Breaking News! Mysterious car burglaries solved … or not?

Police claim to have made a breakthrough in the mysterious car burglaries
case in Stadskanaal. As you might remember a wide range of different
car brands and models where opened without a trace and goods were
taken from the cars. And the police had no idea what tool or technique
was used by these crooks.

The stadskanaal police today claims to have found the answer. A twenty
year old drug addicted male was arrested. Police believe he is the
brain behind this intriguing case. The answer to the question how he
did it is a little ehrm … sobering. His modus operandi was simple:
He got on his bicycle and drove around town trying to find cars that
accidentally were left open and let statistics do the rest. It is a
fact not all cars are closed, and he based his ‘attack’ on nothing
more then just trying to see if a car was left open. That is it…

pliesie is je beste kameraad

Or is it? Three different sources have recently shown me a picture of a
mysterious tool. Police is trying to find out what type of tool it is
and who makes it. It seems to have something to do with car openings…
Unfortunately I can not show you the pictures since all sources do not
want me to publish it. Sorry about that :(   *update10 Nov. : mystery solved!

Update: Dutch SBS6 TV had an item about this (click here WMV 17 Mb)

15 Responses to “Breaking News! Mysterious car burglaries solved … or not?”

  1. Barry says:

    Update: The police got on to him when a private individual’s security
    cameras caught the suspect on tape while tampering with a car. Armed
    with this video police managed to arrest him when he attempted more
    car burglaries later on. The twenty year old suspect is going to be
    charged with at least 55 cases of car burglaries as well as nine cases
    of arson.

  2. Josh Nekrep says:

    Seems a reasonable explanation to me. The only puzzling thing is this: When the police were investigating this, wouldn’t they have asked people if they left their car unlocked? Presumably some would not remember that they had, and some would claim that they hadn’t even though they knew they had, but surely enough of them would have said “Yeah, I always leave it unlocked” to come to some reasonable conclusions. No?

    -j

  3. Barry says:

    Josh: Not if something was stolen from your car and you try to file it with the insurance company. I guess …

  4. Jeroen says:

    Hi Barry,

    Offtopic. You seem to quite often mix ‘where’ with ‘were’ using the former where the latter should be used. I’m no linguist, here’s what I know on this
    * ‘where’ denotes place;
    * ‘were’ denotes past tense; verb

    After stumbling upon this in various articles on your blog I thought someone should let you know. I tend to have similar problems because I write phonetically, or something, I’m not sure.

    Since I couldn’t find your e-mail and didn’t know where to post I tried to post this here. I didn’t have JS on and got an error, lost my text. I lost my text the other day when I typed something elsewhere at an article and didn’t fill in my e-mail.

    No offense, love your blog, and thanks for your work on the voting machines. Groetjes!

  5. Barry says:

    Another update: on the SBS6 video a couple of the victims are
    interviewed. Two of them deny to have left the car open. Henk van
    Klinken is one of them. (quote): “Absolutely no way. My car was brand
    new, just two days old, I would never leave that open”. Trijn Brower
    is another victim. (quote): “I am sure I locked my car… I always lock
    my car and then the back door of my house”. The local police officer
    who is interviewed a little later claims they have investigated the
    case thoroughly and the case is clear and closed. I tend to believe him.

    http://blackbag.toool.nl/video/sbs6.wmv (2 minutes 17 Mb)

  6. Barry says:

    Jeroen: Thank you, I needed that 😉
    A friend of mine pointed this out to me too, but not were it went wrong.
    I hope to keep this blog free from errors like this.

    Thanks for letting me know!

  7. Nick Zakowski says:

    Barry, you have a great sense of humor indeed 😉 .

  8. EricM says:

    Hrmm I see insurance companies reversing their claims to the car owners in reneging the payouts. Once the get the whole story from the police and the car jacker.

    Since I feel a lot of their policies state, no payment to gross negligence.(Ergo leaving your car unlocked)

  9. Barry says:

    EricM: I heard the insurance companies did not pay anyway. They
    already assumed no damage meant no pay …

    Unless something spectacular comes up this is my last update on this
    issue. The local paper ‘dagblad van het noorden’ has a video online
    with more background info. The suspect drove tens of kilometers each
    night cruising for cars that were left open and had valuables in them.
    One of the victims has a point when he says it is highly unlikely six
    people in one small street all left their cars open by accident. Some
    of the other victims just admit they probably did leave their cars open.

    Article: http://www.dvhn.nl/nieuws/noorden/article1062190.ece?secId=22
    Video: http://stream.nxs.nl/asx/flexdot/autokraker

  10. James says:

    “It seems to have something to do with car openings…
    Unfortunately I can not show you the pictures since all sources do not
    want me to publish it. Sorry about that”

    This is a very unusual stance to take for you and the site. Are you saying there is a new car opening tool on the market? Surely if the answer is yes it should be brought into the public domain asap so the threat can be understood and dealt with…

  11. Barry says:

    James: That is why I did mention it, but this is all I can do for the
    moment. I am not sure there is a threat. Nobody seems to be able to
    identify the ‘tool’ or even confirm it actually is opening tool….

  12. James: If you tell me something on the condition that I don’t pass it on to anyone else, I’m ethically bound not to pass it on to anybody else.
    Even ignoring the ethical issues, I think we want people to keep telling Barry about cool things — and there’s no better way to shut up a source than by burning them.

  13. Ramiro says:

    Hi, Barry.

    I think I can help you to clarify what kind of tools can open a car “clearly”, without any evidence.

    Give me a email to send you some information and some videos.

    Ciao!

  14. Eric Konings says:

    Ik weet toevallig welke “sleutel” door de politie is gevonden, kijk voor afbeelding op de volgende site: http://www.comap.nl zoek op inregelsleutel 135.
    Iets afkomstig uit de loodgietersbranche dus.

  15. Barry says:

    Eric: Wow … you cracked the code! It is indeed the mysterious ‘tool’ the police was looking for. Time to update my blog 😉