Lost in One Burglary: Heirlooms, a Wedding Ring and a Sense of Security

Bit by bit, the 28-year-old bride-to-be absorbed the telltale signs of the burglary of her Brooklyn apartment: The gouge in the doorframe where the intruder had shoved a crowbar to get inside, the police officers talking in the dining room and, beyond them, her ransacked bedroom with the contents of her dresser drawers piled on the bed.
It was Aug. 24, and Rachel Tepper, who is getting married on Sunday, stood amid the wreckage taking mental snapshots of the crime scene, struggling to inventory what had vanished and, worse, what she might not yet know was gone.
The value of the loss transcended money: Her digital cameras and lenses with which she makes her living; a wedding ring for her fiancé, Jon Paley; a diamond cocktail ring bequeathed by her maternal grandmother; and a bejeweled gold hummingbird necklace passed down by her paternal grandmother — gifts from matriarchs to a sole female grandchild.
For months since her engagement over a year ago, Ms. Tepper dreamed of the distinctive family heirlooms that would accompany her white wedding dress.
But in the days since the break-in, she has shoved aside a frenzy of nuptials’ planning — deciding on centerpieces, finalizing a menu and filling in seating assignments — to scan Craigslist and eBay obsessively, she said, “like a crazy person,” in the hopes a thief might peddle her belongings online.
With her wedding day almost here, she has had no such luck.In a city where crime is often measured in people killed, shot, robbed or raped, burglary is perceived as a lesser crime. But psychologically, its wounds can be just as traumatizing and lasting, victims and mental health experts say.
As Ms. Tepper, an editor at Yahoo Food, said in recounting her story in interviews this week: “I’m just so sad.”
“I’ve started having nightmares,” she added, “about people breaking into my apartment.”
In one, someone screams her name from a hallway. In another, the door to the third-floor apartment in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood, where she and Mr. Paley, 28, a documentary filmmaker, have lived for nearly three years, rattles like a ghost.
Unlike most perpetrators, who must interact with their victims to commit their crimes, burglars studiously avoid confrontation, criminologists say. But, as a result, their misdeeds leave much to be imagined, and victims are left wondering over the missing links in the chain of events. Trying to sleuth who did it, and how, can be maddening, and can bring about some degree of shame or self-criticism for steps not taken: Should I have installed a better deadbolt? Bought a dog?
Dread about the crime never being solved creeps in.
“I’ve been burglarized, and it generates a sense of vulnerability, of penetration of whatever bubble you put around yourself,” said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist and professor of urban systems at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Among property crimes, it conveys the most sense of personal invasion. After all, your home is a sanctuary.”
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyWhen Mr. Blumstein’s home was burglarized in the late 1990s, the thief went through a window into his second-floor bedroom and took jewelry from a dresser.
“We had a lot of stuff that was quite personal,” said Mr. Blumstein, adding that no one has ever been arrested. “Burglaries are hard to solve. Either you catch the guy in the act or with the property. They don’t come in and do a DNA check for burglaries.”
Burglaries in New York this year have dropped sharply to 9,600 through Sunday, from 10,907 in the same period a year ago, part of an overall decline in crime, according to Police Department statistics. Yet in the 76th Precinct, which covers Carroll Gardens, burglaries have spiked: to 101 from 59 a year ago, a 71 percent increase.
More than a quarter of the cases were believed to be the work of a single career criminal, now 58, whom detectives caught in the act in April, a police official said. Burglaries subsided for a time. But they have recently picked up again, including eight cases that investigators believe share a pattern.
“Monday through Friday, during the daytime and in the front door,” said the police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation.
Precinct commanders, who believe people in the neighborhood are behind the burglaries, have done a “burglary awareness campaign,” in the community, the official said, and have deployed extra officers from the narcotics unit and neighboring precincts.
A woman in Ms. Tepper’s neighborhood who lives near the intersection of Court and Nelson Streets, emailed Ms. Tepper to tell her that her home had also been recently burglarized in the middle of the day, an experience that had left her unable to sleep. The thief took cuff links that belonged to a grandfather she had never met and that she had hoped to give to a husband someday.
At Ms. Tepper’s building, on Third Street, the burglar struck in a period of about 40 minutes that Monday afternoon, said Samantha Babbitt, whose apartment next to Ms. Tepper’s was also hit.
“I went to Whole Foods at about 1:15 and was back by about 2,” Ms. Babbitt, 30, said. “I think these burglars have a good sense of targeting these buildings where a lot of young professionals, who work, live.”
Her theory is that the criminals are scouting poorly secured buildings to find weak spots — open windows or flimsy locks — which Samuel Walker, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said was an age-old tactic.
That is how they burglarized his house in the 1970s.
Like Ms. Tepper, Ms. Babbitt has been searching for her stolen jewelry.
“I’ve been going to pawn shops myself to see what pops up,” she said. “Nothing yet.”
On Wednesday, Ms. Tepper and Mr. Paley posted a message on their wedding website asking guests to refrain from talking about the burglary. They got in their car on Thursday night and headed to Maryland, where their wedding will be held. After that, they will travel to Japan and Myanmar for a three-week honeymoon.

“This is my wedding, and I don’t get a do-over in life,” Ms. Tepper said. “This has consumed me, and I know I have to put it away.”