Within 16 hours late last week, Darien police were called to the scenes of two separate burglaries of homes in town where the residents were away for extended periods.
Police found the second floor of each home ransacked, and the owners later reported men’s and women’s jewelry and other items missing — $50,570 from one of the homes, on Saint Nicholas Road, and $47,090 from the other, on Tokeneke Trail.
This map shows where each street is located in town — about 2.7 miles from each other. The exact locations on the maps don’t correspond to the exact addresses of the burglaries.
Saint Nicholas Road
At 6:25 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 29, a burglar alarm for a home on Saint Nicholas Road alerted police, who went to the house and noticed that a kitchen window in the back of the building had been broken out.
Police got in touch with the homeowners, who allowed officers to enter the house through the garage, and police searched inside for burglars, but didn’t find any.
When police got to the second floor, they found rooms ransacked, with doors, cabinets and drawers open and clothing and other items on the floor. Detectives went to the house to process it for evidence, looking for fingerprints and other possible clues.
The homeowners told police that they had left Darien three days before, on the day after Christmas, to travel and that they were on their way home.
Once home, they were able to give police an inventory of what had been stolen — all men’s and women’s jewelry, valued at a total of $50,570.
Tokeneke Trail
At 10:17 a.m. the next day, Monday, Dec. 30, police were told a tree technician had seen that a sliding door had been shattered at the rear of a home on the 0 to 100 block of Tokeneke Trail.
Police, along with a Tokeneke constable, checked inside the home to see if any burglar was there, but found none. As with the other burglary, on the second floor rooms were ransacked, with items on the floor and drawers and cabinets left open.
In addition, all the rugs on both the first and second floors had been partially flipped over.
The owners of the home had been away since Dec. 1 and hadn’t planned to return until April 1, but they told police that they would come back the following day to find out what had been taken. Again, police detectives went to the scene to process it for evidence.
They later gave police an accounting of what was lost, including jewelry, purses, handbags and coins amounting to a total estimated value of $47,090.
Police did not say they suspect the homes were broken into by the same burglar or burglars, nor did they indicate when the Tokeneke burglary might have taken place, other than during the period the house was empty.
The Tokeneke Trail home had an alarm system, but it hadn’t been armed.