A despicable crime in NM

MY GIRLFRIEND’S father passed away the last week of November. He lived south of Albuquerque and served our country for over five years in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam. He moved to New Mexico from Wisconsin in the 1980s and lived there until his passing. He liked to collect things and had a two-acre piece of property out in the desert he called home.

When he passed away, my girlfriend and her sister came down from Wisconsin to start to go through his things and bring their father back home to Wisconsin for a proper military funeral . ... Because of the distance from northern Wisconsin to New Mexico, it was decided they would lock things up the best they could, talk with the closest neighbor and the authorities to watch over things and then after Christmas their brother would come down to go through the rest of his belongings . ... When the brother arrived, he found his dad’s property totally ransacked. Doors were busted in, sentimental items were tossed about like garbage and anything of value that wasn’t bolted to the floor was stolen. The neighbor even ran someone off who had decided to start living there!

The authorities had no answers and, of course, no suspects, other than “must be the drug addicts.” How can people be so mean as to steal a dead man’s things? In all of my life I have never been told of people stealing a dead man’s things, especially a veteran, here in Wisconsin. Yes, we have drug and other issues here..., but I would like to believe we show some respect to the dead. What happened to my girlfriend’s father just makes me sick. I’ve always wanted to visit every state of our great country, but after this, maybe I will just visit 49 of them and skip New Mexico.