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The Mystery of the Rubbish House Burglar

Started by 23 Daves, May 15, 2011, 01:55:53 PM

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23 Daves

A very strange thing happened last night.  At about 11:30pm - when I was actually still up and about and quite drunk after Eurovision - my downstairs neighbour was disturbed by a male teenager turning a key in the door to her flat.  She was also up, quickly opened the door to see who it was, which caused him to say "Oh, sorry!" then run for his life up the street.

There's a main front entrance door with a lock he'd have had to get through first, so he obviously had a key for that.  There are no signs of forced entry.  Beyond that door, there are only two flats in this block, ours and hers.  He obviously thought he had keys for one or other of them. 

To add to the riddle, we had all our locks changed when our dodgy downstairs neighbours moved out a few years back, so nobody should have copies apart from us.

My wife had her bag nicked in West London a year and a half ago which contained some keys, but so far as she was aware there was nothing in the bag itself to indicate her personal address.  And if there were, the criminal would have had to have kept hold of them for this long before travelling up to East London at 11:30 at night for an opportunistic break-in. 

So here's the question - where the hell did he get keys from?  How is any of this possible?  This is clearly a little teenage scrote we're talking about here, not some house robbing mastermind. 

We had all our locks changed this morning by a locksmith.

Milo

Quote from: 23 Daves on May 15, 2011, 01:55:53 PM
We had all our locks changed this morning by a locksmith.

There's your culprit.

Big Jack McBastard

^That or, is it possible he was one of the ex-neighbours (or a friend of theirs) who knew of some vulnerability in the outer door which got him in sans a key?

Basically what I'm suggesting is have a jiggle about with your outer door while it's locked to see if you can circumvent it

NoSleep

Who's to know if the key he tried your neighbour's door was an actual fit or would have worked, given that they opened the door themselves.

Getting into the flats at that time could have been achieved by following someone into the premises.

The Duck Man

My friend in East London has his flat broken into relatively recently, and out of him room filled with gadgets, all they took was his change jar.

These two incidences and the location points to one thing: hipsters. They're probably doing ironic burglaries now.

23 Daves

No, he couldn't have tailgated in.  There's only two flats in this block, and none of us were going in or out at that time (or had visitors who were).

I suppose he could have exploited a vulnerability in the downstairs door, then tried his luck with some random key at my neighbour's flat.  It just seems like an odd thing to do, though.  Or perhaps it's actually a perfectly sensible thing to do and I know absolutely nothing about how easy it is to manipulate locks.

To be honest, where my flat is concerned, there's not much worth taking.  Two old laptops, one of which has a hard drive fault it keeps warning us about, the other of which is an old MacBook with a knackered battery.  The main thing I get paranoid about is my record collection, although I'd hope they'd take the CDs and just leave the vinyl alone. 

Funcrusher

The odd thing to me is who would break in at 11.30 on a Saturday night? The odds of the occupants being in and still awake are pretty high surely. If you had a means of getting in at any time without breaking the lock, why go in then?

23 Daves

Quote from: Funcrusher on May 15, 2011, 06:04:36 PM
The odd thing to me is who would break in at 11.30 on a Saturday night? The odds of the occupants being in and still awake are pretty high surely. If you had a means of getting in at any time without breaking the lock, why go in then?

Exactly!  I was up myself at that time and making a lot of noise (hence I didn't hear the panic downstairs).  That alone should have been enough to put anyone off trying to gain entry.

What I haven't mentioned above is the fact that about a year ago my downstairs neighbour heard somebody trying to bash the main front door in, it sounded as if they were trying to shoulder their way in.  She called the police, and by the time they came whoever was doing it had gone.  This, again, was at around 11:30.  It's all a bit odd. 

As the tagger said, could it have been this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping

What kind of locks do you have?

Depressed Beyond Tables

Quote from: Funcrusher on May 15, 2011, 06:04:36 PM
The odd thing to me is who would break in at 11.30 on a Saturday night?

But then again that's the perfect time to break in, if you think about it. Nobody would believe it, not even the cops. They'd laugh in your face and probably charge you with wasting poilce time. Sounds like a pro to me.

