Bulletin E-Edition:
$2M theft at a Bend home in silver coins and gold bars
By Cindy Powers / The Bulletin
Published: September 27. 2008 4:00AM PST
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Dakotah Leverett Yarborough, 43, left, has been charged with burglary and aggravated theft in connection with about $2 million in stolen coins, silver bars and jewelry taken from a northwest Bend home. Connie Sue Yarborough, 38, has been charged with aggravated theft.
Submitted photo
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A recent theft of about $2 million in jewelry, gold and silver coins from a northwest Bend home led to charges against a Hawaii couple Wednesday, after an investigation that took Bend police to three states this week.
Dakotah Leverett Yarborough and Connie Sue Yarborough, of Hilo, Hawaii, have been charged with stealing thousands of coins, precious metal ingots and heirloom jewelry from Dakotah Yarborough’s 67-year-old former stepmother.
“He is very familiar with the family and has been at the house and, up to this point, he has been welcome at the house,” Bend Police Capt. Kevin Sawyer said.
Detectives have recovered 14 5-gallon buckets containing more than 8,800 silver coins and 80 100-ounce silver bars from Dakotah Yarborough’s rental car, according to court documents filed this week.
Two Bend police investigators who flew to the couple’s Hawaii home this week were searching the house and had recovered some stolen items Friday, Sawyer said.
The stolen coins and precious metals were stored in safes inside the woman’s Bend home and were accumulated over the past decade as a nest egg, said the victim’s son, Portland lawyer Joe Durkee.
“The jewelry, from what I understand, is very rare jewelry as far as quality and size that was handed down from her father,” Durkee said.
HHis mother felt confident the valuables were secure in her safes, Durkee said.
On the advice of Dakotah Yarborough — who police say works as a private detective specializing in electronic surveillance — Durkee said his mother changed the locks on her home and combinations to her safes in August.
Dakotah Yarborough, 43, was staying at his former stepmother’s home at the time, according to court documents.
In late August, Dakotah Yarborough asked if she would sell him a silver bar or one of her gold coins, which she reluctantly did, according to a report by Bend Police Detective John Lawrence.
Authorities were called to the Bend home Sept. 8 on a report that “assorted gold & silver bars, diamond watch, Krugerrands and jewelry” had been stolen over the weekend, according to the burglary report.
After multiple interviews and a clean polygraph test of the locksmith who changed the safe combinations, authorities focused in on Dakotah Yarborough.
In the week after the burglary, Dakotah Yarborough flew to Hawaii and back, and his wife came to Bend for a visit, then returned to Hawaii, Sawyer said.
When Dakotah Yarborough returned to Bend, investigators from nearly every police agency in Central Oregon watched him on the streets and from the air. They used a fixed-wing plane and a helicopter the family pitched in to pay for, Sawyer said.
Dakotah Yarborough switched cars and clothing often, but detectives put vehicle trackers on three of the cars he drove. He pulled frequent U-turns and repeatedly circled roundabouts, according to Lawrence’s report.
After buying a shovel and 5-gallon buckets with lids at Lowe’s and Home Depot, Yarborough went to a cinder pit on U.S. Forest Service land, worrying detectives that he might have plans to bury the loot, the report said.
“So we had people sitting on five or six places that we knew he frequented or might go,” Sawyer said. “We had people out in the forest, in (camouflage), in the woods watching.”
On Sept. 19, detectives followed Dakotah Yarborough from a northeast Bend home, driving a dusty blue Pontiac Grand Am with a trunk that was obviously weighed down, Sawyer said.
He said Dakotah Yarborough ditched the car for a time and changed shirts twice before police watched him back the Pontiac up to the door of a first-floor room at a northeast Bend hotel and a Redmond detective arrested him outside.
A search of the Pontiac’s trunk turned up the buckets of silver, which weighed more than 1,000 pounds.
The hunt for Connie Yarborough led police to a Days Inn in Redwood City, Calif., where they arrested her Wednesday, according to a report by Bend Police Detective Brian Kindel.
Connie Yarborough, 38, had a new laptop and $17,904 in cash, the report said.
A booking sheet from San Mateo County lists her as “unemployed.”
Dakotah Yarborough was held at the Deschutes County jail Friday on $500,000 bail. A grand jury has filed an indictment charging him with one count of first-degree burglary, six counts of aggravated theft and one count of unlawfully “recording a conversation where a safe combination was discussed ...”
Yarborough has three prior convictions for identity theft and one prior felony theft conviction, according to court records.
Local authorities have recovered a Cobray .9 mm machine gun and a silencer they have linked to Dakotah Yarborough, Sawyer said. They expect him to face charges of being a felon in possession of an automatic weapon.
He is scheduled to appear in Deschutes County Circuit Court on Monday.
Connie Yarborough was lodged at the MacGuire Correctional Facility in San Mateo County on $250,000 bail. She has been indicted in Deschutes County on one count of aggravated theft.
She will be extradited to Oregon, Sawyer said.
Joe Durkee said his mother has been shaken by the burglary and theft of her valuables, but the family hopes some good may come of it.
“While the family has suffered hopefully only just a theft, the big thing is that we hope the courts will take this guy off the streets because he and his wife are like Bonnie and Clyde,” Durkee said. “We hope the sacrifice that we unintentionally suffered will help others.”
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