Second forestry burglar arrested, first one absconds

PALMER — Two men implicated in a burglary of a Division of Forestry building have been arrested and charged with a slew of crimes, but one has since absconded.

The break-in, in which thieves grabbed everything — computers, vehicles, chainsaws and even a bicycle — was reported July 9 at a forestry building on Woodworth Loop.

The building is headquarters of a couple of firefighting Hot Shot crews — Gannett Glacier and Pioneer Peak. It houses, among other things, lockers for crews to store personal items while deployed.

Pioneer Peak was in Utah fighting a fire at the time and Gannett Glacier was headed that way.

The break-in was very similar to one that happened in summer 2010. In that case, tools, computers, electronics and multiple vehicles also were stolen. Stephen E. Foster was convicted of that break-in and sentenced to 12 years in prison. That two burglaries happened that close together has prompted some in the forestry community to call for tighter security at the facility.

In the current case, AST investigators followed the evidence for two months. They reviewed surveillance tapes from nearby Mat-Su Regional Medical Center that captured the burglary as it went down, including the rented U-Haul thieves used to commit the crime.

Both pickups were found in the Valley less than a month later. The bicycle turned up in Anchorage, as did a stolen GPS unit. Troopers tracked a stolen ATM card after it made five successful and four unsuccessful withdrawals in Anchorage.

Eventually, on Sept. 9, James Laneal Lee, 36, was arrested in Wasilla. He said that he and Christopher Barton had committed the burglary.

In court records filed two days after Lee was arrested, Trooper Brian Hibbs requests an arrest warrant to pick up Barton on theft, fraud, burglary and vehicle theft charges.

Prosecutors eventually dismissed all of those counts and instead charged him with theft, vehicle theft, theft of a gun and burglary.

Barton was arrested Sept. 14 and is listed, as of Saturday afternoon, as an inmate of the Goose Creek Correctional Center.

That same state prisons database no longer lists Lee as an inmate, with the reason for his absence as “escape.”

Whether he’d escaped from custody or just absconded while out on bail or wearing an ankle monitor was unclear from the records.

Court records show he was in custody as late as Monday, when he made a court appearance at which Superior Court Judge Gregory Heath agreed to drop his bail to $25,000 with a court approved third party custodian.

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