More than 4 years for burglar

PALMER — When he and his wife came home to find they’d been burglarized, a Wasilla man testified in court Wednesday that his wife fell to the ground.

She’s a retired Marine and the violation of their home triggered her post-traumatic stress disorder.

They’d been gone that day because “we were at a training session for her service dog that she has because of this PTSD,” he said.

As a veteran himself, the man said he has seen terrorism first hand.

“Burglary resembles terrorism very strongly,” he said, noting that both acts require a cowardly perpetrator and victims chosen at random for selfish reasons.

The burglar in court to be sentenced, James Wolsterman, 40, was briefly made famous on Facebook when stills from a surveillance video of him breaking into the house in question was posted in January of this year.

In the break-in, he stole a laptop, a digital camera and a cellphone. The homeowners calculated the loss of property and damage to a door he tried and failed to break open at $1,700, an amount Wolsterman was ordered to reimburse them as part of his sentence.

For his part, Wolsterman said he was sorry for what he’d done.

“I lost sight of who I was as a person due to the use of drugs,” he said. He broke into the house because, “I thought it was the only way to get the drugs I needed.”

His accomplice in the case, Dennis Pickens, received a three-year sentence in July.

In addition to burglary and theft, Wolsterman was charged with violating the conditions of his release — he ditched his ankle monitor while out on bail — and with violating probation in a drug case for which he’d been convicted prior to the burglary.

His attorney, Elizabeth Varela, asked that he be sentenced only minimally for the ankle monitor charge — he was only off of his monitor for less than two weeks and in that time committed no new crimes — and for the probation violation.

“I, too, have been the victim of burglary. You feel like there’s never going to be peace in your home,” Varela said. “We can’t just stick everybody in jail because I’m mad or I’m upset.”

She said justice demands a sentence in line with what Wolsterman did.

“He understands what got him here, he understands what he needs to get out of here,” she said.

Wolsterman apologized to his victims and said he owes it to them, to his family and to himself to get a handle on his drug addiction. He also pointed out that it was obvious from the evidence his crime was a desperate act.

“I’m not versed in the ways of a burglar as I was caught on three cameras that were in plain sight,” he said.

Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen eventually decided on two years for the burglary and theft, six months for ditching the ankle monitor and 270 days for the probation violation.

She said burglary is a serious crime that society does not tolerate.

“When someone goes home for the night they have to feel safe,” she said. “Where else are they going to go?”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.