, he is gone before police can catch him.
Most of the time, he is gone before people even realize they’ve been robbed.
“In so many of these cases, the victim said the following morning, ‘I heard that. I thought I heard something,”‘ said Jacki Tallman, with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators from several jurisdictions have begun to share information in the hopes of nabbing the burglar. Patrol officers are extra vigilant during their sweeps through neighborhoods. Officials are urging people to protect themselves and report anything suspicious.
And still, the cat burglar has remained as slippery as his name suggests.
“It’s safe to say that I’m frustrated he hasn’t been caught yet,” said Thornton police Detective Brent Mullen.
The cat burglar holds an iconic place in popular culture, dating from Cary Grant’s refined gentleman criminal in “To Catch a Thief.” People love that which is dangerous and bold, said Joseph Sandoval, a professor of criminology at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
“We are fascinated by a certain amount of derring-do,” he said.
Yet, the reality of this cat burglar undercuts the romantic image. Far from being debonair, this cat burglar, from his sketch, looks barely past his teens. He does not outsmart people’s best security systems; rather, he preys on people’s trust and feeling of safety within their homes and quiet neighborhoods. In many ways, law enforcement officials say, he is successful only because people make it easy for him. Homeowners are leaving open the windows or sliding-glass doors that the cat burglar crawls through. They are leaving purses and wallets in plain sight for him to nab.
“Nearly all of these incidents are crimes of opportunity,” Tallman said. “Most of these incidents are completely avoidable.”
Officials are urging people to shut and lock downstairs windows and doors. People should also make sure to close blinds and curtains at night. And if they hear or see anything suspicious – be it a curious light out in a field or a rattling on the windows – they should call police.
Lying on her couch, Lastoczy could see only the man’s outline. He was about 5 feet 10 inches tall. He had short hair. He looked athletic.
The figure walked quietly along the rock outside toward Lastoczy’s master bedroom, just a few paces away.
Crunch. … Crunch. … Crunch.
He looked inside, upon a sleeping Mike Lastoczy, Carol’s husband. The stranger began to turn back toward the family room.
Carol flew into the bedroom and jumped on the bed, waking Mike, who bolted to the open window.
“Hey!” he yelled outside at the phantom figure, then raced to the family-room window and looked outside.
Emptiness.
“I couldn’t chase him; I didn’t know which way to go,” Mike said. “He was gone. He was so fast.”
Carol called police. Within moments, officers swarmed the couple’s south Arvada neighborhood. They cordoned off a large perimeter. They had search dogs.
Soon the dogs caught a scent, Mike said, and they were off.
The night the burglar stalked the Lastoczy home, he is suspected of burglarizing two other Arvada homes and trying to burglarize two more. The dogs ultimately turned up nothing.
Police were, for the moment, still chasing just a dark figure.
“We want to catch this guy,” said Thornton police Cmdr. Steve Ritter. “Historically, these things have a tendency to accelerate. If he’s caught inside a residence, there’s no telling what he might do. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
