9 Men, 5 Women Plead Guilty in Burglary Cases

Nine men and five women pleaded guilty Friday in Pasadena Superior Court to conspiracy and burglary charges in connection with what prosecutors say was a band of Polish Gypsies who went around the country stealing jewelry and silverware from the homes of elderly people.

Two others pleaded guilty a week ago, leaving four of the 20 arrested last March with cases still pending. Nine of the defendants were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport with $100,000 worth of stolen goods in their suitcases, authorities said.

All but one of Friday’s defendants were sentenced by Superior Court Judges Gilbert C. Alston and Jack B. Tso to 16 months in state prison. Fatima Gilonka, 29, was given a six-year term because she also pleaded guilty to numerous individual burglaries.

When the Gypsies were arrested last March, Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael J. Grosbard said, investigators thought they had caught a long-sought Gypsy, Danuta Rezuta, who is wanted for numerous burglaries. “But it was actually Fatima,” Grosbard said. “She looks a lot like her.”

The defendants worked out of Chicago and New York, Grosbard said. They were suspected of burglarizing homes in many parts of the country, including Southern California.

Prosecutors said members of the group would drive into neighborhoods and look for elderly residents outside homes. While one woman asked for directions or a drink of water, another female member of the group would sneak inside and steal valuables.

Their use of aliases and Polish names made the lengthy preliminary hearing a tangled affair involving numerous attorneys and translators. The hearing took several months and had to be held in Alhambra in order to find a courtroom large enough.

“It took a lot of intelligence work to put this together,” Grosbard said.

Victims who testified at the preliminary hearing often had trouble identifying the defendants because of poor eyesight. Many of them lost family heirlooms.

Because individual identification by witnesses was so difficult, Grosbard said, the cases against 13 of the defendants were largely circumstantial--using airline records and motel registers.

The guilty pleas came during a pretrial hearing.

Also contributing to this report was staff writer Craig Quintana.