By Jason Kandel
The San Jose Mercury News
GRANADA HILLS, Calif. — The hand-sketched map resembled something out of a middle school drafting class, with an “X” marking the spot of a buried treasure and scribbled notes and measurements on how to unearth the bounty.
And when police dug their shovels into a patch of dirt Tuesday at the site of the “X” — underneath power lines near the Ronald Reagan Freeway and White Oak Avenue — they discovered socks full of jewelry likely hidden long before Los Angeles’ most prolific burglar was convicted last summer.
Diamond rings. Gold necklaces. Antique Rolexes. A canary diamond ring that, if real, could be worth as much as $400,000.
“My heart jumped out of my throat,” said Los Angeles police Detective Bill Longacre, who said he didn’t want to estimate the value of the total treasure and will leave that up to an appraiser.
“Why did he give it up? Why did he keep this stuff? ... For him, it was the thrill of the hunt. It was a lifestyle he chose to excite himself.”
The burglar, Roberto Caveda, is imprisoned at the county’s Twin Towers jail. He recently drew the map while sitting in his cell.
“I was shocked,” said his attorney, Mark Bledstein, who faxed the map to police. “I mean, to have a map like that, and it’s right there where the guy says it is?”
He said his client is smart and has a college degree from San Diego State University. His mother and a sister traveled in the past two weeks from Spain to visit him at the Twin Towers, Bledstein said.
his sisters is an architect. The other is an attorney, Bledstein said.
“He comes from a very nice family. They’re very upset with him. These are pro-social, upscale people.”
While Caveda’s motive isn’t clear, his sentencing is set for Thursday, and he could get 15 years in prison.
“He just felt it was the right thing to do,” Bledstein said. “He’s been telling me how bad he felt after seeing all these old people testify.”
The map provided details so cops would know exactly where to look, with measurements in meters -- the system of Caveda’s native Spain.
In the “jewelry area,” he even told them how far to dig — .75 meters. When LAPD detectives hit that depth, they discovered socks full of jewelry stuffed into a 2-foot-long, 4-inch-thick piece of plastic piping sealed with electrician’s tape.
“We always knew that he’s an odd character,” said Detective Don Hrycyk, who works the LAPD art theft detail.
“He looks like somebody who thought of himself as a master criminal. It looks like he was, in fact, very active.”
This is just the latest in the continuing saga of a man whose story reads like a movie script. Dubbed the James Bond of burglars, he was convicted in July for breaking into homes from Pasadena and Brentwood to the San Fernando Valley.
Police estimate that he took up to $15 million in loot, including a Degas painting of two ballerinas valued at $10.5 million and an LAPD officer’s service pistol.
He evaded detection in at least 28 burglaries -- and possibly as many as 80 --during 17 months from September 2004 to February 2006.
He used fake IDs, hydraulic pry bars, grappling hooks, rappelling ropes and cutting torches. He melted precious metals into ingots that he then sold to local jewelers, police said.
His method was to break into homes during the day, when few people were around, entering through dog doors, front doors, open windows and louvered windows, which he meticulously removed and replaced, police said.
He also tidied up the rooms he ransacked so homeowners didn’t realize for days that they’d been burglarized.
Caveda allegedly rented one storage unit in Studio City to store guns, jewelry and art and another in Simi Valley, where he kept smelting equipment used to melt precious metals.
Warrants served in connection with the case show that guns, jewelry, artwork, clothing and paperwork were seized from storage lockers rented by Ignacio Pena del Rio -- one of his aliases.
Police also seized equipment they say was used to create phony driver’ s licenses, visas, passports and Pacific Bell and Department of Water and Power employee ID cards, authorities said.
Caveda’s spree ended Feb. 16, 2006, after he burglarized two homes -- and tried to hit a third, police said.
Someone chased him away from a home in the 5000 block of Mecca Avenue in Tarzana. He was later caught in a house in the 4500 block of White Oak Place in Encino.
Investigators later reviewed a surveillance video from a home that had been burglarized in the 5300 block of Yolanda Avenue in Tarzana and identified Caveda as the suspect.
Now, police will begin the tedious process of cataloguing and photographing everything they found in the Granada Hills hole Tuesday and trying to reunite the jewelry with its rightful owners.
And today, they’ll interview Caveda to find out if there’s any other buried treasures.
“It’s a big recovery. It’s huge,” Longacre said. “It’s a huge feeling of satisfaction.”
Copyright 2008 The San Jose Mercury News