New Zealand’s top burglar
Well spoken and polite, Allan Adams now has 402 convictions for burglary, making him New Zealand’s most prolific burglar.
Adams, 46, has a staggering total of 444 convictions – some for dishonesty and arson – but mostly for breaking into businesses.
On Tuesday, Wellington District Court judge Jan Kelly jailed him for six years for the latest series around Wellington and the Hutt Valley in 2015.
He calmly thanked the judge for her fairness as she sent him back to the place where he has spent about 20 years of his life.
Adams had been found guilty of seven charges of burglary, and pleaded guilty to five more, along with possession of cannabis, cannabis and methamphetamine utensils, and theft of petrol.
The judge also imposed a minimum non-parole period of half the sentence.
Adams’ modus operandi is well known to police. He uses a screwdriver or crowbar to jemmy open doors or windows at night.
He crouches or crawls to avoid cameras, wears a hooded jacket to shield his face and looks for tills to crack open, petty cash and sometimes donation boxes.
He is in and out quickly and moves on, usually to the business next door.
This time he targeted mainly cafes and takeaway stores, hitting five in one night in Hataitai on May 5 and 6, the Gasworks a couple of nights later, then the Caci clinic, Quinns Post tavern and the Upper Hutt Veterinary Hospital.
He was later found to have broken into the Teaspoon coffee house in Upper Hutt after blood left at the scene was matched to his DNA.
The judge called his history of offending extraordinary. A previous sentencing judge called it remarkable.
Adams himself said it was about power and control.
It started when he was 13. He was placed in Beck House, a child welfare home in Hawke’s Bay in 1984, after The Department of Social Welfare was granted custody. He had set fire to a former school and been put into care.
He ran away after being sexually abused at the home and committed his first burglary.
He admitted some of it was survival, but that it gave him a sense of power, and helped reduce his stress and anxiety. It continued to do so for the next 30 years.
A lawyer who acted for him in 2012 said he appeared to be addicted the burglary, but Adams does not see it the same way.
He has only recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and is now getting counselling after being accepted by ACC.
He says it is helping him move on. Adams claimed the abuse through ACC and in 2011 he was paid $27,000 in compensation and received an apology from the chief executive of Ministry of Social Development for his treatment in care.
He also laid complaints with the police that were investigated, but nothing has come of it. It is something he still feels strongly about and believes has had a major impact on his life.
‘‘It’s all good and well to punish me for what I’ve done, I can accept this. But what I’m struggling with, however, is the fact that the ‘person’ who damaged me, destroyed me, and whos’ (sic) actions were therefore the catalyst for the direction that my life has taken, will not, as things currently stand, do a single day in prison.’’
‘‘Yeah, it’s what brought me here today,’’ he said at the sentencing.
After his last release from prison he got a job, but lost it in early 2015 after turning to methamphetamine. At a Parole Board monitoring hearing in December 2015 he was commended for not committing a burglary in five months, and told the board did not need to see him again.