Blue Creek: CSI

I was burglarized a week or so back, in the middle of the day, in my sleepy village of 280 people. Worse, 3 fellow PCV's and good friends were visiting me for the weekend also found there cash and ipods missing. I guess it was just my time, having gone nearly 2 years living in a poor, Central American country and traveling to poorer Central American countries without incident. It seems that a trio of wayward youth from another, larger, village had wandered into Blue Creek in search of some easy money. Me being the naïve soul that I am left a window open a crack for ventilation while the 4 of us visited Jeff for a short while. After returning 40 mins later, one of the girls noticed her ipod and cash gone, prompting us to check our own belongings. Seems that our visitors weren’t amateurs and had replaced our wallets back in our bags and left everything as-is, taking only cash and 3 ipods (mine was somewhat hidden and remained).

A freak thunderstorm downed the satellite phone signal for a couple of hours, so by the time we got a hold of the Punta Gorda police department, they were gone for their dinner “refreshment” and would be out to Blue Creek for their report in an hour or so. I was less shocked by the fact that we would have to wait for the police due to a meal break than by the idea that they would be driving out to my village at all. I honestly expected a request to come to town at my earliest convenience, where I would then be treated with indifference and skepticism while I waiting for hours in a stuffy police station while half-drunk crazies yelled obscenities at me from the stinking holding cell. Instead, the police, a forensics expert, a photographer, and a couple of people whose titles or purposes I’m still not sure of arrived promptly at 9:30pm at my house in Blue Creek. We explained the situation and showed the police the “evidence” that our own investigation had turned up, namely a full set of toe prints in the dust on my chair near the guilty window and a set of boot prints high on my wall where one of the guys had tried to get into the neighboring rooms of my shared house. The forensics expert got out his dusting kit while the photographer walked around my house taking crime scene photos. The Alcaldes (village security/leaders) hung around outside enjoying the show as much as we were. The police probably thought that we were awfully jolly for 4 girls that had just had hundreds of dollars worth of cash and ipods stolen, but watching a full-fledged investigation taking place in 12’ x 18’ shack was just too unlikely.  Once they had lifted the prints off my chair and one of the ipod covers that was left behind, they packed up the show and headed back into town, leaving us to wonder what were the chances of matching a set of toe prints to a likely perpetrator, and what happens if they get a pedicure?

Update: Two ipods have been recovered and the third is being tracked down. The three youth have admitted to stealing the ipods, and will go before the courts to plead their case in the coming month. Case Closed.