DALLAS — On December 30, a Lake Highlands couple discovered they'd been burglarized, according to Dallas Police.
The couple, Dick and Mary Barr, say they were scammed when a man came to the front door claiming to be a tree trimmer for their neighbor.
"I’m so sorry for the bother, I’m just trimming some of the trees for your neighbors," he's heard saying on the Barr's RING doorbell camera.
The man tells Dick he wants limbs from trees in his yard reaching into his neighbor’s and asks him to come take a look.
"And I said, okay," Dick explained to WFAA.
Dick agreed to meet the guy in the alleyway between the two homes. As he heads that way, another man is caught on camera showing up at their home. Footage shows him first trying to get through the front door, which is locked. Then he's seen walking in through the back door.
Moments later, the video shows that man running off with a sack of stuff, while the other guy, who kept Dick away and distracted, runs off too.
"I went back to the bedroom, and I saw that [my wife's] closet was just a complete mess," Dick said.
Dick’s wife, Mary, said her closet was torn apart.
"It’s so violating…I have a heart condition, I went immediately into AFIB," she told WFAA.
The man inside took most of her jewelry, she said, including gold, necklaces from her late grandma, and the pearls she wore on her wedding day.
"Anger, sadness," Mary said. "That this is the world we live in now that you have to be on guard, 24/7."
The Barrs figured they were the only family targeted until they saw a video posted by a woman named Keli Rabon in Houston, which appeared to show the same men commit the same type of burglary.
"He said he was here to trim trees on behalf of a neighbor," Rabon told WFAA over Zoom from Houston.
She said the same thing happened to her, that the two guys got away with $100,000 in her cash and fine jewelry.
"Since this happened to me two weeks ago, I’ve connected at least 12 other cases," she said.
Rabon is a former investigative reporter. She shared her story on the news and social media. Since then, a dozen families have written to her and shared their own videos with her. They said they believed they’d been burglarized by the same guys.
"I’m not going to stop until we catch them one way or another," she said.
If you think you might know who these men are, you can call the Dallas Police Department. Detectives there confirmed to WFAA that they are investigating Barr's case.