Police Say Burglar Hit 2 Houses for 'Quick Cash'

A cleaning woman led police to close two burglary cases straddling police jurisdictions last week.

The woman's son Daniel D. Monteiro, 24, of Southampton, was charged in both cases on Dec. 3, after admitting to the burglaries during questioning, East Hampton Village Police Detective Sgt. Matthew Bennett said on Tuesday.

Monteiro, a student at Stony Brook University, had access to keys to both properties — one on Lilly Pond Lane in the village and another on Talkhouse Walk in the town police department's jurisdiction— and knew the alarm codes, but made it look like break-ins, Bennett said.

"It was obvious somebody knew the properties," Bennett said, adding Monteiro has appears to have a drug problem and needed the "quick cash."

East Hampton Town police were alerted to a burglary at the house on Talkhouse Walk on Nov. 29, after a Scan security employee responded to an alarm and found a rear glass door shattered.

On Dec. 2, the owner told police $80 that had been left on the kitchen counter for the cleaning person— Monteiro's mother — went missing in the burglary.

According a town police report, detectives interviewed the cleaning person and found that the house on Lilly Pond Lane where she is a live-in caretaker was also burglarized on Nov. 30.

Bennett said Monteiro stole an older model iMac computer during the commission of that burglary and sold it in New York City.

Village police charged him with second-degree burglary, a felony, and fifth-degree criminal possession of stolen property, a misdemeanor.

Town police charged him with second-degree burglary and criminal mischief in the third-degree, also a felony.

Following arraignment in East Hampton Town Justice Court, Monteriro posted $11,000 bail at the Suffolk County jail in Riverside, but he was released into the custody of the Southampton Town Police Department.