I was telling this story to someone and they could barely believe it. As a matter of fact I'm quite certain they didn't or at least doubted certain parts but I assure you every single part of what I'm about to tell you is true.
I was in my third year at the university and as most of you will know, the hours you'll be away from home will vary. Some days you have to get up at 7 am and some days you can leave home as late as 1 pm. But in the third year we have this exploitation scheme they call 'internship' and for half a year you'll be experiencing the rest of your life: Get up at 7am, come home at 6pm. Leaving the home, which at the time was still my family home, empty for most of the day as everyone else was going to work/school as well.
It was during this half year that you had to put in all the required hours, or else you had to make up for what you missed in the summer. In the whole half year period I missed three days. Two were company granted holidays I could use whenever I wanted, and one day I for some uncharacteristic odd reason just really didn't feel like getting up and going there, so I called in sick.
I slept till 10 am and then went to the bathroom. It was at this rather inconvenient point that the doorbell rang. I was half way done shaving and thought to myself "oh well, no one would be home now anyway so I'll just ignore it". It rang again just as I was finishing and preparing to shower and because I was going to shower, I distinctly remember closing the door to the guestroom right next to the bathroom, because it had a big window which could directly see you coming out of bathroom.
As I got out, I noticed I must've forgotten to close the guestroom door after all even though I was positive I did, but anyway as I went to my own room to dress, I heard voices downstairs and thought "huh, that's weird, it's not even 11 am, who could be here now?" After getting dressed I curiously went downstairs to see who had come home and saw the police standing in my living room.?? They asked who I was and what I was doing here, and I asked them the same. Then I saw a family member who said "what, you are home, did you see them?"
See who, I said, and what in the ***** happened to the window? The window at the yard side was almost completely broken. Like someone was trying to break into it using a crowbar, which apparently was exactly what happened. As I was showering and dressing, a group of four thieves was trying to break in and rob the place thinking no one was home. Yeah, remember that doorbell in the beginning, that was 100% them checking to make sure no one was home.
Now here's the strange part, the initial police report before I came down was citing that three people were attempting to break into the house via the yard but were seen by the neighbor who shouted to them and they shouted back for about three minutes and then failed to completely break the window and suddenly left. "A failed attempt to break in, nothing is missing and you didn't see anyone right?" As one of the police officers asked this I immediately rushed upstairs to see if anything was missing from the guestroom. "No one touch this door handle" I said, this is where you need to dust for prints, someone did come in.
If not for that guestroom door we would have thought they'd got scared after the neighbor yelled at them and that that's why they left empty handed. Which if you think about it didn't make sense to begin with as they even yelled back and still tried breaking it for several minutes. Something else must've spooked them. What you ask? Someone who was home but didn't answer the door and almost came face to face with them.
Apparently upon coming upstairs and opening the guestroom at least one other thief must've heard me in the bathroom and called the whole thing off, after which the other three in the yard didn't even bother to completely break the window and left. "But if they were already in, why break the window"? Ahhh now you're asking the million Satoshi question. That's apparently their misdirection in order to hit you again. You see, most people would not have changed all the locks after they were robbed if they saw a huge broken window right? But in our case the compromised lock is exactly how they got in. It has to be, no other window upfront was damaged and the neighbor saw all three run away and kept watching that side of our house until the police came. So that in combination with the guestroom door left me no other choice but to go out and buy new and more secure locks straight away.
The window got fixed after a few days and I was 100% sure that would not be the end of it. They didn't take a single thing for a reason and the reason is they want to hit you as hard as possible without you expecting anything. If even one laptop, tablet, TV or piece of jewelry was missing, they knew we would change the locks and their money train would take off without them. So they waited for the rematch and most likely would have won, but made the crucial mistake of leaving that guestroom door open.
One night about two weeks later we went out to visit a friend at around 10 pm and got a distressing call from a family member who stayed home to sleep early: "where are you, come back quick someone is at the door doing something with the lock for 10 minutes now." As we got back it seems no one broke in and most likely came back to either try or to test the key they somehow had and see if it still worked. They passed on the loose change to come back for the big time, but were left empty handed in the end. All because I slacked off for literally one day and stayed home, didn't answer the doorbell, noticed the opened guestroom and didn't leave anything to chance and changed the locks.
As for how they got a copy of the key? Who knows, but one particular person in my family is too trustful and just hands it to the neighbor to come water the plants, the gardener to come in and use the bathroom if he needs it, the colleague at work to quickly go home to pick something up, you get the idea. I imagine one of them copied the key and made all this possible.
The end.??