Funcrusher

Quote from: Steve Lampkins on May 15, 2011, 06:25:57 PM
As the tagger said, could it have been this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping

What kind of locks do you have?

Only works on Yale type locks, I think, not Chubb lever types.

23 Daves

Quote from: Steve Lampkins on May 15, 2011, 06:25:57 PM
As the tagger said, could it have been this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping

What kind of locks do you have?

I don't know.  The neighbour spoke to the locksmith earlier, so I don't actually know what type he will have put in as a replacement.  The one on our door is a standard Yale type lock, but I've no idea what the mechanism for it is.

I knew nothing of this "lock bumping" tactic before it was mentioned on this thread.  Is this actually a reasonably common method of breaking into properties now?

katzenjammer

Well considering detailed instructions are all over YouTube and looks like a piece of piss....


Ambient Sheep

Time to add a five-lever mortice lock as well, methinks.  (We already have one, phew!)

In fact, as long ago as 1990, when I bought my house, we could get 5% discount on our house insurance if we had either a cylinder-type lock that could be double-locked from outside and inside (so that anybody smashing the glass would find turning the handle did no good at all) or a five-lever mortice lock (i.e. your typical back-door style lock), plus window locks.  Nowadays, given lock-bumping, they'd probably want both double-locking-cylinder AND a mortice lock.

I still have the keys to that house, even though I'm long gone and so are both the doors. :-((

23 Daves

I've just been laughing at this appalling YouTube video advertising a product called Pickbuster.  Look out for the "opinions from ordinary people" at the end:

http://youtu.be/ZGX6jyyIkPk

I've looked at several advice forums regarding it, however, and as a product it apparently does the job, although I'd be happy to be told otherwise.

I have a series of double locks on the door to our flat, so for the time being I'll just make sure they're locked shut at night, something we don't normally do due to the fire risk.

As for changing them completely, that would be up to our landlord.  It's not our property, unfortunately. 

NoSleep

Quote from: 23 Daves on May 15, 2011, 07:43:27 PM
I have a series of double locks on the door to our flat, so for the time being I'll just make sure they're locked shut at night, something we don't normally do due to the fire risk.

I thought there were laws against locking people inside a home?

MojoJojo

Quote from: 23 Daves on May 15, 2011, 07:43:27 PM
As for changing them completely, that would be up to our landlord.  It's not our property, unfortunately.

As a tenant, you are fully within you're rights to change the locks - legally, you just have to provide access if your landlord needs it to maintain the property or they want to inspect it and have given you 24 hours notice.

However... if you want to stay on good terms with your landlord, discussing it with them first is probably a good idea... it's the sort of thing that gets landlords aggravated.

(assuming your concern is the legality, rather than the not wanting to spend money on someone else's house thing)

hpmons

Quote from: 23 Daves on May 15, 2011, 01:55:53 PM
My wife had her bag nicked in West London a year and a half ago which contained some keys, but so far as she was aware there was nothing in the bag itself to indicate her personal address.  And if there were, the criminal would have had to have kept hold of them for this long before travelling up to East London at 11:30 at night for an opportunistic break-in. 

Maybe she lied, and actually gave her keys to her secret boyfriend, who hoped she would be alone that night and wanted to surprise her.

Cerys

Clearly a future tenant of the property, who has a legitimate set of keys, a time machine, and short term memory loss.

hpmons

Quote from: Cerys on May 16, 2011, 01:46:16 PM
Clearly a future tenant of the property, who has a legitimate set of keys, a time machine, and short term memory loss.

But...then he'd have different keys, since 23 Daves changed the locks afterwards...Preposterous!

Cerys

Nope - his arrival with his own set of keys was an event that caused a bifurcation of the time line.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: 23 Daves on May 15, 2011, 06:50:58 PM
I knew nothing of this "lock bumping" tactic before it was mentioned on this thread.  Is this actually a reasonably common method of breaking into properties now?

I had a mortice lock put on our front door after lock bumping was discussed on here before. IIRC even mortice locks can be bumped but bumping two locks at the same time is very difficult.

I wouldn't lock your mortice locks at night in case you need to get out quickly in an emergency. Just use them when you're out. Mortice locks are particularly good if burglars find another way in because they still need a key or to break the door in order to get out with your stuff.