Car Thief ‘s Booty Comes to Rescue

I finally got Casey Wade Eaton’s stuff out of my car last month, .

My car, a 1981 Datsun, had been stolen from my West Hollywood parking garage on my birthday, May 18.

Detective Brian Hawksley, who handles auto thefts at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department--and my first police contact--assured me that 85% to 90% of stolen cars are found within 48 hours, or a week at most.

He filled me in on car thievery, even predicting where my car would turn up--in the police lot at LAPD’s Ramparts Division, having been found abandoned after someone’s joy ride.

Hawksley also shot down my notion that thieves target new cars. Old ones are less conspicuous. And thieves love Datsuns, he told me.

Hawksley’s prediction came close. A week later, my car was recovered with Casey Eaton in it. The call came at midnight from Officer Michael Montoya at Ramparts Division, who’d just arrested him after spotting him on Arlington “driving shaky.” Eaton’s companion got away.

“I hope you’ll press charges,” said Montoya.

You bet I would.

Montoya said the car was in “fair condition.” Granted, it wasn’t the skeletal heap some poor souls find at Viertel’s, where recovered cars are impounded. But Eaton, and possibly friends, had done their bit to cause me major headaches: radio and air conditioner pulled out, back seat ripped, one fender dented and every lock busted. I had a hole the size of the Mississippi for a dashboard and no money to fix it because I had not insured my 11-year-old car for theft.

In return, however, in some twisted kind of justice, the car was full of booty--clothes, fur-lined moccasins, a Hawaiian Surf Club T-shirt and a nifty Sierra Club backpack crammed with men’s toiletries in black designer travel cases. There also were what I supposed to be tools of the thieves’ trade: a hand drill, two tire jacks, tape and a foot-long screwdriver.

Detective Jim Breen sounded pleased when I called him with news of the loot in my car. It might serve as evidence tying Eaton to the crime.

But picking through the pile, Breen shook his head. “He can say he was just g-riding.” This, I discovered, was police parlance for joy riding.

There are three levels of car theft, I learned: grand theft auto (GTA), joy riding and receiving stolen property.

All are hard to prove, but GTA, the most serious offense, is the hardest. While officers automatically book anyone found in a stolen car as a GTA, without proof the case is likely to be prosecuted as joy riding, a misdemeanor.

We might assume that Eaton, having been found driving my car, was caught red-handed, but to convict him of GTA, with which he was charged, it had to be proven that he was the one who had stolen it and that he had intended to deprive me of it permanently.

He could have bought or borrowed my car from the thief. If he admitted to taking it but said he took it only for joy riding, this would only constitute intent to temporarily deprive me of my car.

Eaton would get six months in County Jail for joy riding, Breen predicted.

For the next few days, infused with amateur detective zeal, I searched the loot for evidence that Eaton had stolen my car. At the bottom of the Sierra pack, inside a small spiral notebook labeled “Streez,” next to what I speculated was a stealing list--”3 Fender AMPs & 4-5 Kolor (sic) TVs”--I found two phone numbers scrawled, one for “Monica,” one for “me.”

Monica wasn’t home. Tremulously, I dialed “me.”

“Hi, this is Streez,” a taped voice answered. “For those of you who don’t know, I’m down here at Parker Center, busted for GTA.”

Any sympathy I’d had for the kid from Georgia immediately evaporated. A thief with voice mail?

He had identified himself--the man in jail was the man who’d left his notebook in my car. Was this evidence? I took it to Breen. No, it wasn’t.

Proof would be “an altered registration . . . the plates changed. He has to show intent to deprive you of it for good,” said Breen.

I called Streez again.

The message had changed. “Monica, where are you?” he asked. “I really miss you.”

Soon, Eaton and I would have our day in court. I’d received my subpoena and called the deputy district attorney for instructions. I learned that my testimony was to be limited to two questions: Do you own the orange ’81 Datsun? Did you give Casey Eaton permission to drive it on the night of May 15?

After paying an $8.50 parking fee, I appeared at Temple Street Night Court. Sessions begin at 2 p.m. and I waited--one, two, three hours and into the night.

Finally, Eaton was brought in--a slight, white-faced kid with a prison buzz cut and handcuffs, responding in a barely audible mumble to questions. Then he was taken out again.

Finally, at 8:15, back came Casey with the public defender. The prosecution had accepted a plea bargain; the charge was now joy riding. “Guilty, no contest,” said Eaton.

I never had to testify. Across the aisle, I picked out Officer Montoya amid the bored group of cops who’d been there since morning. “Six months,” he said.

“Two years,” the judge said. I was told later that the sentence was stiff because Eaton had a prior record.

I asked for the form to apply for a witness fee and left. The man caught driving my car never even knew I was there.

I put what I supposed to be Streez’s stuff away for months.

Then, this fall, I got a call in the pre-dawn Sunday hours from my friend Tom in Idaho. “My house burned down last night,” he said. “I lost everything.”

I rounded up the Sierra pack with its dozens of bags, and filled it with all the men’s accessories and tools. I shipped it to Tom. It was a start.