True Crime: Burglary

The Victim: Lynton Musik

Date: Saturday, Oct. 20

Time: Between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.

Location: 1300 block of Lansford

“They destroyed everything.”

Those were the words of Lynton Musik after he came home to find a burglar had ransacked his house one mid-morning in October. With some errands to run, Lynton left home about 10 that morning. He returned within the hour to find devastation in his home.

Someone had forced open the front door to get inside. Musik says the thief made off with an old .22 caliber pistol, some pocketknives and a couple file cabinets. Sadly, in the burglar’s haste to find anything of value, the urn holding the ashes of Musik’s wife’s was broken.

Another bad part of the break-in was that the file cabinets contained important paperwork that he needed.

“That’s all I cared about; the rest they could have,” he says.

Luckily, the thief must have thrown out the paperwork because a neighbor found it around the corner. The neighbor’s home also had been broken into.

Thinking about what little was taken and the mess that was made, Musik says it just couldn’t have been worth the risk for someone to break into his home.

Dallas Police Major Edwin Ruiz-Diaz of the Southwest Patrol Division says it’s uncommon for burglars to target a household strictly to steal documents with personal information. However, the loss of these types of documents could lead to identity theft.

“It would be prudent for someone who is the victim of a similar offense to place safeguards on their credit cards (alerts of some sort) and to periodically check their credit rating. Also, the victim of this type of crime should closely monitor any bank account or credit card account that might be vulnerable due to the theft of documents.”