Cat Burglar on Prowl : Lido Isle Thefts Worth Quarter-Million Dollars

A sophisticated cat burglar has struck 14 homes on luxurious Lido Isle since January, carrying away as much as a quarter-million dollars in jewelry, according to Newport Beach police.

Investigators say the burglar always enters through unlocked second-story windows or sliding glass doors that are relatively easy to reach from the ground. He strikes in the evening when residents are downstairs eating dinner or watching television.

He specializes in jewelry but in some cases has taken small amounts of cash when it was handy.

Sometimes he steals nothing, but in one burglary he got an estimated $100,000 worth of jewelry, much of it antiques, said Dan Holub, the detective investigating the case. “He’s been pretty successful,” Holub said. “He’s not ransacking. He’s very neat. This guy is so neat, a lot of the victims don’t discover the crime until maybe the next day.”

“Not a piece” of the stolen jewelry has been recovered, Holub said. “I’m a little surprised that the jewelry hasn’t been showing up in pawn shops. But if he’s a sophisticated burglar, he may be selling it out of state or at a diamond exchange.”

Holub said the burglar was seen once, perhaps twice. A witness who saw him trying to enter a house could say only that the burglar seemed to be male, “small in stature, probably shorter than 5 feet, 9 inches, maybe less than 150 pounds,” Holub said. “That’s all we know.”

The burglar seems to be concentrating only on Lido Isle, a mile-long island of expensive houses connected to mainland Newport Beach by a single bridge. The most recent burglary there was last Saturday.

“I have been in contact with a lot of other (police) departments, and so far no other, in state or out of state, is reporting a similar problem,” Holub said.

He said the same burglar may have struck a house in the Dover Shores district of the city, but investigators are not certain.

The burglar has avoided any pattern in his method, thus making it more difficult for police to trap him, Holub said. “He’s burglarized on every single day of the week--no certain day or certain hours. He’s very difficult to work. He doesn’t hit us often enough that we can successfully work a surveillance or stakeout.”

Police have notified residents of Lido Isle that they should lock their upstairs windows and doors. The burglar has never forced entry, Holub said.

“The only problem, you know, is it’s getting hot, and people leave their windows and doors open,” he added.

“Because this person is not the knock-you-over-the-head type, people in general have not been as concerned as if he was a mugger,” Holub said.