by their mother in another home. 'And I remember Todd said he was never going to live this way again, and maybe that explains him a little.'
Becker told me he began to steal simply to help out his family. He swiped tennis balls from a tennis club because he didn't want his mother to use her money on him. To pay for gasoline for his car, he stole money from a country club. By his junior year in high school, he was stealing radar detectors out of cars and selling them for fifty to sixty dollars each and taking his siblings to the mall to buy clothes. Two years later, Becker enrolled at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando, on a tennis scholarship. But after hurting his neck, he quit the team and dropped out of school in 1989, just after his freshman year. He returned to Port St. Lucie to attend junior college, where he ran across a guy who told him that he knew about some Apple computers that could be stolen from a warehouse. 'That was when Apple computers cost four thousand dollars, which sure beat radar detectors,' Becker said.
Becker did get arrested a couple of times in his late teens and early twenties, but either the charges were dropped or he was given a minor probated sentence. When he met Cathy, in 1992, at a nightclub on the beach frequented by college students, he told her on their first date about his past burglaries. But he also talked about his love for family and his intentions to go straight. Cathy had been raised in West Texas by her mother after her father, a crop duster, had died in a plane crash. She too wanted a stable family life after having been moved from home to home, and she found herself drawn to Becker's old-fashioned sincerity, especially when he told her his goal was to own a family-friendly business, like a Chuck E. Cheese's. 'Todd really wanted to be Ward Cleaver, and he wanted Cathy to be June,' said another of Becker's half brothers, Bill Becker. 'And they lived in the perfect community, where they could walk around at night and not have to worry about the wrong elements.'
Still, Becker could not get away from the fact that he possessed a special gift for burglary. To pay for his and Cathy's 1993 wedding, for instance, he slipped out one night and quickly burglarized a couple of computer stores. Six months after the marriage, when he learned Cathy was pregnant, he committed a few more burglaries so they could rent a nice house in a quiet neighborhood on the Florida coast.
Cathy believed Becker when he kept promising that his next burglary would be his last, but as criminals like to say when describing their pasts, one thing led to another, and soon Becker was a full-time burglar, focusing on computer companies located in out-of-the-way business parks throughout Florida. He asked Dwayne, a part-time construction worker who was then hanging out at bars in the afternoons, drinking and playing darts, to help him break into businesses, and he persuaded Bill, a Grizzly Adams look-alike who had been unsuccessfully trying to build a career as a manager of Holiday Inn restaurants, to allow the stolen computers to be stored in his garage. Although he could have found other professional burglars to work as his accomplices, Becker told me that he decided to work with family members and friends because he felt they would not squeal on anyone else if they ever got arrested. He said he also thought it might be nice to boost the fortunes of his family, especially those Beckers who were facing personal or financial challenges. As a favor to his sister Kim, Becker asked her husband, Danny Birtwell, an electrician who had shown little competence in the workforce-'He was a complete idiot,' Kim told me-to work with him. And he also recruited a friend from his old high school tennis team, Paulo Rodrigues, who had become somewhat disheartened because he was seriously overweight (Becker estimated he weighed three hundred pounds) and because he had a rather mundane job as a salesman at Mattress Giant.
It seemed to be the unlikeliest of operations, this partnership between a fastidious young suburban dad and his unambitious relatives. Initially, they looked more like the Marx Brothers than Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. The beer-drinking Dwayne occasionally broke into the wrong businesses. Danny once fell off a roof while trying to get into an office building. After one burglary, while the team was unloading the computers from Becker's car, Danny accidentally locked the keys inside the vehicle. Unwilling to damage his own car, Becker called a locksmith in the middle of the night. When Danny took a break from the burglary business, complaining that he had been working too hard, Becker brought in Kim to work one job with him. She wore a cute sweat suit, brushed her hair back into a ponytail, and hid behind some bushes to look for cops. When Becker was ready to leave with a stack of computers, she sprinted to the minivan, her enhanced breasts bouncing like beach balls.
Against all odds, Becker kept himself and his employees one step ahead of the cops. He taught his guys how to pry open the front door of a business with a crowbar without shattering the glass or tearing the door frame, thus allowing the door to shut behind them and preventing a cop or security guard driving by from realizing that a burglary was in process. He showed them how to cut certain phone lines, which would disconnect most alarm systems. To make sure they hadn't tripped a silent alarm, Becker would have everyone pile back into the car after cutting the phone lines, drive fifteen minutes in one direction, and then return. If no police officers had shown up by that time, they would break in.
