Author: Sarah Dunlap
A five-week crime spree ended Friday, March 30 when five campus safety officers apprehended a red-haired woman and her accomplice, both suspected of stealing the money and possessions of 26 Occidental students. The officers handcuffed the suspects from the third floor of Stearns Hall at approximately 10 p.m., after they received a phone call from Alex Kearns (first-year) and Christina LeBlanc (first-year) notifying them of the red-haired female’s whereabouts.
Director of Campus Safety Holly Nieto said that based on the thief’s statements, the thefts were most likely drug-related. Furthermore, when officers searched the suspect’s car they found an array of drug paraphernalia, including bent-back spoons, needles and lighters. The perpetrators quickly sold all stolen property, and Nieto said that the woman did not attempt to get fair-market value for the stolen goods. Instead, she sold them for “literally pennies on the dollar.”
“We’re led to believe that this was how a drug habit was supported: stealing money and property, using the money, selling the property,” Nieto said. “Fifty dollars for a laptop. That kind of thing.”
After a 9 p.m. phone call directing Campus Safety to Erdman Hall, officers subsequently moved to Chilcott and ended up in Haines, where they received Kearns’ and LeBlanc’s phone call. At approximately 9:15 p.m., the red-haired woman and her accomplice had knocked on LeBlanc’s door, asking for a girl named Emily.
“We had heard from someone else that she had been asking for Emily,” LeBlanc said. Because the stranger matched the description of the suspect and asked for Emily, the two women immediately called campus safety. “Once we closed the door, we put two and two together,” Kearns said.
After promptly reporting to Stearns, campus safety officers handcuffed the woman and her male accomplice. “They were really, really fast. One of the officers had already been in Stearns, and it didn’t take long for the others to show up,” Kearns said. “It was maybe ten minutes after we called that they had her arrested.”
Although Kearns and LeBlanc said that the suspect appeared to be a member of the Occidental community, she was visibly inebriated and seemed confused upon her arrest. “She looked exactly like an Oxy student. It would have been really easy to think she goes here,” LeBlanc said. “A lot of people were saying that she looked homeless, but when we saw her she looked like a normal person, but she looked really drugged out.” Kearns agreed, underscoring the suspect’s complacency upon the arrest. “The way she was so calm when they had her in handcuffs, she looked pretty out of it,” she said.
Campus Safety attributes 26 burglaries to this suspect, whose name they cannot yet release due to the ongoing investigation. When the suspect entered Emily Marmaduke’s (junior) room in Haines uninvited, she spoke with the woman, who struck her as a harmless and friendly person. Later that day, Marmaduke discovered that her wallet was missing, though she was able to cancel her credit cards before anybody used them illegally.
“While I was listening to music and reading, she literally barged into my room. I immediately asked her what she was doing, and she retreated to the hall, apologizing that she was looking for a friend whose name was also Emily and had seen my name on my door and gotten confused,” Marmaduke said. “She was extremely friendly and easy to talk to. We talked for a while, [with] me trying to figure out who her friend might be.”
Marmaduke said that a man accompanied the woman, though at the time she did not give him extensive thought. “She also had a guy following her, who looked like a college student as well. I didn’t talk to him at all, he just kind of stood awkwardly and followed us.”
In addition to Oxy, the suspect has recently stolen money and property from several nearby schools, including Pasadena City College, Glendale Community College and California Institute of Technology. Nieto hopes that the Oxy community has learned a lesson from these troublesome experiences.
“We’ve put an end to this, [but] it worries me that people go ‘whew, that’s over with,'” she said. “We’ve just got to be vigilant all the time. We’re a beautiful open campus, and it’s very inviting to all the good people as well as the bad.”
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