Button, dust lead to burglary conviction

It was good old-fashioned police work at its best.

Hill Meat Company in Pendleton was burglarized the night of Feb. 14, 1971, and the firm’s safe had been literally torn apart and scattered around the office. Cash totaling $1,800 was stolen.

Oregon State Police officers John Williams and Jim Toddy began their investigation by interviewing W.D. Perkins, the Hill Meat employee that discovered the burglary at 8:15 a.m. Perkins told the officers that an early 1960s beige station wagon had been seen in the company parking lot the evening prior to the theft.

Pendleton police officer Don Isom also saw the car in the area. He had stopped a similar vehicle in the Sherwood area at 4:45 a.m. for running a stop sign. He talked to the car’s two occupants, George Wesley Storms and Inez Guerrero, who Isom said seemed short of breath and nervous. He let them go with a warning. Police soon learned that both men were convicted safe burglars, but the men and the car had vanished.

Meanwhile, OSP investigators at the scene of the burglary found a single black button in the wreckage of the safe. With this and the descriptions of the two suspects, they asked Umatilla County District Attorney R.P. Smith and District Judge Richard Courson for a search warrant. Smith then headed for Portland, where Storms and Guerrero were well known to law enforcement.

The suspect vehicle was spotted at a Portland bar, and Storms was arrested. Portland police seized the vehicle and OSP investigators Williams and Toddy, and Reg Madsen of the state police crime lab, made a thorough search. In the car they found a copy of the Feb. 13 East Oregonian newspaper and some dust, which was collected with a vacuum cleaner.

But that wasn’t enough evidence to make a solid case. So Portland police, armed with a second warrant, raided a home where Storms was known to have visited recently. And there they collected a black jacket with a missing button. Dust in the pockets of the jacket was also collected.

Pendleton police, armed with mug shots of the two suspects, learned that they had been at Hill Meat Co. a few days prior to the burglary, asking for jobs. But the big break occurred when police interviewed Barry Clift at his service station on Southwest Emigrant Avenue, and learned the suspects’ car had stopped there around 7:15 a.m. the morning following the burglary. Clift said one of the men had pockets full of coins and boasted of making “quite a score.”

Crime lab reports matched the black button to the jacket, and the dust in the car and in the pockets of the jacket included particles of fire clay and paint from the ransacked safe.
During Storms’ trial on June 3, 1971, the prosecution called 18 witnesses to the stand. The jury was out only 20 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty. The 44-year-old Storms was sentenced to 10 years in state prison.

Guerrero faced the same charge, but at the time of the trial was being held in a Portland jail on a charge of armed robbery.