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 become suspicious of everyone, and your fear is contagious to everyone you know. 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 businesses. His biggest MO was breaking into industrial businesses late at night.
I went to the Fisher’s house and picked up Brittany for an interview. She was nervous and fidgety, but she was known as a drug abuser and was doing good in the interview until I asked her about Bradley. Immediately her demeanor changed. I tried to get her to confirm an alibi for Bradley on the night of the burglary, but she would not. Instead, she said she didn’t know what he did because he left home around 10 pm every night after the kids went to bed and went to bars or casinos in his gray work van. When we finished the interview, Bradley was waiting for Brittany in the parking lot. I took the opportunity to ask him to come inside for an interview. He said he would, but he was late for an appointment. He promised to come the next day, but he did not show up. That evening I called him. He told me he would meet me the next day, and he did, but he had an attorney with him.
If I had any doubts about Bradley’s involvement in the burglary I was working, the presence of his attorney erased them. I did the interview, and despite the attorney’s presence, he talked to me. He gave me the same alibi Brittany gave him when I interviewed her. He worked full time as a painter but still found time most nights to frequent bars and video poker casinos. The interview was cut short by his attorney, and they left.
Every detective has feelings about a suspect’s guilt, but without evidence, feelings mean nothing. All I knew for sure was Bradley Fisher was a good suspect.
Normally when the hounds alert, the foxes take notice and hole up until the danger subsides, but not Bradley. He took the attention as a challenge. 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 car wheels stolen from it. The wheels were unique because the vehicle they were removed from had locking lug nuts, and the owner lost the key. He used a torch to cut the wheels off the car, so instead of five regular lug holes, the wheels had four regular holes and one large one.
I drove by Bradley and Brittany’s house and saw four wheels stacked up on the driveway by the house. 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 they would not approve the warrant. They said I did not have enough probable cause. I argued, but it changed nothing.
Later that week, my doorbell rang at 7 pm. When I opened the door, Bradley was waiting. He said he ran out of gas. There is a gas station a hundred yards from my house which meant he could have easily gotten gas from there. Instead, he came to my front door. I told Colleen and the kids to stay inside. I got my gas can and poured a little in his van which was parked in my driveway by the road. I have put gas in many vehicles when they’ve run out, and it always takes a while to get them started when they are bone dry, but Bradley’s van cranked up immediately. He was taunting me.
I called SPD and checked on burglaries that occurred on the outskirts of the city. One occurred at a business on Mansfield Road, half a mile from the parish line. I met the owner. He had some tools and tiles stolen. The tiles were expensive, one of a kind artistic tiles. 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. Bradley lived down the road from him.
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. The shop was owned by the father of a friend I played football with in high school. He showed me where his front door had been pried open. Who ever pried it pinched his hand between the door and the tool he used and cut himself leaving his blood behind. I had CSI collect samples of the blood, and I sent it to the crime lab.
A week later, someone broke into the parking lot at the school board warehouse located at Bert Kouns and Julia Francis Drive. The parking lot was filled with buses and maintenance vehicles. A dozen of the maintenance trucks were burglarized and lots of hand and power tools were stolen. Each tool was marked as belonging to the school board.
Jay Long and I had been working together for 13 years, several of those on the SWAT team. I gave him a run down of my case, and he told me, “The only way to catch some people is surveillance.” I made my cases through interviews and evidence, and I didn’t like surveillance because I wasn’t good at it. I am impulsive and easily distracted, and when I’m sitting around, I get caught up in a radio talk show, or pick up something to read, and forget why I’m there. Jay gave me a solution to my problem: he would go with me.
One Sunday night, Jay and I set up surveillance at Bradley and Brittany’s house at 10 pm. An hour later, Bradley’s van pulled out of the driveway. We followed at a distance. The van took a direct path to the recent burglaries. It went past Julia Francis Drive by the School Board Warehouse before making a U turn at the railroad tracks. Jay and I were surprised at how careful Bradley was being. He must have gotten scared because he made another U turn after two miles, and it looked like he was going home, but instead, he passed his house and went to a video poker casino at a truck stop. 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 about the same time, and we followed him back along the same route. This time, instead of making a U turn, he drove to a neighborhood nearby. He stopped at a house, got out, and went inside as we watched from down the road. Twenty minutes later, he left. We drove by the house, and I wrote down the address. I called the address into Dispatch, and they told me Miles P. Hanover, Sr (not his real name) was the homeowner. I looked 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 named Miles P. Hanover, Sr.’s son as a suspect.”
