Theft of singer’s trailer helped uncover vast crime ring

GPS led to house of stolen goods, later spurring 130 area arrests

When thieves pounced on country music star Zane Williams’ van and trailer outside a restaurant in north Houston in May 2015, they unwittingly tipped off authorities to where they kept stolen equipment and pushed law enforcement agencies to work on similar cases together. When Williams used an app to track a GPS device he’d placed inside the trailer, he helped investigators pinpoint a home used to house stolen goods by a coalition of burglars operating across the city.

On Tuesday, the Houston Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security announced a network of 130 people had been arrested and charged with stealing upward of $2 million of merchandise from trailers throughout the Houston area, all within the past year. HPD made 80 of those arrests.

Operated differently

Items stolen included everything from lawn equipment to motorcycle paraphernalia to actual cars, anything that could be hauled on a trailer attached to the back of a vehicle. Thieves would store stolen goods at the home or property of someone they knew, before trying to sell big-ticket items to interested buyers, all via word-of-mouth.

Thieves were “stealing anything and everything they could get,” said Lt. Mike Osina with HPD’s burglary and theft unit.

Osina hadn’t seen a ring this vast, with so many people involved before. He said this network was unlike a typical crime ring, in that it didn’t have one main leader or a set hierarchy. Instead, it was a loose network of 130 people who knew each other, some family members, mainly from the city’s east side. But they spread out across and beyond the city to find potential targets. Smaller groups would help one another out once they found viable targets, a process they called “shopping.”

“It was more, ‘Hey, I got this, come help me steal it,’” he said.

Osina declined to provide specifics on how the group communicated and planned their heists, saying they still expect to make additional arrests.

100-year-old fiddle

A month prior to the Williams’ trailer theft, a Houston Police undercover unit conducted an operation buying stolen items at the Port of Houston, only to learn the Pasadena Police Department was investigating the same ring of suspects. Before teaming up, most people who had been arrested were charged with property crime and given nine-month sentences, said HPD Capt. Daryn Edwards. After law enforcement authorities joined forces and began charging suspects with engaging in organized crime, average sentences jumped up to between 10 to 15 years, Edwards said. Some have also been charged for aggravated robbery and aggravated assault. Some of the 130 have gone to prison, and others are still awaiting trial, officials said.

While stolen goods haven’t been tracked leaving the port, Dan Rasmussen with the Department of Homeland Security said there are indications cars and other items may be going to Mexico. Osina said much of the property has been recovered, including Williams’ trailer full of band equipment.

After recovering the trailer with band equipment that same day, it took weeks to find the van it was attached to. Williams took to social media to send a message to his robbers, asking them to return the contents of the van, which included a few Macbook Airs, a 100-year-old fiddle and some guitars. Strumming along in a YouTube video uploaded three days after the heist, Williams sang, “I’m flattered you liked my CDs so much you just had to take them all.”

He went on, singing, “In the back bench, there’s a fiddle in that case. It’s 100 years old and one of a kind, and hard to replace.”

Contents never found

A few weeks later, Williams posted to Facebook. “Yeeehaw! Remember that van that got stolen? Well we got it back a couple weeks ago and now it’s broken down on us in Arkadelphia, Ark.,” he wrote.

However, Williams confirmed Tuesday he never got back what was inside the van, more than a year later.