Burglars on the Job

If you worry about your home being burglarized, you might want to take a look at this interview with a burglar who gives some advice about where to hide your valuables. His obvious answer: “at the bank.” But he’s got a few other pointers too, including:

1. If you do keep cash in the house, leave a little of it where the burglar can find it, in the hope that he’ll think that’s all there is.

2. Leave visible a list showing that all your valuables are tucked away in a safe-deposit box.

3. If you have kids, consider hiding cash in their rooms: they’re too messy for a burglar to bother with and burglars assume that parents wouldn’t take a chance of hiding money where their kids might find it.

If you’re looking for more information on how burglars think (short answer: “not much”), take a look at Burglars on the Job, a pretty fascinating book by Richard T. Wright and Scott Decker.

To be sure, there are some pretty crafty burglars out there, like this silver thief I once wrote about, or the jewel thief Alan Golder, a.k.a. The Dinnertime Bandit. But not crafty enough: the silver thief is in prison now, and Golder was recently arrested in Belgium. The silver thief once burglarized a home in New Jersey, stealing all the silver but pointedly leaving undisturbed a pile of cash — as a flip-off to the New Jersey detective who’d been tracking him. The thief just wanted to let the cop know that it was him, the silver connoisseur, who did the job and not some random burglar who’d stoop to grabbing a few bucks.

(Hat tip: Skrzypek Mateusz)