Becker told me that he and his team made $2 million in a ten-year span selling their stolen computers to fences (other criminals who purchase stolen goods). He was doing so much work that police departments all over Florida had begun to share information in an attempt to find the computer thief. Becker figured that the cops had to be thinking about him: Because of his earlier arrests, his name was in their databases. What's more, Cathy wanted to find a place for the family to live where they wouldn't always have to look over their shoulder, a place where they could be anonymous.
So Becker did exactly what so many nineteenth-century lawbreakers once did to hide out from the long arm of the law. He moved to Texas. And just like the outlaws of old, Becker decided to hide out on a ranch.
Well, it was called a ranch. At the edge of almost every large American city there is a development like Stonebridge Ranch: a master-planned community, filled with just the right amenities for the upper middle class, including eighteen-hole golf courses, a large community swimming pool, hike-and-bike trails surrounding man-made ponds, and strategically placed shopping centers. All the neighborhoods are given lofty names (Eldorado, Stone Canyon), and the custom-built houses that line the uncracked streets look nearly identical, with nearly identical trees planted in the front yards and nearly identical SUVs sitting in the driveways. In such communities can be found the newest generation of Americans bonded together by their striving for entitlement. The setting couldn't have been more perfect for Todd Becker.
In 1996, Becker put down $56,000 for his new home, which Cathy loved because it had a second-floor catwalk. ('Perfect for decorating for Christmas,' she told me.) They added a chandelier to the living room, and on a dining room wall they hung vases from which poured fake ivy. On another wall they placed photos of themselves holding each of their children. 'He was a very caring, loving neighbor, friendly to everyone,' said Kathy Scherer, who lived on the same street and who believed Becker's story that he worked in 'computer consulting,' one of those nineties catch-all phrases that could mean absolutely anything. He helped clean up one neighbor's house when it was toilet-papered by some kids. He used his extra-long ladder to help another neighbor put up Christmas lights. He tracked down another neighbor at work to let him know that his burglar alarm was going off and that he'd be happy to check the house out for him. Parents appreciated the way he never yelled at the kids on the soccer teams he helped coach, and the elders at the Lutheran church near the Becker home appreciated the $500 checks he deposited in the collection plate.
Cathy, meanwhile, babysat anytime someone needed her. She generously gave money to a friend on the block who was running in a charity race to raise funds for breast cancer research. She taught vacation Bible school at the church, and she made sure to invite the neighborhood kids over for her children's birthday parties, for which she brought in petting zoos and pony rides. 'What can I say? We loved them,' said neighbor Jodi Anderson. 'My husband works for a defense contractor, and he used to be in the navy, so he's trained to be a little skeptical of people. He can always spot the bad seed. But he never thought twice about Todd. He told me that he wished he could find a job like Todd's so he could be around the house more.'
Becker still held on to his dream of opening a Chuck E. Cheese's. He also talked with Cathy about someday owning a Stride Rite children's shoe store and perhaps a tanning salon. With his new Stonebridge Ranch lifestyle, however, he knew he wouldn't be going straight anytime soon. On his way to Texas, as a matter of fact, he had committed a couple of computer burglaries in Louisiana and Mississippi to get a jump-start on his upcoming mortgage payments. To help out the other members of his family, he used some of his burglary earnings to buy a restaurant near Port St. Lucie called Big Al's Catfish House, changed the name to Becker Boys Big Al's, and hired Bill to manage it. But the restaurant failed. He then opened a check-cashing and quick-loan business called Treasure Coast Cash Company, which he had his father run. That company shut down after the State of Florida charged the elder Becker with loan sharking.
To cover his debts and to pay his father's legal fees, Becker found himself forced to carry out even more burglaries, and it wasn't long before he was flying in his old burglary buddies to help him plunder from Texas's computer companies. During one job, his brother-in-law Danny stumbled across a small safe in the corner of a store, pulled it from the floor, and carried it out to the minivan. When they got the safe open, they found more than $10,000 inside. Becker, always one to look for new entrepreneurial opportunities, took a breath. His career in crime was about to take a major step forward.
In the annals of American crime, few criminals have been romanticized like those who can get into a safe. Almost since moviemaking began, Hollywood has loved producing films about a gentleman burglar leaning his ear against a safe and trying to decipher its combination. The reality, however, is that safecrackers cannot compete with today's manufacturers, who can build safes with electronically controlled locks. Bank safes, surrounded by reinforced vaults and state-of-the-art security systems, are virtually impossible to penetrate. But smaller safes and ATMs found inside many businesses can be broken apart or dislodged from their moorings. They can be stolen-which is exactly what Becker decided to do.
