The Thief

There is nothing more frustrating than being the victim of a theft. When your car is burglarized or something is stolen from your yard, you are suspicious of everyone, your fear is contagious, and to make matters worse, less than 20% of property crimes are ever solved. 

In the early 2000s, Greenwood and Keithville were pummeled with burglaries and thefts. I was working a case at a business on Old Mansfield Road with no leads. I called the manager and got a list of his suppliers and employees, and one name caught my attention. 

Brittany Fisher (not her real name) was a secretary at the business when the burglary occurred but had since been laid off. She was familiar to deputies in area 6, mostly because she worked off and on at various mom and pop stores, but also because it was rumored she helped her husband Bradley (not his real name) burglarize businesses in Shreveport, Greenwood, and Keithville. As far as anyone knew, Bradley did not break into houses, but he didn’t mind taking stuff from porches, out buildings, yards, and especially businesses.

As the secretary of the Keithville business that was burglarized, Brittany was a person of interest. I went to the Fisher’s home and picked up Brittany and brought her to the substation for an interview. She was nervous, fidgety, and a known drug abuser, but despite that, she did well in her interview until I mentioned her husband.

The goal of the interview was to get Brittany to give an alibi for Bradley on the night of the burglary. She had no trouble giving her own alibi, but when it came to Bradley, she didn’t know what he did at night because he regularly left home around 10 pm after the kids went to bed. He told her he needed to unwind at a bar or casino. She said he always left home in his gray work van. 

When we finished the interview, Bradley was waiting for Brittany in the parking lot. I walked up to his van and asked him to come inside for an interview. He said he would, but he couldn't that day because he had an appointment. He promised to meet me the next day, but he did not show up. That evening, I called him and set up an interview for the the next day. When he arrived, he was not alone. He had his attorney with him.

If there were any doubts about Bradley’s involvement in the burglary I was working, the presence of his attorney erased them, but I did the interview anyway. Despite his attorney’s presence, he gave me the same alibi Brittany gave him. He told me he worked full time but still found time most nights to frequent bars and video poker casinos. His attorney ended the interview, and they left.

Every detective has feelings about cases and suspects but without evidence, feelings mean nothing. All I knew for sure was Bradley Fisher was a good suspect, but I never solved the Keithville burglary.

Normally, suspects lie low when there is pressure from police but not Bradley. The burglaries on the south end skyrocketed. Businesses around Julia Francis Drive and West Antoine Loop were particularly vulnerable. One business had tools and four wheels from a hot rod stolen. The wheels, Crager Mags, were unique because they were attached to a vehicle with locking lug nuts. The owner lost the key to the locks, so he used a torch to cut the wheels off the car. Instead of five lug holes, each wheel had four regular holes and one large one.

While looking into that burglary, I drove by Bradley and Brittany’s house and saw four wheels stacked up on their driveway. Feeling sure the wheels belonged to the recent burglary victim, I went to the office and wrote a search warrant for Bradley’s house. I sent the warrant to the District Attorney’s Office, but the Assistant District Attorney would not approve it. He said I did not have enough information. The next day the wheels were gone.

One night at 7 pm my doorbell rang, and when I opened the door, Bradley Fisher was standing there. I stepped outside, and he told me he ran out of gas in my driveway. There was a gas station one hundred yards from my house, and Bradley could have easily parked his van on the side of the road, walked to the station, and gotten gas, but instead, he came to my front door. I found it strange but got my gas can from the shed and poured half a gallon of gas in his van.

I have put gas in vehicles that have run out of gas many times, and it always takes a while to get them started because the gas has to be pumped from the tank to the carburetor or fuel injectors, but when Bradley turned the key on his van, it cranked up immediately. 

The next day, I called the Shreveport Police Department and got a list of burglaries they were working near Keithville and Greenwood. One of the burglaries was at a business on Mansfield Road, half a mile from the parish line. It was this business, outside my jurisdiction, that held the key to solving the mysteries of burglaries in my area. 

