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Ag teacher learns lessons when house burglarized
Dec 31, 2009 (Cleburne Times-Review - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Like most first-time robbery victims, Barney McClure has learned his lesson.
"We'll get a gate and a safe," said the Cleburne resident and CHS vocational ag teacher. "And we've talked about getting a security system."
Those steps will help prevent a repeat of the theft that occurred at his County Road 805 residence.
They won't, of course, turn back the clock.
On a Tuesday when the house was unoccupied, someone broke in through a wooden door, scoured several rooms and lifted a laundry list of items that included a Nikon digital camera, serial number 30006613, valued at $569, Dell laptop computer, gold antique pocket watch, two passports, a box of blank checks, a diamond bracelet, a diamond necklace, a butterfly gold necklace, a gold promise ring, a sterling necklace, a baby diamond ring, two jewelry boxes and a Cleburne High class ring.
Johnson County Sheriff's Office detective Jody Augsburger is investigating, but the trail is cold.
The crime occurred Oct. 27 and was reported to authorities last week.
That's when McClure realized he and his family had been victimized.
"I had been to Austin for a meeting, and my wife had gone to eat supper with the kids," McClure said Wednesday. "When she got back, she noticed a window pane out. The pane wasn't even broken. It was in the hallway. We thought the dog had gotten up on the door, and the pane had come out."
The McClures saw little else amiss at the time.
"There were no cabinets open, not a lot out of place," McClure said. "There was no mud on the floor, even though it had rained. Whoever did it was pretty careful.
"It wasn't your typical theft where things are dumped out on the floor. Whoever it was didn't take guns or the television or any electronics other than my wife's laptop. They left my laptop. I don't know if they were in a hurry or just looking for stuff they could carry. We have serial numbers on our guns, and most of them are in a safe. We do have a .22 rifle in a closet. It wasn't taken."
He and his wife discovered the burglary on Dec. 24, McClure said, when they were preparing to attend a function at Cleburne High.
"I told her to get her camera, that she might want to take some pictures," McClure said. "The camera was gone. So was her laptop. Then other things were found to be missing."
The checks were in a bathroom cabinet, the passports in the Nikon camera bag.
"Not too smart," McClure said. "We've been lucky this kind of thing hasn't happened to us before. We've lived out here 30 years. We're pretty accessible. We live a half mile off a road. Whoever broke in the house could not have been seen from the road."
He said his brother, Larry McClure, who lives nearby, had a break-in a month before.
"He has a gate on his place," McClure said. "Tracks were found going out his back gate but not in the front gate. He felt it might have been somebody on foot."
McClure said he has no idea who burglarized him.
"It was a crime of opportunity, as they say. It wasn't necessarily someone who knows us. It could have been someone scoping things out. They could have walked up to the door, knocked and decided nobody was home. You never know."
He's bothered by the crime, also that someone entered his house without the family's permission.
"The fact that someone was here ... we don't feel quite as secure as we did before," McClure said. "That's disturbing. Some of the objects we lost have definite sentimental value. They're irreplaceable. The laptop can be replaced. The camera can be replaced."
He said he'd like to see the thief or thieves prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
"I would imagine that's our plan. We don't know if they can be caught. Hopefully, they'll mess up."
The McClure family is known for its benevolence. It probably would have come to tyhe aid of a culprit in need of a buck or a meal ... had the culprit just asked
"We know the economy is tough," McClure said. "If they'd needed money, we would have given them money. But there were things taken that were irreplaceable."
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