Apartment broken into!!! Nothing stolen???

A little background: I lived in North Dakota until I met my wife 4 years ago (Match.com). She lived in South Dakota. So, I packed up all my belongings, and headed south.

All my scrap metal clients were still in ND. So I rented a flea-bag apartment in North Dakota where I can stay while I am cleaning up my clients. I do this ND-SD thing about 1 week in ND, 2 weeks in SD all summer long. Winter it slows down to nothing.

Well, got a call yesterday, gotta make a run from home (SD) to client (ND). So leave this morning to head north. Everything good.

Get to apartment in ND. Push on door, and it just swings open. Locked, but has been jimmied with a crow bar. Door jam all f'ed up, door frame bent. Somebody's been in here! Check closets, shower, double check closets...nobody here. Look around, nothing missing. Laptop (that I am typing this on as we speak) still here, can of coins, ice fishing stuff, beer in fridge, nothing gone. WTF.

Call landlord. He says call cops. So I call cops. Cop comes over, looks at door, looks at door jam. We BS for a while. After kinda getting to know the cop, he tells me there are a lot of transients coming here because they hear there are all kinds of high paying jobs in North Dakota with the oil boom and such. Well hello, I'm 200 miles from any oil well, or oil producing county. Apparently they just hear North Dakota and think it's easy money wherever you decide to plop down. BS with cop some more, he tells me he's been over here before "visiting" with my neighbor. This is not your standard apartment. Just an old house renovated into a 4-plex. Apparently neighbor kid is a nasty drunk. I've said hi to him a few times and how's it going...nothing more. Seemed like an ok kid to me. OK, BS more with cop. He says this kid (23-26 yearold) will break in to get booze. I tell cop I have 30 pack of Busch Lite in fridge and it's still there. Cop says; " This kid ain't interested in beer. Doesn't do it for him. He needs a 1/2 gallon of whiskey at a shot.". I'm like HUH?

So cop says bye, bye and I go about my business and he goes about his. I walk outside to plug my pickup in because it won't start without being plugged in at these cold temps. There is punk kid standing outside smoking a cig. What to do? I have my pistol, which I carry legally at all times. Do I show him the bulge in my pants pocket? HAHA, or just walk away like nothing happened? Walk back to door, Kid asks me: "Hey man, what were the cops doing here?" I start to quiz him: Did you see anything? Hear anything? Anyone suspicious around here? Of course all his answers were "No, I just come out here to smoke." Then punk asks me "Was anything stolen?" I say "no", and continue on with my questioning. After what seemed like minutes, but was probably only seconds, he said something very telling. "Glad nothing was stolen."

Now, when I told this whole story to the cop, to my wife, and to my sister, they all asked "are you sure nothing is missing?" Couldn't believe nothing was gone. When I told this punk kid that, he wasn't surprised nothing was stolen.

Full disclaimer: when I was young I did some very foolish things while under the influence of whatever. So I kind of have an understanding if this kid was just looking for some hard liquor. Also, he may have stolen my laptop and whatever else and returned it later...who knows. I haven't been here since Nov. 25th.

Side note: Cop forgot his gloves here. I called non-emergency number, and he came back by and was very happy with my honesty. Told him to keep his **** eyes on this place lol.

Thanks for reading my rant. No point to it really. Someone is going to say "Punch him in the face", I know that.

What would you do besides punching him in the face?

Rip off his lower mandible , hard to drink without a lower jaw

Ok honestly I hope it was not your neighbor , I know all signs point towards him , but it could be anything . Maybe try a fake alarm sticker or find a diffrent stay away place , glad nothing was stolen

Oh Sirscrapalot... If it was a sheep, that would be my date for the night. It gets cold and lonely up here in North Dakota.

Originally Posted by HonestScrap

Where the men are men & the sheep are nervous!

Us NDers say that about Montana.

Honest advice, and I cannot possibly make this more obvious to you.

HIGH QUALITY GAME CAMERA. The kind you can put a 3g or 4g sim card in. Best **** investment I have made in my entire life bar none. Caught a guy in my garage, caught another guy trying to break into my storage, yet ANOTHER successfully inside the warehouse with the alarm going off, got his face, IR cam and all, right in the background a nice little piece of tape with his height for the cops. Every time the game cam caught a license plate, a face of the driver or both.

I've tried remote monitored security systems and their only as good as the response time, but having a 10 or 20 megapixel infrared picture of someone cannot get much better than that, no security system in the world can beat that.

I would hide it, sometimes plain sight goes unnnoticed though...like in the clear plastic package front from walmart, I just put batteries in it, set it up and put it back inside the package, left the top open, the instructions laid out, pointed right at the door. Be creative.

Originally Posted by Scrappah

Hummmm .... it's a puzzler. You see the door jimmied like that and you would think that someone broke in to rob the place. It could have been like that for weeks and nobody passing by took anything ? Are you sure you aren't talking about a certain island just off the coast of Maine ? ( I never lock my doors. That way they can't break in. )

The thing about breaking in for whiskey doesn't seem to fit. I've heard of guys drinking sterno and just about anything with alcohol in it to stave off the DT's.

It could have been a homeless person. It's pretty cold out there. You can't really blame somebody for seeking shelter. It's better than dying from hypothermia.

I have to wonder if they broke in for some other reason. You said it was a fleabag and that it was cut up into four apartments. They probably did a half assed job of breaking it up.

Does every apt have it's own thermostat ? If the thermostat in your place controls the heat in the other apts they might have forced their way in to turn it up.

Is there any sign that they've recently been working on the plumbing ? Freeze ups & pipe breaks are pretty common in the dead of winter. Sewer lines catch and back up. Sections of baseboard heat sometimes go air bound and have to be bled. We used to get quite a few freeze up calls after the power had been out for a day or two.

The building code is a PITA in regard to smoke detectors. They're supposed to be hard wired so that when one goes off they ALL go off. Sometimes the detectors go bad or just get dust in em'. If the bad one is inside a locked apt there's only one way to re-set it.

Is the circuit breaker -or- fuse panel in your apartment ? They might have had to come in to re-set a circuit that runs through one of the other apartments. Heaven forbid it was the furnace that went out ....

Could it have been somebody checking on your well being ? Maybe they hadn't seen you in weeks and were wondering if you had died ?

Lastly .... i hope you aren't one to go off and leave the TV running. If i was in the next apartment over and had to listen to CNN 24/7 i would either shoot myself or go in and shut the darn thing off.

I have to wonder if the kid knows more than he's letting on. Have you talked with the other neighbors ? Maybe something happened while you were gone ?

Yikes... where to start with all this. Island off the coast of Maine??? Are you referring to Marxist Vineyard? I'm just a simple rube from the dakotas.

Homeless? I doubt it. Homeless people are weeded out this time of year. Plus if it was a homeless person, he/she would still be here when I showed up.

Yes, every apt. has it's own thermostat. It is an old house that someone made into 4 apartments. Two upstairs, two downstairs.

No, plumbing is fine. Nothing froze up, if it was the landlord has a key.

No on smoke detector, again landlord.

No on circuit breaker. In a different apt.

Nobody would be worried about my well-being. Friends and family and landlord know where I am.

And no, I don't leave the TV on CNN. In fact I don't even have TV here. I'm too German and Cheap!!!

No, I haven't talked to other neighbors. According to the cop who came over they are just as sketchy as the kid next door. LOL.

It's the low rent district. $260/mo. That kind of rent attracts the riff-raff.