Two thieves who targeted an 85-year-old couple after one of them helped install a new heating system in their Bethesda, Maryland, home blamed the economy for the crime, according to Montgomery County police.
The couple was in the basement when they heard a loud crash upstairs about 5:30 p.m. Feb. 16, police said. They went upstairs and found two men – one with a baseball bat and the other with a small, blunt object – entering the home through a broken glass backdoor.
The men ordered the couple to sit on the living room couch, put their hands up and not look at the men.
“We are not going to hurt you,” one of the men said. “We respect you. It’s just that the economy sucks.”
They took a box containing $10,000, including silver dollars earned and saved for 35 years, police said.
"It was very clear from the beginning that these two suspects knews where this cash and these coins were stored in the home, so it was very clear to the detectives someone had intimate knowledge of where they might be," said Rebecca Innocenti of Montgomery County Police.
The box was below a thermostat on the second floor of the home, and detectives learned the couple had recently had the heating system installed. That led them to 30-year-old Robert Christopher Hartley, an employee of the company that installed the heating system, police said.
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Detectives searched Hartley’s home Feb. 19 and found silver coins and traveler’s checks taken from the couple’s home, police said. Hartley offered a full confession during questioning.
Detectives also learned about three hours before the robbery, the female victim turned away a man claiming to be knocking on their door about snow removal and landscaping. Police learned it was Hartley’s suspected accomplice, 28-year-old Ioanis Gourgoulianos. He was arrested Feb. 20.
Hartley and Gourgoulianos are charged with home invasion, first-degree assault and theft.
