THE CALLER: Jonathan Jester
DATE: Wednesday and Thursday, Nov. 2-3
TIME: Afternoon
PLACE: 11300 Quail Run
Jonathan Jester knew something was awry when his 11-year-old son called him at work to tell him an SBC employee was in their back yard because of a problem with the phone lines.
“I said, ‘Well, you’re talking to me on the phone,’ ” Jester says.
When the purported SBC employee said the phone problem was with “the old lady next door,” Jester jumped into his car and headed home. The home next door belongs to Jester’s landlord, and no one has lived there for the six months since his landlord’s father died.
Jester told his son to put the man on the phone, then told the supposed SBC employee that he and his landlord were on the way and to wait outside. Instead of handing the phone back to his son, the man hung up.
When Jester reached his son again, he learned that the man had lied to his son, telling him that Jester had given him permission to go into the bedroom and check the phone jacks. The man then took Jester’s laptop computer, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.
Jester instructed his son to throw the phone at the bathroom door and then run out of the house. Amazingly, the man answered the phone and continued the SBC employee façade.
“At that point, I got very vocal with him — I won’t use exact words — and he hung up the phone and ran out the front door,” Jester said.
The police searched for five hours, but didn’t find the man. The next day, Jester’s son returned home from school to find that their house had been robbed. All of the Jesters’ electronic equipment was gone, and the thief had left behind a trail of fingerprints after enjoying an alcoholic beverage, a glass of iced tea and a frozen pizza, cooked in the microwave.
Police searched the empty house next door and found personal belongings stashed in a closet — some of which matched the description Jester’s son had given of the SBC employee. Police stationed undercover officers around the house and waited for the man to return.
At 2 a.m., they stopped a man walking toward the house wearing Jester’s Texas Longhorns baseball cap and his fiancée’s leather coat. The man said he was looking for the homeless shelter, and after patting him down, police pointed him in the opposite direction.
The man somehow made it past the undercover officers and into the house, but then made the mistake of turning on a light, Jester says. Police went into the house and arrested him, finding more stolen items in his possession.
“In that 30 minutes between when they stopped him and when they arrested him, he had robbed another house,” Jester said.
Jester’s son crawled out of bed to identify the man as the supposed SBC employee at his house the previous day. The 11-year-old also recognized him as the homeless person who had asked his father for money and cigarettes a few weeks earlier at a gas station on Jupiter and I-635.
Jester says he learned from police that the man — who was charged with five different felonies — lived in a homeless community of people beneath the bridge at Jupiter and I-635.
“People asking for money on the corner — that’s where these problems are stemming from,” Jester says. “This guy was not scared. He was smart enough to case people and wait until they weren’t home.”
Jester later learned that other neighbors had run the man off. The entire mess convinced Jester to start keeping track of his serial numbers and made him a believer in neighborhood crime watch.
“It’s sad that you’re not really into those things until you get hit,” he says.
Jester started introducing himself to his neighbors, and he also called Lake Highlands Elementary to make the school aware that houses are being robbed while children are headed home from school.
“We were lucky that our son wasn’t hurt,” Jester says.
