Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
Posted on 08/03/2004 6:59:15 PM PDT by Mark
Los Angeles Daily News
Steal cop's ashes, be hunted down
By Dennis McCarthy
This is one of those stories that will either make you laugh or just shake your head in disbelief that two burglars could be this audacious and dumb.
They broke into the Granada Hills home of Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Laura Van Eyk on June 29, and stole some jewelry, a couple of computers, and a gun owned by her longtime boyfriend, Jack Gray, a veteran LAPD detective.
Oh, and they took one other thing that made them public enemy No. 1 with every cop in the Valley.
They took Jack's ashes.
"Just before he died this April, after a 1-year-long battle with melanoma, Jack said he wanted to be cremated," Van Eyk said Monday. "He left it up to me to do what I wanted with his remains.
"I took the ashes and put them into separate little plastic baggies. We made 'Jack Packs,' so friends and family could leave some of Jack in his favorite places, like swimming with the turtles in Hawaii.
"I thought maybe the burglars thought they were stealing drugs or something in the baggies. But it was Jack."
When word spread throughout the Devonshire and Van Nuys divisions about what had happened, Laura's phone started ringing, with police officers promising her they'd do everything they could to get Jack's ashes back.
"He was one of those police officers everybody loved and admired because he was always so upbeat and friendly," she said, recalling her 46-year-old boyfriend, who was named Detective of the Year in 2003 at Van Nuys Division.
The idea that a couple of burglars had stolen the ashes of one of the Valley's most-decorated burglary detectives didn't sit too well with the rank and file.
At Devonshire Division, which handled the investigation, Sgt. Bruce Vermaat assigned 12 officers to a detail to find Jack's ashes.
"Whoever had stolen them knew they were the ashes of a cop," Vermaat said. "They had also stolen Jack's police ID and some pictures."
The first break came from a message on Laura's answering machine the day she walked into her house and realized it had been burglarized.
The call was from Robinsons-May, saying someone was trying to use one of her credit cards. But by the time Laura called the store back to have security arrest the woman, she was gone.
But a surveillance camera caught a grainy picture of her, and this is what the detail assigned to recovering Jack's ashes focused on, Vermaat said.
"We beat the bushes with that photo, and took a chance that the woman might be a prostitute working along the Sepulveda Boulevard corridor," he said.
They eventually arrested Deanna Landsman, a 33-year-old woman known as "Goldie" along Sepulveda Boulevard. She has been charged with two felony counts of receiving stolen property.
She told police that two men had given her the credit cards to go shopping. On July 29, exactly one month after the burglary, police arrested Joshua Portillo, 26, and Michael Fernandez, 31, on charges of residential burglary.
Vermaat said Fernandez took police to a storm drain on Arleta Avenue in Pacoima where they had dumped Jack's ashes and police identification two weeks earlier.
"One of our officers crawled into the storm drain and began sifting around," Vermaat said. "We didn't think they'd still be there, but pretty soon he found a torn piece of Jack's police ID, and then the plastic baggies with his ashes.
"I called up the station and told them we'd done it -- found Jack's ashes."
Laura says she had all but given up hope of getting them back.
"I thought the burglars probably dumped them in a trash bin somewhere, so when I got the call last Thursday night to come and get them I was ecstatic," she said.
"There were 20 officers, men and women, standing there smiling and looking so proud. This meant a lot to them, and to everyone who knew and loved Jack."
Laura's planning a "Jack's Back" party in the next few weeks to hand out the recovered Jack Packs to his friends before something else happens to them.
"If you knew Jack, you'd know this about him," she said. "He would have loved this party."
Dennis McCarthy's column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
Dennis McCarthy, (818) 713-3749 dennis.mccarthy@dailynews.com
What can I say? I don't want do say d*mn, 'cause you know, a dead guy's involved, but I'd urge these people to find a resting place for Jack, ASAP!
"Jack Packs"???? LOL! "Just Damn" indeed.
Strange story of the week..
Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
Note to self: Tell family not to put me in baggies and leave me laying around after I'm gone.
Don't do the crime if you can't do the time----you can take that to the bank.
But feel free to freeze my head if it will make them feel better.
I told my son to have my left hand bronzed in the one finger salute shape (it flipped off william j. clintoon in person), put it on his mantle and have the rest of me "toasted". Then put me in an old coffee can and put me out with the rest of the trash.
I want to be cremated and have my ashes mailed to Hillary Clinton.
As the daughter, granddaughter and sister of retired cops - I think I will leave this one alone.
I like the bronze one-finger salute idea in stumpy's #8 above.
Oh jeezuz LOL
...and that's the name of that tune.
Hmm. Would it be possible to be bronzed so as to be permanently mooning toward Chapaqua? No, probably too impractical.
If they let me have a couple of Jack Packs, I'll send them to Daschle and Brokaw.
hehehehe
Warning to idiots who steal cops' remains: Stupidity can be hazardous to your health.
Yeah no kidding.
Personally I want my friends to put me on ice with the beer in the hold and then use a wood chipper to make chum while they fish!
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