I went to the business and spoke to the owner. He had some tools and tiles stolen in the burglary. The ceramic tiles were large, expensive  tiles used in decorative mosaics. The owner described a gray van that was seen backing up to his business the night of the burglary. I asked him if he knew Bradley Fisher, and he did.

A couple of mornings later, I was on my way to work when I heard patrol dispatched to a burglary at an electrician’s shop on West Antoine Loop. When I arrived, I spoke to the owner. He showed me where a burglar pried open his front door, went inside, and stole the tools of his trade. That was the bad news. The good news was whomever pried his front door open pinched his hand between the door and his crowbar and dripped blood on the door and threshold.

I called CSI to collect samples of the blood and dust for fingerprints. The fingerprint dusting was useless because it appeared the burglar wore gloves, but I sent the blood samples to the crime lab. This was the third burglary of a business in a matter of days, and the burglaries didn’t stop.

Later that week, someone broke into the parking lot at the School Board Warehouse on Bert Kouns and Julia Francis Drive. The parking lot was filled with maintenance vehicles. A dozen trucks were burglarized and were missing hand and power tools. Each tool was marked as belonging to the school board. The loss in stolen items and damaged vehicles was in the tens of thousands of dollars. 

Detective Jay Long and I had been working together for 13 years. I gave him a run-down of my case, and he gave me some advice: “The only way to catch some people is surveillance.” 

I made my cases through interviews and evidence. I didn’t like surveillance because I wasn’t good at it, and I liked to be home with my family at night, but Jay offered to go on surveillance with me.

We set up surveillance at Bradley and Brittany’s house at 10 pm on a Sunday night. Within an hour, Bradley’s van pulled out of his driveway, and we followed at a safe distance as he took a direct path to the burglaries. He drove past Julia Francis Drive by the School Board Warehouse and made a U-turn at the railroad tracks. Two miles later, he made another U-turn. It looked like he was going home, but when he got to his house, he drove past. A mile later he pulled into an all-night gas station with video poker machines. We waited nearby, but when he didn’t come out for an hour and a half, we called it quits.

The next night, Bradley came out of his house and got in his van around 11 pm, and we followed him along the same route as the night before, but this time, instead of making a U-turn, he went to the a subdivision near I-20. He stopped in front of a white house, got out, and went inside as we watched from down the road. Twenty minutes later, he got in his van and left. When we drove by the house, I wrote down the address. I called it into Dispatch, and they told me Miles P. Hanover, Sr (not his real name) was the homeowner. I looked over at Jay.

“Well, well, well…”

“What’s up?”

“You remember the burglary I got the other day from the Cycle Plex on Highway 80? The owner told me Miles P. Hanover, Jr. was a former employee and thought he could be involved in the burglary.”

“Interesting…”

We thought Bradley stopped at Miles Sr.’s house to satisfy his unquenchable drug habit. We followed his van to a nearby truck stop with a casino, waited a couple of minutes, and ended the surveillance.

On the third night, Bradley pulled out like clockwork at 11 pm. We followed him along the same path as before, but this time he turned on Julia Francis Drive, an industrial park that runs a half mile before coming to a dead end at Lake Hays, a small lake behind the General Motors plant. Three of the burglaries I was working occurred on Julia Francis Drive. 

We drove past to avoid being seen and pulled over where we could watch the intersection. We lost sight of Bradley's van. When he didn’t come out for twenty minutes, we drove down Julia Francis looking for him. The van with its high beams shining immediately pulled out from the parking lot of a business directly in front of us and blinded us with its headlights. Bradley was waiting for us. 

While waiting for patrol to back us up, we had Bradley step out of the van. He claimed he was fishing at the lake at the end of the road, and before leaving, he pulled behind a business to urinate. When a patrolman arrived, I walked around the business looking for signs of a break in. It was a large warehouse that had been closed for some time. I found an unlocked door and went inside, but it was empty.

