Portland police officer Kimberly Adams knew something didn't seem right when a man and a woman walked up to a North Portland condo that had been burglarized last July 28.

The officer was interviewing the homeowner who had returned from vacation and discovered the theft. When the pair caught sight of Adams, they suddenly turned and walked in the other direction.

Adams followed the two -- and her intuition.

That ultimately led to the convictions of Randy Le'Anthony Devitt -- described by police as a decades-long thief and heroin addict who has hit places all over the city -- as well as Kayla Louise Snow -- his younger, less-experienced companion.

Snow was sentenced this week for her role in the theft, and Devitt was sentenced last month for the burglary.

Police suspect that the two had returned to the scene of the crime to try their hand at breaking into other condos in the complex, police say.

Once the officer approached Devitt and Snow, she asked them why they were there. Devitt said they were meeting a friend. But when pressed, he said he didn't know where his friend lived in the complex.

Adams also thought something else was odd.

"Instead of parking at one of the many open spaces right in front of the entry and in the shade, Devitt chose to park approximately one block away," states a probable cause affidavit filed by prosecutor Jeff Auxier, summing up the officer's observation.

Adams asked Devitt and Snow for their names and identification, according to police reports.

The next day, Officer Steve Jacquot ran their names through a computerized pawn-shop data system, which records the identities and fingerprints of people who have sold items to pawn shops in the city.

Snow's name came back as a hit, showing that she'd just pawned some gold and silver bracelets about 10 minutes earlier at a shop on Northeast Sandy Boulevard. They appeared identical to those owned by the resident of the burglarized condo.

Jacquot swiftly called the pawn shop to put a hold on the bracelets.

"They were like 20 minutes from being melted down," said Jacquot, explaining that a pawn shop employee told him the bracelets were already in a bowl that was set to be heated.

Jacquot went to the shop and took photos of the bracelets, then sent them to the condo owner. She confirmed that they were hers.

"It was all based on Kim (Adams) acting on that gut feeling she had, and my sheer dumb luck," Jacquot recalled this week.

The owner, who asked not to be identified because she doesn't want to become a target for more thieves, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that her stolen collection was worth about $57,000 and included diamond earrings, Mikimoto pearls and various gold rings, chains and bracelets.

But most special to her were family heirlooms, including a locket that came with her grandmother when she immigrated to the U.S. from Eastern Europe to marry her American husband in about 1900.

The owner discovered the burglary after arriving home from a trip. She said she was shaken and upset, but tried to put things in perspective as she spoke with Adams, the responding officer.

"I said to her, 'In the realm of things, this is probably not that big of a crime,'" the owner recounted this week. "She said, 'Nobody has the right to come into your home and take your personal things,' which I thought was pretty darn wonderful. She said, 'We will go after these people.'"

Here's how police got the her jewelry back:

After identifying 31-year-old Snow as the person who pawned the stolen bracelets, police interviewed her. Snow told them that she had sold the bracelets as a favor to Devitt, who had told her he was dope sick and needed her help.

Police believe that 44-year-old Devitt had planned to sell off the large cache of jewelry bit by bit to fuel his drug habit. But he couldn't keep quiet about his newly acquired fortune -- and he began bragging about it to friends, police say.

Word quickly spread in the criminal world, and shortly after the condo burglary, Devitt called police to report that he'd been tied up at a Northeast Portland motel and robbed of his wallet and car. No one has been charged in that case.

Informants who also heard about Devitt's bragging told police that Devitt had bought a safe at a Harbor Freight hardware store to stash the stolen jewelry. He was keeping the safe at his niece's St. Johns home. Police used that information to help them get a search warrant.

Police found most of the rest of the jewelry, including the locket that once belonged to the condo owner's grandmother. The owner was delighted to get it back.

"That was phenomenal," she said.

Prosecutor Jeff Auxier praised the work of both officers -- and of burglary task-force Detective Matt Estes, who Auxier said did the "diligent, non-glamorous work" of building an "overwhelming case" against Devitt.

Devitt has a criminal history stretching back 23 years, including theft, burglary and robbery.

Police believe Devitt accessed the jewelry owner's condo -- and possibly other condos that were burglarized last summer -- after he broke into a maintenance room at the complex and stole a box of keys to various units.

Devitt told authorities that he uses both heroin and methamphetamine weekly. He also said he's used heroin on and off for 30 years, since he was 14 years old. Devitt said has schizophrenia and post traumatic stress disorder, and that he's been unemployed for at least the past decade.

In addition to the condo burglary, police say Devitt was on a monthslong, citywide burglary and theft spree that included stealing a laptop from a University of Portland dorm room and smashing the window of a Jeep on Chapin Drive in the Forest Heights neighborhood of Northwest Portland and making off with a purse and tire chains.

Police say Devitt used a debit card from the purse at the downtown Galleria Target store. Video surveillance caught him in the act.

In January, Devitt pleaded no contest to several counts of first-degree burglary and identity theft related to the condo burglary, laptop theft and car break-in. He was sentenced in Multnomah County Circuit Court to five years and 10 months in prison.

On Tuesday, Snow pleaded guilty to first-degree theft for pawning the stolen bracelets. She was sentenced to three years of probation, 10 days in jail and a drug evaluation, which could lead to required treatment.

-- Aimee Green

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