Mayor's jewelry is suspect's undoing

Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)

2001-07-17

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Mayor's jewelry is suspect's undoing Stolen earrings turn up in Medford pawn shop An accused daytime burglar who broke into four east Medford homes, including that of city Mayor Lindsay Berryman, was caught last week after a pair of the mayor's diamond earrings turned up in a local pawn shop, police said Monday. Donnie Duane Warner, a 36-year-old veteran thief with no permanent address, faces burglary and theft charges stemming from the break-ins during the second half of June, police said. Warner allegedly broke through a sliding glass bedroom window in Berryman's Highcrest Drive house on June 16 and stole $5,000 worth of jewelry while the mayor and her husband, a physician, were gone, according to the Medford Police Department. A routine check of local pawn shops turned up a set of diamond earrings believed to be those of Berryman, and investigators eventually traced those earrings back to Warner, Medford police Sgt. Roy Skinner said. Warner confessed to the Berryman break-in, as well as burglaries of homes on the 1400 block of Bluebonnet Avenue, the 2400 block of Acorn Way and the 100 block of Ashland Avenue, Skinner said. Warner was arraigned Monday in a Jackson County court on three counts of first-degree burglary, one count of second-degree burglary, seven counts of first-degree theft and one charge of possession of methamphetamine. Judge Ray White set bail at $250,000 on those charges, then returned Warner to the Jackson County Jail, where he is being held on a no-bail hold for breaking probation from a previous conviction. Berryman could not be reached Monday for comment. The case began after the one-third carat earrings turned up at the Rogue Valley Coin and Jewelry Exchange, where owner Michael Cotta bought them for $175. Cotta said he did not know they were stolen, and planned to sell them for about $350. A detective checking the shop found that the earrings matched the description of some stolen from Berryman's home, but the mayor could not make a positive identification of them, Skinner said. Police questioned the woman who pawned the earrings, which eventually led them to an aqua-marine ring that the mayor could identify as one of the 16 items stuffed into one of Berryman's yellow pillowcases and taken in the burglary, Skinner said. Warner was arrested Thursday in Medford on a warrant charging that he violated his probation from an earlier conviction, and he was lodged in the county jail, police said. The burglary and theft charges were added Saturday.   Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.