Remembering A Real Grinch

Have you ever looked at that loveliest of holiday tableaus – the gifts bought and wrapped and stacked under the Christmas tree – and considered what a bonanza it would for a burglar?

Most of us don’t think that way, but some burglars do. And now Gretchen Elsner thinks that way, too, thanks to a home burglary last year that turned her merry Christmas blue.

The burglars jumped over her backyard wall in Albuquerque, kicked in her garage door, got tools to remove her iron security door and then kicked in the back door. They easily found the gifts, ripped them open, took what they wanted and went on to ransack the rest of the house.

Fingerprints left at the scene, along with security camera footage, led police quickly to Wilkie McCoy, a 30-year-old who was on probation for a slew of felonies, including drug crimes. He was arrested within 30 days and indicted by a grand jury a few weeks later, and then the judicial process crawled along until Wilkie agreed to take a plea deal.

Crimes, accidents, tragedies that happen around holidays have a way of never going away. Just when you think you’re moving on, the stores start playing Christmas carols, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is on the TV again, and those feelings come flooding back.

Elsner and her boyfriend had just left for the airport to spend the holiday with his family when the house was hit. They planned to return to Albuquerque and celebrate a second time with her family a few days after Christmas.

As the holidays are upon us once again, Elsner told me she has moved, has a security system in her new house and is “a little nuts about locking everything.”

In a letter she delivered to state District Judge Jacqueline Flores, so the judge could read it before McCoy’s plea change hearing, Elsner told her story of loss and anguish better than I could. So why don’t I step aside and share some of her statement.

“Instead of enjoying the Christmas holiday with my boyfriend’s family, I had to find friends who could rush to my house to be with my frightened sister during the police investigation. I had to find her a safe home for the holidays until I returned. I had to find someone who could house my scared pets until we could cover the doorway on the house and return home.

“Instead of celebrating the giving season, I had to make arrangements over the phone to have my home boarded up in a snowstorm. I also had to change my plane ticket to come home early to deal with the mess that Mr. McCoy had created.

“When I returned to Albuquerque to celebrate Christmas with my sister and my parents, I discovered that Mr. McCoy had taken the gifts I had bought for my family throughout the year, including handmade jewelry for my mother that I had purchased from an artist while I was on an international trip.

“My father has a traumatic brain injury, and Mr. McCoy had stolen the brain injury survival kit I purchased for him so that I had nothing to give him for Christmas. While in graduate school, I tutored a student struggling with English and the student thanked me by having his parents send an elegant, irreplaceable jewelry box from Korea that I have treasured for years. Mr. McCoy stole that from me, and all jewelry inside, which I had collected as souvenirs from local artisans over a decade of international travel.

“Mr. McCoy robbed us of our Christmas spirit, and I am definitely aware of the lasting effects of his actions on me now that Christmas has come around again.”

Elsner has one extra thing on her Christmas wish list this year – a gift that was as much for McCoy as it was for her. She wanted to make sure he spends at least a few years in prison – so no one else gets hit by this Christmas Grinch and so McCoy will have access to prison programs that might help him turn his life around.

When the time came on Thursday for the hearing, at which the district attorney was prepared to sign off on a plea deal in which McCoy would admit to one count of burglary and face a minimum of one year in prison and a maximum of four, his lawyer was a no-show and Flores had no choice but to push the case forward on the court calendar.

That means this case will not be wrapped up neatly with a nice bow before the holiday. McCoy’s arrest for Elsner’s burglary was a violation of his probation, which sent him back to prison for his previous crimes. So, McCoy will spend Christmas in prison, and Elsner will spend it still waiting to find out how much longer he will be there.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal