December 1990 holiday break-ins
From WikiArchives, the open record
The December 1990 holiday break-ins were a series of residential burglaries in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, between 3 and 24 December 1990. Fourteen properties across three villages were entered, all of them left empty while the households travelled for the holidays. Two men were arrested on Christmas Eve.
The case is remembered chiefly for the circumstances of the arrest, which followed a telephone call made by a child who had been left behind at one of the addresses.[1] At the request of the family, no member of the household was named at the time, and the record has been kept that way since.
Background
The villages along the north shore emptied noticeably over the holiday period, a pattern local insurers had commented on for years. A 1988 circular advising households to suspend deliveries and leave lights on timers was reissued twice before December 1990; a review the following spring found fewer than one household in five had acted on it.
The break-ins
The first entry was reported on 3 December. Further entries followed at roughly two-day intervals, almost all through rear doors or ground-floor windows left unsecured. Little was damaged, and in several cases the households did not discover the loss until they returned in January.
Investigators established in the second week that the properties had a common feature: each had been called at during the day, on foot, by two men who did not return until the household had travelled.[2]
Arrest
Shortly before 22:00 on 24 December, a call was received from a property on the 600 block reporting two men at the rear of the house. Officers from the Elmhaven department attended and detained two suspects at the address.
Sergeant Dale Brannick, the lead officer of record, has consistently declined credit for the arrest, telling a local paper in 2019 that his contribution was “driving to an address a child had already worked out”.[3]
Recovered property was returned to thirteen of the fourteen households. A carriage clock taken on 11 December has never been recovered.
Aftermath
Both men were convicted in 1991. The holiday vacancy checklist was rewritten the following year and remains in circulation in three villages. Brannick retired in 2017 after thirty-one years of service.
The household at the 600 block address has never given an interview, and the child’s name has not appeared in any published account of the case.
References
- “Two held after Christmas Eve call”, North Shore Ledger, 27 December 1990.
- “Police link December entries to daytime callers”, North Shore Ledger, 14 December 1990.
- “Thirty-one years on the winter shift”, North Shore Ledger, 4 July 2019.