“Interesting…”
Bradley likely stopped at Miles Sr.’s house to buy drugs. We followed his van to a truck stop, waited a couple of minutes, and went home.
The third night of surveillance, Bradley pulled out like clock work 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 a large pond. Three of the original burglaries occurred on Julia Francis. We went straight to avoid being seen and pulled over where we could watch. We lost the van, and when it didn’t come out for twenty minutes, we drove down Julia Francis looking for him. Fisher’s van pulled out from behind a large warehouse right in front of us and blinded us with it’s headlights. We knew we were made, so we pulled him over.
While waiting for patrol to back us up, we had Bradley step out of the van. He knew us well. I hoped he burglarized the business where he pulled out so we would have a reason to arrest him. He told us he had been fishing at the pond at the end of the road, and before leaving, he pulled behind a business to urinate. When a patrolman arrived, I drove around the building looking for signs of a break in. The building was a large warehouse that had been empty for some time. I found an unlocked door and went inside, but it was completely empty. It appeared the building was once full of steel and industrial machines like drill presses, lathes, and sanders. It smelled of cutting oil. There was nothing to steal in the building.
We searched his van. It was full of paint, paint brushes, and tools including fishing rods, shovels, rakes, and an ax. Tools were the main thing stolen in most of the burglaries I was working, and some of the yard tools were stolen in the same burglary where the wheels were taken on Julia Francis Drive. The name of the business was written on the handles. We expected to find drugs in the van but didn’t.
I hoped for something to tie him to a dozen burglaries, but it wasn’t there. The rakes and shovels didn’t amount to much financially, but they were taken in a burglary, and it was enough to arrest him. We towed his van and took him to jail.
Bradley bonded out of jail the next day. He paid the towing and storage fees on his van and was back in business.
Miles Hanover Jr. was named as a suspect in the theft of six new motorcycles at the Cycle Plex. Bradley stopped at his father’s house one night while we were watching him. Miles Jr. lived off Highway 169. He was on probation for a drug charge. I called his probation officer and met her at his house along with K-9 Deputy Kevin Dunn. We searched Miles Jr’s house and garage but found nothing. Kevin ran his dog through the house, and the dog alerted at the chimney clean out. When he looked inside, he found a 200 gram rock of cocaine. It was a violation of Mile’s probation and a charge of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. I searched the shop behind the house and found a power drill from one of the burglaries on Julia Francis Road. Miles Jr. said the drill came from Bradley Fisher. I arrested him and took him to jail.
I called Narcotics to go to Miles Hanover Sr.’s house. While they spoke to Miles Sr. at the front door, I noticed four wheels and tires in the 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 a burglary on Julia Francis Drive. Inside the house, we found a couple of hand tools taken in burglaries. Miles Sr., who was in his mid-seventies, told me Bradley Fisher dropped off the wheels and a large amount of tools. 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 on the house at the end of the road.
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.
Croc and his father showed up. Both said the tools in the shed came from Bradley. I arrested both men.
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 it by getting a warrant to swab Bradley for DNA. I picked up Bradley, took him to jail, and got a DNA sample from him. The verification sample was confirmed, and I arrested him again.
Bradley had been in and out of jail all his adult life, but he never spent extended time away from home. This time, he stayed locked up for several years, and burglaries on the south end dropped dramatically. After he got out, I saw him at back to school night at Walnut Hill School. Our kids had the same teacher. The hub of all Bradley’s problems was his addiction to drugs and alcohol. He and Brittany separated, and his life spiraled out of control. The last time I saw him was 2015. A patrol man noticed his van parked on Colquitt Road in front of a business after midnight. He checked the business and found the Coke machine had been broken into. A canine caught Bradley hiding underneath the building. When he refused to come out, the dog bit his leg, and he surrendered.
