IAPE Evidence Blog

Sono­ran News, sonorannews.com
BYLINE: LINDA BENTLEY
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Mari­copa County, AZ

‘In the end, it was cutting-edge police tech­nol­ogy used by my Foun­tain Hills detec­tives that led us to this criminal’

PHOENIX – Mari­copa County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Robert James Neese, iden­ti­fied through DNA as the “Rock Bur­glar,” on the morn­ing of May 27 in south Phoenix.

Neese has eluded law enforce­ment for over 17 years as he com­mit­ted bur­glar­ies in afflu­ent neigh­bor­hoods of Par­adise Val­ley, Scotts­dale, Care­free and Foun­tain Hills.

He was dubbed the “Rock Bur­glar” because he would throw a large rock through a win­dow to gain entry – often through a bath­room win­dow, which was gen­er­ally not hooked up to the alarm system.

Neese worked fast and was gone before law enforce­ment could respond to calls.

In 2005, using DNA evi­dence col­lected from a num­ber of crime scenes, the Mari­copa County Attorney’s Office obtained a “John Doe” indict­ment based on that evi­dence, since law enforce­ment did not know the suspect’s identity.

Accord­ing to Mari­copa County Attor­ney Bill Mont­gomery, the John Doe indict­ment puts his office in a posi­tion to pros­e­cute Neese, now that his iden­tity is known, for crimes he allegedly com­mit­ted some time ago.

Con­sid­er­ing he is sus­pected of steal­ing over $10 mil­lion in jew­elry, cash, coins and weapons over the past 17 years, Neese was said to be unem­ployed and liv­ing in a trailer park in Mayer, Ariz., located in Yava­pai County about 10 miles north­west of Cordes Junction.

Detec­tives believe Neese was prob­a­bly liv­ing off the pro­ceeds of his bur­glar­ies, items he most likely fenced for pen­nies on the dollar.

Neese has a his­tory of burglary-related crim­i­nal activ­ity and was incar­cer­ated dur­ing the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s with the Ari­zona Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions, where Mari­copa County Sher­iff Joe Arpaio believes he likely learned to per­fect his craft.

At first it seemed as though the Rock Bur­glar hadn’t struck in about five years, but accord­ing to MCSO Lt. Dave Mun­ley, he changed his M.O.

Instead of select­ing ran­dom loca­tions in Scotts­dale, Care­free and Par­adise Val­ley, Neese con­cen­trated on homes in Foun­tain Hills.

Mun­ley also said he chucked his rock-throwing trade­mark in favor of pry­ing open doors to gain entry.

How­ever, Arpaio said, although Neese was clever enough to avoid detec­tion all these years, “In the end, it was cutting-edge police tech­nol­ogy used by my Foun­tain Hills detec­tives that led us to this criminal.”

MCSO Sgt. Marty Over­ton and Detec­tive Jason Bezel used com­puter mod­el­ing and a prob­a­bil­ity study to deter­mine where and when the Rock Bur­glar might strike again.

They nar­rowed it down to three homes in Foun­tain Hills and then sat and watched those homes on Sat­ur­day night, May 14.

A 911 call from a home­owner led deputies to one of the homes, where they arrested Neese and charged him with pos­ses­sion of bur­glary tools.

Evi­dence seized dur­ing his arrest linked Neese to other bur­glar­ies and it appears he is likely respon­si­ble for more than 60 bur­glar­ies in Foun­tain Hills over the past two or more years.

Ulti­mately, it was DNA that con­nected Neese to approx­i­mately 325 bur­glar­ies, which included the homes of for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dan Qua­lye and Ari­zona Dia­mond­back play­ers Mark Grace and Steve Finley.

Although Neese was released on his own recog­ni­zance fol­low­ing his May 15 arrest, MCSO kept him under con­stant sur­veil­lance until his arrest on the morn­ing of May 27 on the March 2005 grand jury indict­ment, which Montgomery’s office moved to amend last week.

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