We searched Bradley's van. It was full of paint, paint brushes, shovels. rakes, an ax, and even a couple of fishing rods. We expected to find drugs in the van, but there was nothing. Frustrated that we were coming up empty handed, I went back and looked at the rakes and shovels and found markings identifying them as belonging to the victims of a recent burglary. They didn't amount to much financially, but they were enough to arrest him for possession of stolen goods. We towed his van and took him to jail.

Bradley bonded out of jail the next day. He went straight to the junk yard, paid the towing and storage fees on his van, and was back in business. 

Miles Hanover Jr. was named in the theft of six brand new motorcycles at the Cycle Plex two miles away from his father's house. I interviewed him about the stolen motorcycles a month earlier, but he denied being involved. 

Two nights before we arrested Bradley, Bradley stopped at Miles' father's house. It was more than a coincidence. Miles Jr. lived off Highway 169, six miles away. Miles Jr. was on probation for a drug charge. I called his probation officer and met her at Junior’s house along with K-9 Deputy Kevin Dunn. We searched his house and garage but found nothing. While Kevin ran his dog through the house, I searched the shop behind the house where I found a power drill with Caddo School Board stamped on it. When I came back inside, Kevin was sifting through the chimney clean out where his dog alerted and found a 200-gram rock of cocaine the size of a racket ball. The street value was well over $10,000. It was a felony and a violation of Mile’s probation. I charged him with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and possession of stolen things.

I called Narcotics to go with me to Miles Hanover Sr.’s house in the subdivision near I-20. While the narcs spoke to Miles Sr., I noticed four wheels and tires stacked up in his yard. On each wheel, one of the lug nut holes was enlarged where it was cut off a vehicle with a torch. They were the wheels from the burglary on Julia Francis Drive. Inside the house, we found a couple of School Board hand tools. Miles Sr., who was in his mid-seventies, told me Bradley Fisher brought the wheels and a large number of tools to his house. Miles said a man who lived around the corner known as Croc picked up most of the tools and put them in his dad’s shed at the house at the end of the street. 

We went to the house, and I spoke to Croc’s mother. She gave us permission to look inside the shed. When I opened it, I found the tools stolen in the School Board Warehouse. Each one was marked. I also found a motorcycle stolen out of Shreveport. The recovery was worth thousands of dollars and took several truck loads to retrieve.

While we were searching, Croc and his father showed up. Both men told us they were storing the tools for Bradley. I arrested them for possession of stolen goods.

I got a warrant to arrest Bradley, but before serving it, the Crime Lab called and said the DNA from the blood on the door at the electrician’s shop came back to Bradley. It was good news, but I had to verify the match by getting a warrant to swab Bradley for DNA. I went to Bradley's house and arrested him, took him to jail, and got a DNA sample from him. The verification sample was confirmed later that week, so I returned to the jail and added a burglary charge to his arrests. 

Bradley had been in and out of jail all his adult life, but he never spent more than a few months at a time in jail. Due to his history, this time, he stayed locked up for several years, and burglaries on the south end of the parish dropped dramatically. After he got out, I ran into him at Back to School Night at Walnut Hill School where our kids had the same teacher. 

Bradley seemed to get along well with his wife and kids, but he and Brittany separated and divorced, and his life spiraled out of control. The last time I saw him was in 2015. A patrol man noticed his van parked on Colquitt Road in front of a business after midnight. The patrolman checked the business and found the Coke machine had been broken into. He called for a canine, and the dog found Bradley hiding underneath the building. When he refused to come out, the dog bit his leg, and he surrendered.

One of the many ironies of his story was that he worked in the construction business every day, showed up on time, and did his job well. His boss spoke highly of him and was gravely disappointed when he went to jail. The hub of all Bradley’s problems was his addiction to drugs and alcohol. As far as I know, he was never able to over come his drug and alcohol dependence.