Rogers County Family Busted In Alleged Crime Ring

Lori Fullbright, News On 6

CLAREMORE, Oklahoma -- Rogers County deputies broke up a large theft ring. Deputies arrested five members of one family and recovered a large amount of stolen goods.

Jimmy, Willy, Allan, Clayton and Erin Legates were arrested for possession of stolen property and having firearms during a felony.

The bust happened after one of the victims set up a hidden camera.

Tony Platner owns a home in Chelsea he plans to renovate and sell. Thieves broke in recently and hauled off Lazy Boy chairs, a freezer full of meat and more.

That's bad enough, but they came back. This time taking refrigerators, dressers, a heavy pool table, even sentimental items.

"Some things can't be replaced. They took a camera that had my son's wedding on it, my grandson and now the memory card is gone, my son's prom, you can't replace that stuff," Platner said.

Afraid the thieves still weren't through, Tony set up a camera and sure enough, one of them came back. Rogers County deputies hope someone can help them identify this man, who had no trouble making himself at home in Tony's place.

"He pulls up a chair and looks pretty comfortable going through my personal papers," explained Tony, showing footage from the surveillance video.

A deputy working a separate stolen gun case got search warrants for two mobile homes in the Foyil area. They found tons of stolen stuff, including many items that were Tony's.

"Yeah, it was good. We hooked up a trailer and got a bunch of our stuff back. Some of it is still missing. It's probably been spread everywhere. It felt good to catch them. Now I just hope they punish them," he said.

In addition to Tony's property, deputies say they found several other stolen goods dating back to burglaries from 2010.

They'll have to track down the victims to reclaim the items which include saddles, guns, electric motors, fishing poles and tools.

"We have people who wake up every day with a mission to victimize somebody. Our focus is to stay focused on them and have plenty of room in our jail for them and have them locked up and hopefully, sent to the penitentiary," said Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton.

Sheriff Walton said a small part of the population is committing a large percentage of the crimes and by focusing on those career criminals, they hope to cut the crime rate drastically.

Tony did get his camera back, but instead of the pictures of his family, the thieves had taken pictures of themselves wearing the stolen clothes and even playing pool on his stolen pool table.

If you information on this case, call the Rogers County tip line at 918-341-3620.