My husband, Steve, and I used to live on a lovely street in a lovely city in upstate, NY. Very nice neighborhood. Very Safe. We were raising our young children there. Lots of families (young and old). It really was a perfect place to raise the kids . There was even a park nearby. Well groomed lawns, people always out for a walk or a bike ride. . Just a wonderful place to live!
This story happened back in May of 2002.
It was 3:30 am and I heard 5 very loud knocks on our front door. Like – really loud. Who ever was knocking really wanted us to wake up.
Steve slept like a rock. And I had to shake him awake.
At this point. My heart was pounding out of my chest. Who was knocking on our door at 3:30 am?
Our bedroom was located around the corner from the front door. I walked out of the bedroom first and Steve was half asleep walking behind me. As I turned the corner, I was blinded by a bright light flashing into our house through the the square window panes of our front door.
I heard “It’s Kingston Police Department.”
I opened the front door, still extremely nervous. What the heck is happening here?
As I opened the door all the way, I saw the police officer and he then turned his flashlight off. His car was in our driveway. He said “You need to look in your car because we have discovered that many of the cars on your street have been broken into tonight. And the drivers door was wide open for this car here.” He was pointing at Steve’s white Oldsmobile.
Steve never locked his car. He was always so trusting.
So, we said thanks and the policeman drove away.
The guy wasn’t very friendly and he almost made me shit my pants. He should have at least said sorry for waking us up.
Clearly, at this point, we were wide awake.
Steve checked his car and realized the checkbook he kept in the console was missing and so were all the coins that he kept in the little ashtray between the seats.
Steve worked at the bank in which our checking account was with. So, when he went into work that day he had to meet with the checking account dept. to close the old account down , deal with our outstanding checks , and then open a new account. There was a lot to deal with.
Back then, all of our shopping and bill paying transactions were done by check.
Remember – 9/11 happened 8 months earlier and banks were still working on creating the debit card and automated check processing as a result of that tragedy. So checking writing was still the main way that people would pay for things back in 2002.
It was a huge inconvenience.
We opened a new bank account and I tried to remind Steve to lock his car doors.
The next day, after all of the work we did to close the old account, we got a message on our answering machine.
“Yea – This is Bob from Riccardos – We found your checkbook here. Just so ya know it’s behind our bar.”
Ricardos was a popular local bar/restaurant located downtown. Located on the opposite side of town from where we lived.
We were glad to hear it was found. But also very annoyed that we had to go through all that nonsense to open a new account.
Steve stopped in the bar on his lunch hour and grabbed the checkbook. It was very nice of them to call us and Steve thanked them.
Steve called me right away and said “I just looked and it doesn’t look like any checks are missing. “ He saw the check number on top was what he thought it would be and skimmed through the checks book real quick. No big chunks taken out.
We were glad about that.
So- Fast forward another 2 days . And we get a very strange phone call.
”Hello, is this Colleen Hack?”
“Yes” I said.
“This is Detective Brown from Kingston Police Dept. Are you going to be home later today ? I have a few questions for you and I want to stop over to chat.”
“Can you tell me what this is about?” I was definitely starting to freak out. I was actually shaking.
The detective replied “There is a potential crime scene we are looking at and we found a blank check at the scene. The names on the check say Stephen and Colleen Hack with the address of 134 Madison Ave. – That’s you, right?”
“Yup- that’s me. Our checkbook was stolen 3 days ago. And – Yea – I’ll be here all day. Come on over.”
I was thinking
- “I got 3 little kids running around. The house is an absolute mess.
- Police are about to come to my house. AGAIN.. All because Steve didn’t lock his car door.”
- “Are we in trouble ?”
I called Steve right away. He finished up at work and came home. He brought the checkbook inside and we both looked at it more carefully.
Turns out the very last check in the book was removed. The thief (or thieves) did, in fact, steal a check.
Detective Brown came by later that day. He was nice. Much nicer than the grumpy cop who woke us up a few nights earlier.
He told us he was investigating a suspicious death. A middle aged man who lived near the bar downtown. He was found dead on the floor of his home. The investigators needed to figure out if it was foul play. This person had a very shady past and they didn’t know if he died of natural causes or if someone killed him. They were still waiting on the autopsy report. The detective told us the deceased persons name and his address and asked if we knew him or anyone affiliated with him. We did not know this person. I did recall reading his name a few times in the past in our local newspaper’s police blotter for things like dwi and theft. We didn’t know him or what he even looked like.
Detective Brown went on to tell us that check #989 from our checkbook was on the floor right next to the dead body. He even showed us a photo of the “crime scene” so we could identify our check.
We eventually learned that the investigators concluded that this man died of a heart attack.
Steve and I still think our names are sitting in a case file somewhere as “persons of interest.”
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Thanks for reading my story. Most of this was true except for the dead person. I made that part up. Have a nice day. 😊