It was a tough decision. Becker knew that Dwayne was already somewhat disenchanted with him because of his lack of interest in his Internet venture. Dwayne had also been arguing with Becker about his share of the burglary proceeds, which he thought needed to be bigger. The fact that Becker would not bail him out was the last straw. An angry Dwayne impulsively contacted a police detective and said that he might know a thing or two about the mysterious safe burglaries that had been occurring around Florida. Indeed, Dwayne was so willing to talk that he forgot to arrange any kind of immunity deal for himself before making his confession.
When the cops located Julian and confronted him with the statements Dwayne had made, he did quickly cut a deal, perhaps because a few months earlier he'd been arrested for doing some burglaries on his own. Apparently, Julian had begun to believe he was as good as Becker and no longer needed him. In Orlando, in a single evening, he had attempted to steal the safes of a Dairy Queen, a check-cashing business, and a Steak and Ale-all of them located within a block of one another. An Orlando police officer saw Julian running from the last burglary, drove up beside him, and shot him with a stun gun, causing him to soil his pants. Julian realized that the only way he could avoid prison for his triple-burglary stunt was to betray the very person who had taught him how to do it.
And just like that, the Becker Crew was no more. Police officers descended on Todd and Cathy's dream home, yelling at them, "Where are the safes? Where is the money?" They found only a couple thousand dollars in the bedroom closet and around a hundred dollars in Cathy's purse, which she told them was money from her daughters' Girl Scout cookie sales. When Becker's five-year-old son watched the officers lead Becker away, he told his mother that the men were soldiers and that they wanted Becker to go away with them to fight terrorists. Cathy said, "I bet that's right," and then she burst into tears.
When police officers in Florida went looking for Bill, they found him working part-time as a Santa's helper at a mall because he was still having trouble finding a good job in the restaurant business. (He was also a very bad criminaclass="underline" The cops found one of the stolen safes, which he had been too lazy to discard, in his garage.) As the police approached, he was wearing a Santa's hat and a bright green vest festooned with decorations of candy canes, telling children to smile for their photo with Santa. According to Bill, the police shouted, "Step away from the Santa booth!" During the arrest of Paulo in another part of Florida, the police found a sculpture of a purple dolphin, titled "Taking Flight," that had been taken from one of the Florida stores where a safe had been stolen. The sculpture was so beautiful, Paulo later said, that he just had to have it for his living room.
Becker was taken to Florida to be booked on state burglary charges. In the jail, he came across Dwayne. "We were sitting there by ourselves," Becker recalled, "and I said, 'What did I do to you that was so terrible that you had to do this to me?' I said, 'My kids love you-they jump on you. They call you Uncle Dwayne. They jump all over you.' " Becker paused, still stunned by the betrayal. "And there was nothing Dwayne could say. Nothing he could say."
For days at Stonebridge ranch, people drove past the Becker house to gawk. Neighbors on the street talked about how Becker used to give each of them a nice bottle of wine for Christmas. Parents from the soccer teams that Becker helped coach wondered if the soccer league would let him coach again after he got out of prison. He was, after all, so good with the kids. "We definitely knew what he did was criminal," said Jodi Anderson, "but we did admire the way he pulled it off. It did take a lot of courage. And it's pretty hard to get away with something like that for so long in this neighborhood, where everyone knows your business."
Some neighbors withdrew from the Beckers, and one woman on the street told her children they could no longer play with the Becker children because their daddy was a burglar. Cathy told me she was so furious at what the neighbor had said that she marched up the street to where the woman and others were gathered one evening and shouted, "You hypocrites! I've seen you get drunk in front of your own kids. I know you smoke pot. I know you went swimming naked in someone else's pool!"
When investigators asked Becker to explain how he could maintain his Stonebridge Ranch lifestyle despite filing income tax returns that showed him earning less than six figures, Becker said that he had made money gambling in Las Vegas. (Becker had indeed done some gambling over the years in hopes that he could earn enough money to quit burglarizing.) But Becker quickly succumbed after hearing the evidence accumulated against him. Besides the state burglary charges he was facing, an IRS task force was charging Becker with money laundering and was planning to take away all his assets. M. Andrew Stover, an assistant U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Texas, met with Becker and told him that Cathy could well be prosecuted for conspiracy. "His reaction was amazing," said Stover. "He started crying and shaking-something you rarely see a major criminal do-and he said that all he wanted was to take care of his wife and family."
To keep his wife out of prison, Becker agreed to confess to everything he had done. His attorney, Mark Watson, of Dallas, also arranged that in return for a five-year federal prison sentence, Becker would reveal the names of the various fences around the country who had bought his stolen computers years before.
Dwayne, Bill, and Paulo received two-year sentences in Florida. The cases against Joey and Danny are still pending. Kim was never charged because the statute of limitations had expired for her particular criminal adventure. (Due to Becker's encouragement, she did quit dancing and now works as a waitress at an Italian restaurant.) Meanwhile, with his full immunity, Julian has disappeared from Florida. The rumor is that he has used his burglary money to help out members of his family, just as Becker used to do. Julian has allegedly purchased his father a Camaro and given money to his mother, who now has no income, with her husband, Bill, in jail. (When I talked to Becker about Julian's new life, he paused for a moment, then said, "I hope I had an effect on him, getting him to help out his family, because that's what it's all about.") Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that Dwayne, Becker's Judas, told me when I went to see him in Florida that as soon as he gets out of prison, he is going to get his dog back from his girlfriend and move to Tennessee. "I'm going to get started again," he said. "Find a nice house in a nice neighborhood and not drink or anything."
"It sounds just like the life Todd wanted you to live," I said.
There was a pause. "Well, no," said Dwayne. He paused again. "I don't know. Maybe."
I went to see Becker and his wife for the last time this past November, just before he left for federal prison. The IRS had decided not to confiscate his Stonebridge Ranch home, which still had a sizable mortgage, because real estate values had decreased in the area and the home would be difficult for the federal government to sell at a profit. As a result, Cathy and the children were going to be able to stay in the house. (Although Cathy, who has gone back to work as a real estate agent, said she was going to make the mortgage payments with her income, some detectives speculate that the Beckers still have a secret stash of stolen money.) When I walked through the front door, Cathy was busy decorating the house for Thanksgiving and Becker had just returned from his next-door neighbor's home, where the woman there had locked herself out of the house. "I used a flat-head screwdriver to pop open her back door," he said with a shrug.