1-26-10
Second Walpole Burglary on Old Keene Road
By Chuck Bingaman
Burglars broke into a house at 88 Old Keene Road in Walpole yesterday between 10:45 and 11:00 a.m.—the same house that had been burgled on New Years Eve—but police were unable to respond quite quickly enough to nail them at the scene.
Walpole Police Lt. Michael Paquette said this afternoon that the owners, Caldwell and Alice Marks, had installed audible burglar alarms systems after the New Years burglary, and those systems must have spooked the burglars today after they had pried open a back door and kicked in a cellar door.
“We answered the alarm as quickly as possible,” according to Paquette, “driving down Rt. 12 as fast as we safely could with siren and lights flashing—and arrived less than eight minutes from the time the alarm went off. But they were gone. We did recover some physical evidence, however.”
Yesterday’s attempted break-in follows a New Years Eve burglary in which thieves broke into the house by the same crawl space and cellar doors. In that case a snow plow driver employed by the Marks’s noticed two sets of footprints in fresh snow early on New Year’s Day and the Marks’s caretaker found that the house had been ransacked.
Walpole Police responded to the New Year’s Day call and found two sets of footprints leading to the crawl space and cellar door. No alarm had been installed at that point, and the burglars had rummaged through drawers and cabinets throughout the house. A considerable amount of antique silverware and valuable silver serving pieces were taken in the first burglary along with keys to the Marks’s house and cars.
Walpole police were unable to find fingerprints from the first burglary, but they did recover other evidence. Their investigation is ongoing.
“I’m very glad that the Marks’s took our advice to install audible burglar alarms after the first burglary,” Lt. Paquette said yesterday afternoon.
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