‘It was like walking into the Home Depot!’

WAITSBURG - It's rare for burglary victims to ever see their stolen goods again. But Waitsburg residents and even some Columbia Coun- ty households who were hit last year may get lucky. And some already have.

During a drug bust in Walla Walla last month, local law enforcement of- ficers stumbled on an enor- mous treasure trove of stolen items, the county's largest in recent memory. The find leads authorities to hope they can soon nab a handful of burglars operating in the Touchet Valley and return much of their loot to the rightful owners.

The raid on the Walla Walla home of an accused drug dealer, Richard Eugene Cornwell Jr., turned up so many missing items, it took a crew of nearly a dozen of- ficers from the Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office and Walla Walla Police Depart- ment 12 hours to haul them away.

"It was like walking into the Home Depot," Depu- ty County Prosecutor Joe Golden said about his visit to the scene at Cornwell's home on Third Avenue in Walla Walla three weeks ago. "It was absolutely in- credible."

The modest single-family residence, its yard and ga- rage were crammed with thousands of items allegedly bought, sold or traded by Cornwell for drugs with bur- glars, shoplifters and inside family thieves, for whom Cornwell was a "fence" - or middleman - according to Undersheriff Eddie Freyer, who was one of the officers helping haul the goods off to storage.

The Sheriff's office rented a 26-foot U-Haul and made two trips to get everything removed from the home and from another targeted drug home on Division, he said. "Every nook and cranny was jammed with stuff. It was just loaded," Freyer said.

The Victims

The current Sheriff's in- vestigation, which Frey- er said is ongoing, started shortly after the Walla Walla and Touchet Valley areas were hit last fall by an un- precedented spike in burglar- ies. At least 35 occurred in Walla Walla County during the last quarter of the year with a high percentage - Freyer estimated about half - occurring in the Waitsburg area.

In barely one month from late September to late October, six residential burglaries were reported in the Waits- burg area from Bolles Road to Whetstone Road. Three Main Street businesses were hit around the Thanksgiv- ing holiday. The Columbia County Sheriff's Office also reported a rise in burglaries in the fall.

"We recognized we had a problem," Freyer said, recalling the Sheriff's deci- sion to make it an immediate priority to zero in on the per- petrators, particularly after the reported theft of several firearms.

The theft ring, suspected to consist of at least four or five individuals, is said to op- erate from Columbia County in the east to Oregon's Uma- tilla County in the south and Benton and Franklin counties in the west.

The types of goods reported stolen from Waits- burg residents included heir- loom jewelry, silverware, kitchen items, alcohol, musical instruments and rifles. Waitsburg City Councilman K.C. Kuykendall, who was among the Waitsburg vic- tims, said he hopes the guitar stolen from his home last fall is among the recovered items.

The Fence

Cornwell's home and another household suspected of dealing drugs on Division Street in Walla Walla had been under investigation by the Sheriff and Walla Walla Police after authori- ties received several citizen complaints of suspected drug activity.

In early December, after corroborating the complaints with informants, police made a "controlled buy" at the Cornwell property and obtained search warrants on at what Freyer described as a typical, nondescript single-family home of 1970s vintage. The home is several blocks south of the down- town core and about a block from the Paine Campus El- ementary School on Fourth and Walnut.

According to court documents, on December 12 Cornwell was taken into custody and charged with 11 counts. They included six violations of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act for delivering or intending to deliver meth, heroin, hy- drocodone and methadone within 1,000 feet of the perimeter of school grounds; three counts of possessing stolen fire arms; one count of possessing stolen property; and one count of trafficking in stolen property.

In the charging papers submitted by Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Gabriel Acosta, Cornwell is accused of possessing "various items stolen from individuals in and around the Walla Walla valley with a value in excess of $1,500, knowing that it was stolen and withheld such property to the use of a person other than the owners thereof, the person entitled to such property."

Translation: he was al- legedly buying, selling and trading hot goods. The notion Cornwell possessed "various items" was an understate- ment. His cache of stolen goods was larger than anyone in local law enforcement cir- cles had ever seen in the area.

"He was definitely a big player," said Golden, who indicated he had never seen so much stolen inventory in his 22 years as a prosecutor in Walla Walla. "That's where you took your stolen property if you wanted drugs."

Surprised by the trove of sometimes new or barely used consumer goods, offi cers had to obtain a second search warrant to recover the items. With the help of Sheriff's evidence techni- cian Matt Stroe, who had compiled a list of more than 100 items stolen in the bur- glaries around the county, the officers began to match the inventories. They included three firearms: a .30-.30 lever-action rifle, a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun and a Japa- nese World War II rifle.

"Cornwall later admitted during an interview with me that he purchased several of the items as well as accepted some of the items in exchange for narcotics," ac- cording to a statement from Walla Walla Police Depart- ment's Special Team Unit Detective Steve Harris.

It was immediately obvi- ous that the vast majority of items found at Cornwell's residence weren't his per- sonal property, Freyer said. Otherwise, how could a household with no verifiable legitimate income own or even need 60 drills, 30 bi- cycles, 20 table saws, 15 tool boxes, five welding stations or an assortment of saddles, just to name a few. Some clothing items still bore their store security tags.

The joint crew from the Sheriff's office and the Walla Walla Police Department hauled off at least 400 items. Some were totes filled with even more goods, leading Freyer to speculate there were likely "thousands" of hot consumer products on site before he and the other officers stuffed them in the U-Haul.

The stolen property bust was unusual not just for its size but for the duration with which some of the items were stored at Cornwell's location. Freyer said most items stolen in local burglar- ies normally disappear "very fast," moving like lightening from the Walla Walla area to Yakima or Spokane where they might turn up at local flea markets. Golden said other stolen goods are funneled through middlemen on the Washington-Oregon state line and evaporate in circula- tion from there.

"It's a unique event," Freyer said. "Nine hundred ninety nine times out of a thousand the owners never see their stolen goods again."

The recovery

Though it's good news for burglary victims in the Touchet Valley, the size of the stolen inventory presents the Sheriff's Office with an exceptional challenge. The goods all have to be pho- tographed, catalogued, inventoried and matched with burglary reports - a process that can easily take months.

Freyer said he expects it to be such a laborious task that the Sheriff hasn't begun to consider a date by which burglary victims can claim their stolen property. Victims are encouraged to contact the Sheriff's office, which will then conduct a short inter- view to ensure their property claim is legitimate. Victims aren't obligated to file a bur- glary report if they haven't done so.

Some owners don't even know their property is miss- ing, Freyer said. He made one call to the owner of a small motorcycle (traced through registration) who was caught off-guard by the undersheriff's inquiry. He went off to check the shed where he last saw it and returned to the phone to confi rm it was indeed gone.

Sheriff's Detective Gary Bolster has already matched items to owners in the Waitsburg area, Freyer said. The most oft-repeated feedback from the victims was "I thought I'd never get that back."

Deprived of a prime destination for their stolen goods, burglars likely will keep a low profile and Freyer expects to see a significant drop in the number of local hits. "This should have a noticeable impact," he said.

Law enforcement au- thorities also have the pos- sible prospect of striking a deal with Cornwell for a drop in charges in ex- change for the identities of his "regular clientele," the undersheriff noted. "We have a strong list of four to five individuals respon- sible for the vast majority of the (recent) burglaries and we're not too far from arresting them."