OXNARD : Police Say Burglary Report Was a Hoax

A Navy petty officer who claimed that his Oxnard home was burglarized while his family was away on Christmas vacation fabricated the crime after he threw a drug party and trashed the house during his wife’s absence, police said.

Burdette Starcher, 35, was arrested Monday on suspicion of insurance fraud and filing false reports, police said.

Starcher reported that, sometime between Dec. 22 and Dec. 30, burglars stole $70,000 in family belongings after breaking into the rented Norma Street duplex, eating food from the pantry and leaving behind stacks of dirty dishes and empty beer cans.

The ransacking astounded the suspect’s wife, Amanda Starcher. “As soon as I walked inside I was more or less in shock,” she said last week. “I went to call the police, but both phones had been stolen.”

The Christmastime theft of the Starchers’ car, electronics equipment and virtually all their worldly belongings also prompted an outpouring of support from the community, including offers of a free hotel room, rental car, food and baby clothes.

Oxnard Police Detective Don Elliot, in investigating the crime, said he learned that Amanda Starcher and the couple’s 1-year-old daughter left to visit relatives in Ohio several days before Burdette Starcher joined them.

After discrepancies arose in various interviews, Elliot said Starcher acknowledged having a drug problem. Police said Amanda Starcher, who like her husband is a petty officer at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme, had no knowledge of a drug party at her home or of any attempted insurance fraud.