The revised article that was printed in the Sacramento Bee
sacbee.com/101/story/522785.html
For church thieves, nothing is sacred
Safe cracked, thousands stolen from a parish in Woodland
By Hudson Sangree
Last Updated 12:18 am PST Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1
It isn’t often that a police officer has to dust a statue of Jesus for fingerprints, but that’s what Kelly York found herself doing Monday afternoon at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Woodland.
She wasn’t happy about it.
“He’s pretty clean,” York said after delicately, and reluctantly, brushing the figure with black fingerprint powder.
York and two other Woodland officers were at Holy Rosary because overnight someone broke into the white, mission-style church at the corner of Court and Walnut streets downtown.
Intruders smashed a window, used a blowtorch to cut a hole in the church’s safe and made off with thousands of dollars collected over the holiday weekend. Much of the money was from a special Thanksgiving service and was meant to feed the poor.
A tall processional cross, bearing a silver likeness of Jesus, stood beside the broken window. Investigators thought the thieves might have grabbed the crucifix for support as they climbed down from the high windowsill.
At the crime scene, shards of glass crunched underfoot. A homemade wooden ladder lay on the floor. Police theorized it was used it to reach the street-side window and then dragged in.
The Rev. Terry Fulton, pastor of Holy Rosary, found the ladder, the broken window and the empty safe at 6:30 a.m. Monday.
Fulton said he thought the bandit or bandits were familiar with the church. The safe is in the sacristy, a room behind the altar, and the thieves knew exactly which window to use.
There are 3,000 families registered with the church, or about 8,000 individuals, Fulton said. Holy Rosary is the only Catholic church in Woodland and among the region’s largest.
The sacristy, he said, is a pre-Mass gathering place, and the safe sits in plain view.
The burglars likely knew the church had collected donations from a Thanksgiving service, a large wedding ceremony and nine Masses over the weekend, he said. He estimated there was easily $15,000 to $20,000 in the safe, perhaps more.
Donations from the Thanksgiving Mass alone totaled $6,000 to $8,000, Fulton said, and that money was earmarked to provide food to needy families through the church’s Saint Vincent de Paul Society.
Fortunately, the church is insured against theft, Fulton said. It also has a stockpile of food, and other aid organizations in town feed the hungry, he said.
On the advice of law enforcement authorities, Fulton is warning contributors to cancel their checks and possibly change their bank accounts to avoid financial fraud. About half the donations stolen were checks, he said.
On Monday, the church’s heavy steel safe, nearly 4 feet tall and bolted to the floor, bore a jagged hole in one side. A flap of metal had been wrenched aside like the top of a soup can.
The last time Fulton saw it, the safe had been filled with canvas bank satchels, stuffed with cash, coins and checks. It must have been difficult for the thieves to pull the sacks through the hand-size hole, the priest said.
Fulton said he found $20 bills and a lot of change scattered on the floor in the morning.
“They must have been in a hurry,” he said.
Water from a nearby sink covered the floor by the safe. Police guessed the money had caught fire from the blowtorch, and the robbers doused the flames.
Police are hoping the culprits will try to cash one of the stolen checks and get caught on a security camera. They also are hoping the criminals might make a common mistake.
“Sometimes people who do things like this, they can’t help but run their mouths,” Woodland Police Sgt. Jason Brooks said Monday as he surveyed the crime scene.
Monsignor James Murphy, rector of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in downtown Sacramento, said he couldn’t recall a church crime of similar magnitude or sophistication in the area.
The cathedral’s flimsy votive-candle donation boxes used to be pilfered by homeless people before they were replaced with steel, he said. And would-be thieves once hacked at a Vacaville church safe with a hammer, without success.
“Good Lord, it’s a warning to us all,” he said of the Woodland church theft. “We’ve just got to be careful. It’s the people’s money, and in this case it’s money for the poor.”
Fulton said those who robbed the church should return the money and confess. He said he had once forgiven teenagers who set fire to his church office in Chico, and now could forgive those who robbed the Woodland church.
“We’re Catholic,” he said. “We have to.”
