A Cheyenne transient and his accomplice are accused of ripping the wood-burning stove out of a woman’s house and driving away with it.
William Cody Maddox, a 27-year-old transient of Cheyenne, and Kenneth Orr, a 44-year-old Cheyenne resident, each face one count of burglary and one count of felony property destruction. Each charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
Maddox is set for a Dec. 26 arraignment in Laramie County District Court. Orr’s district-court arraignment hasn’t yet been set, his court file indicates.
The ordeal began when Laramie County Sheriff’s Office Cpl. Larry Moniz responded to a home on Gopp Court at about 11:07 a.m. Nov. 22 for a burglary report, says a case affidavit Moniz wrote.
There he met a 64-year-old woman who said her neighbor alerted her that morning that someone had entered her home and taken things. She didn’t give anyone permission to do that, the woman added, according to the affidavit.
Moniz found the front chain-link fence bent and broken away from its posts, the corporal wrote. The repair costs were estimated at $1,200, he added.
Chilling
Someone had propped a chair under the window to creep in. The window was bent in the tracks and no longer slid the way it was designed, Moniz wrote.
“I entered the home and found the wood-burning metal fireplace was removed and the upper (flue) was still mounted, and the lower air vent was ripped out,” wrote Moniz.
Ashes littered the floor and the front walkway. The fireplace is valued at about $580, the agent added.
The document says the front door lock was also broken, as if someone rammed the door open from the inside.
Neighbor’s Camera
The woman’s neighbor let Moniz view his security camera video. That showed a green Subaru hatchback parking in front of the woman’s home that morning, the affidavit says.
In the document’s description of the video, two people exit, cross the fence and put the chair under the window. One person climbs in through the window; the other goes in through the front door.
Several minutes later, a man backs the Subaru up to the crushed fence, then the two men use a dolly to remove a “large item” and put it in the back of the Subaru before driving away, says Moniz’s summary of the video.
All of this happened at about 7:11 a.m., the corporal wrote.
Oh By The Way …
At about 7:23 a.m., Sgt. Jason Gillott contacted two men in a car just down the street from the woman’s home — before the alleged burglary was reported.
Gillott noticed the stove in the back of the vehicle, and the men said the homeowner gave them permission to move the stove, the document says.
It wasn’t the worst day to have one’s wood-burning stove stolen.
The Cheyenne high temperature hit 61 degrees Nov. 22 and the low hit 41 degrees that night. But five days later on Nov. 27, the day high plunged to 36 degrees with snow, while the low reached 14 degrees that night, according to timeanddate.com.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
