Portly and disheveled, Robert Lee Brown doesn’t look like the sort of guy who would be light on his feet, but apparently he is. Last month, he broke into five homes in South City in the middle of night as the homeowners slept. He pilfered wallets, money, electronics, and jewelry before sneaking out.
The 53-year-old Brown prowled around in Compton Heights, a neighborhood where both the mayor and the police chief reside, and eluded a police canine before disappearing into Shaw. His M.O. was to enter through windows, hitting spots where homes are older and often have creaky floorboards, making his apparent stealth all the more astounding. The nighttime home invasion is one that criminals tend to eschew these days on the well-founded fear of getting shot. Not Brown; in one case he stole a homeowner’s keys and used the car as his getaway vehicle. In another burglary, he stole a cellphone from a young girl’s bedroom while she slept.
That particular burglary was captured on film. One of the family’s two dogs had taken to peeing in the middle of the night, so a camera had been set up in the living room to try to figure out which one it was. Instead, it showed Brown tip-toeing from the kitchen into the living room and up the stairs. “What are the odds that you break into the one house in Shaw that has a video camera set up to catch their dog that keeps marking the chair in their living room?” the homeowner asks…