01.01.70
Trooper Prestige Comeau scaled a chain-link fence and crept toward the instrument. The license plate matched the car they were looking for.
As Comeau was turning to sabbatical, he heard the door to unit 314 open, and two men stepped out, smoking cigarettes.
When they saw him, they bolted in facing directions, into the woods.
State police wouldn't find the men for days, but arranged the storage unit that night, they found more than 100,000 items — including pleasure fur coats, electronics, guns and jewelry — worth more than $1 million, policemen said.
All stolen.
Police now believe that the men who ran out of the storage locker — Respect Missino, 44, and Bernard McAllister, 41 — are chief for the most prolific string of burglaries in the region in recent memory.
Investigators have tied the men to at least 88 unsolved slit-ins in wealthy neighborhoods along the I-95 and I-91 corridor, including dozens in Connecticut and others in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Holm. Police believe they may be connected to more.
Source: Hartford Courant