Posted on 08/24/2011 11:40:21 PM PDT by lowbridge
A 12-year-old amateur sleuth beat police at their own game by cracking the case of who ransacked her late great-grandmother's home last month.
Jessica Maple honed her detective skills at a Junior District Attorney camp in Atlanta this summer, sponsored by the Fulton County DA's office.
Police told Jessica, and her mother Stephanie, that whoever robbed the home would have had to have entered with a key, since such large items were stolen and there were no signs of forced entry, Jessica said.
But the curious 12-year-old knew something wasn't right. Her parents were the only two people who had keys.
She asked her mother to take her to investigate a few days later.
"I went to the side of the house and looked at the garage," Jessica told ABCNews.com
"The windows were broken. There were finger prints by the glass. Everything was ramshackled. There were clothes everywhere."
Jessica Maple, 12, is an amateur sleuth who beat police at their own game by cracking the case of who ransacked her late great-grandmother's home last month.
Not only did Jessica find a crucial clue police missed, but she took it one step further by visiting a pawn shop down the street.
Sure enough, she found her great-grandmother's furniture for sale.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling kid!
Unfortunately she said that the police had not made an arrest yet. The reason for this is that it is no longer a crimincal case. By law, it is automatically demoted to a civil case when the family confronted the burgler directly. When you intervene in a police investigation (regardless of how slow they are) and have direct interaction with the criminal, you legally place the police out of jurisdiction for the case. I know, I made this mistake before.
>>This kid was no Encyclopedia Brown<<
Holy MOLEY what a reference!
I read every single Encyclopedia Brown book cover to cover. He and “Danny Dunn” were my heroes in my childhood!
Thanks for the great memories that rushed in :)
“Junior District Attorney camp”
wow, this sounds like a bad, bad idea
it also sounds like the worst summer camp ever
Unless, I suppose, you’re fortunate and armed enough to make a citizen’s arrest of the burglar, calling the cops right away and turning the culprit over to them. Assuming there’s a live burglar to turn over....
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