Stolen goods returned

By Erin McGrath and Aaron Lee
Published: April 16, 2008

Wilson White stopped his wife, Tammy, in the driveway at their Roseland home on March 12 to warn her that she would find a ransacked house inside.

What she wouldn’t find was more than $20,000 in belongings that included 20 years worth of jewelry, nine guns, and pillow cases the couple said were used to cart their stuff away.

On April 9, Wilson’s birthday, Nelson County Investigator Mac Bridgwater walked the couple around what was a veritable flea market of loot seized by authorities from a Fluvanna County home on April 4.

Among the baseball cards, necklaces and coins spread out on folding tables at the Fluvanna County Sheriff’s Office, Tammy found several watches. At another nearby table Wilson eyed two of the couple’s guns. He’ll have to wait longer until he can put those guns in his new safe.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be comfortable, but we’ll definitely be more aware,” Wilson said of the burglary.

Throughout the afternoon, dozens of victims like the Whites wandered around everything from leaf blowers to 8-track tapes.

Authorities believe two Fluvanna men, Mark Wayne Shifflett and Ronald Lee Morris, are connected with more than 50 burglarized homes in an eight-county area. Both men are being held without bond at the Central Virginia Regional Jail on gun and drug charges. Authorities said they expect more charges will be filed.

Investigators from sheriff’s offices in Fluvanna, Bath, Nelson counties, along with the Albemarle Police Department helped with last week’s arrests. But the number of authorities involved expanded quickly after crime reports began matching up the seized property with other locales.

At least five burglaries in Nelson County can be connected to the seized property. In Amherst County, at least two have some connection, authorities said.

Andy and Jenny Waldeck were at work on March 4 while cameras, guitars and jewelry were stolen from their Arrington home.

Four days before the burglary, the couple had returned from a trip to India.

Jenny’s jewelry box had been returned to her before April 9, but the couple drove to Fluvanna on April 9 to return some jewelry they found mixed in that wasn’t theirs.

“Maybe everything but a few watches,” Jenny Waldeck said of the jewelry she’s recovered. But, “Considering how much was in there, it was amazing what was left.”
While looking over a cache of other items, Jenny bee-lined toward two of her digital cameras.

“Show me India,” Andy said as Jenny picked up a camera that had 500 photographs from the couple’s trip. “Yeah, that’s it man.”

And then there was the sword Andy saw nearby.

“This is a family heirloom,” Andy Waldeck said. “I didn’t even realize this was missing.”

Nelson’s Bridgwater and Amherst Investigator Gerald Higginbotham later recovered Andy’s two bass guitars.

Becky Gearhart, of Amherst, realized immediately that among the things stolen from her Amherst home on March 19 were the Easter candy she’d bought for her two boys, and her 16-year-old Pomeranian, “Abbegail.”

But it wasn’t until she returned to her house five days after the break in, and had finished showering, that she realized someone had stolen her hair dryer and curling iron.
“Ugh, flat hair,” Gearhart said of her thought at that moment.

And while the Easter candy is still missing, she and the Pomeranian were reunited on April 9 in the Fluvanna sheriff’s office parking lot.

Investigators Higginbotham and Bridgwater had tracked the dog to a home in the Scottsville area.

A couple there had spent nearly two weeks caring for the dog after a friend said it was found it by the side of the road.