He did not have to be told that compared with the pilfering of computers, safe-stealing would be a high-risk, noisy business. The sound of a sledgehammer pounding into the bolts holding a safe to the floor or the ear-splitting whine of a gasoline-powered saw slamming into a steel safe could be heard dozens of yards away. What's more, most businesses with safes-at least safes with substantial money-are located in busy commercial sections of cities rather than remote business parks, increasing the likelihood of eyewitnesses and cops.
But as far as Becker could tell, about the only criminals willing to steal safes were stupid kids who would drive stolen pickups through the plate-glass windows of convenience stores and frantically try to dislodge the safe behind the counter before the cops arrived. He became convinced that he could beat the cops by carefully planning his burglaries, spending days scouting locations, looking for stores that his team could get into and then get away from without causing too much disturbance. He studied stores on the Internet to see what kind of cash transactions they did. He particularly looked for stores that cashed payroll checks, as well as stores owned by foreign-born shopkeepers, because they tended not to trust American banks and thus were likely to keep more money in their own safes.
Becker's team was also ready to make some more money. Although Dwayne's life had improved somewhat through the computer thefts-he had used his earnings to buy a Mercedes-he remained in dicey financial shape. To make extra money, Dwayne's new girlfriend had persuaded him to perform sex acts with her in front of a camera attached to their computer, which were then shown on an Internet sex site. (Viewers who paid to watch the not-particularly-good-looking couple could e-mail them and request that they try new positions.) Meanwhile, Bill was still having trouble keeping a steady job in the restaurant business, and Danny was still relying on the money Kim made as a topless dancer. Paulo Rodrigues was still fat.
Becker brought in one more family member: his step-nephew Julian Gavin, whose mother had married Bill. Julian was a raw-boned, chain-smoking country boy who liked to take his mother 'mudding' (driving her in his pickup through big mud pits). He was also, by his own admission, a crack-cocaine user who had been drifting through life ever since his fiancee had died in a car crash. A concerned Becker told Julian that he could get a new start in life with the money he would make robbing safes. ('Since I had nothing else to lose at the time,' Julian would later tell a police detective, 'I took him up on the offer.')
According to police reports, Becker also recruited a Stonebridge Ranch neighbor, forty-three-year-old Joey Thompson, an unhappy salesman of heavy equipment with no past criminal record. Becker told me that Joey, depressed after losing $60,000 in the stock market, had come to him to talk about new career opportunities. Like Becker, Joey loved Stonebridge Ranch and didn't want to lose his home. 'Whatever you're doing, I want in,' Becker recalled Joey saying. Taking pity on his sad-sack neighbor, Becker replied, 'Well, I've got something, but it might not be exactly what you're expecting.'
Becker told his team that he would keep 65 percent of whatever was found in a safe; whoever was working with him on that particular job would receive the rest. (Typically, Becker would commit a burglary with either one or two members of his team.) Becker said he would pay all expenses and that he would purchase all the burglary tools, including two-way radios with headsets so that everyone could remain in contact during the heists. He promised they would hit the businesses only late at night, when no one would be there, thus avoiding the need to use guns and hold anyone up. And if anyone was arrested, he said, he would pay for his bail and his lawyer.
Whether he liked it or not, Becker was coming into his prime as a criminal mastermind. After spending the day substitute-teaching for his daughter's kindergarten class or playing shortstop for a Stonebridge Ranch league softball team, shouting out encouragement to his teammates, he would find himself sitting at his dining room table, sketching diagrams about how he could get into his next target. On Sunday nights, when he and Cathy watched The Sopranos, the HBO series about the fictional mob family that lives in a nice suburban neighborhood in New Jersey, he would instantly spot the mistakes that Tony Soprano and his mobsters were making when they committed their crimes.
For his own burglaries, he had his guys wear light-colored T-shirts or polo shirts, along with shorts or regular jeans, because he thought that anyone wearing too much black at night would look suspicious. He rented green or blue minivans for the burglaries because they blended in with traffic and were hard for potential eyewitnesses to remember. He also did all the driving, because he had learned how to stay calm, no matter what, when dealing with the cops. While casing a location in Dallas, for instance, Becker and his team were pulled over by a police officer. Becker lowered the
