Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509050005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But this is not another postal delay horror story.
It's about a woman who postal inspectors say walked the streets of her neighborhood for months, collecting mail from her neighbors' boxes. Any mail. Letters, packages, bills - even junk mail. It didn't matter.
Neighbors were inconvenienced, paid some of their bills late, waited for expected checks that never came. But they seem mostly perplexed about it.
"I think it was just a cry for help," said Paul Canada, who last week received a stack of old mail 6 or 7 inches high that postal inspectors say they found in Ann Kennedy Dickens' apartment.
Dickens, 62, is unemployed and lives alone in Briskwood Apartments on Third Street. She has been arrested twice before in Roanoke and charged with stealing mail.
In 1990, postal inspectors found more than 5,000 pieces of mail taken from around her Pebble Creek apartment in Southwest Roanoke County. The prosecutor dropped the charge after she was found to be insane when the thefts occurred.
Jail, U.S. Magistrate Glen Conrad said at the time, "would not be conducive to her best interest."
In 1993, Dickens was arrested again with 400 pieces of mail from Walnut Avenue Southeast. She agreed to get help and was put into a pretrial diversion program. The U.S. attorney had her 1993 file sealed from the public, but it was unsealed last week at the request of The Roanoke Times. The court found then that she had a history of psychiatric disorders and unspecified mental health problems that cannot be treated on an outpatient basis.
Dickens moved to Baltimore, but came back to Roanoke last year. The thefts started in April.
She was arrested Aug. 21 and brought back before Conrad, who ordered her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before she appears in court again Sept. 12.
After receiving complaints about missing mail, postal inspectors set out "bait" mail and photographed a woman stealing it.
The woman would make two trips, Postal Inspector Kevin Boyle said, one before the mail carrier made his rounds and again afterward, taking letters left out to be mailed and those that had just been delivered.
The mail was found in boxes in Dickens' back bedroom, Boyle said. None of it was opened
Because people don't always know what they're going to receive in the mail, it took awhile for people to suspect theft.
"We didn't realize for a long time we were missing any mail because it wasn't [stolen] every day," Canada said.
After Dickens was arrested two weeks ago, the 460 pieces of mail found in her bedroom were returned to the folks who live and work in the neighborhood.
LMW Professional Corp., an engineering firm, received $6,000 worth of checks that should have arrived in April and May. Some had already been replaced by the senders, but some were outstanding on the books.
"It's very unusual for us not to receive any mail," said Bob Tilley, administrative manager at LMW.
The company began noticing empty mailboxes some days. One day, an employee watched a "suspicious lady" walking off the porch tucking something into her shirt.
Businesses may have gotten hit hardest on Saturdays, when no one was around to take in the mail.
Cornett Realtors, across the street from Dickens' apartment, was hit just once, but the loss of the mail was noticed.
Bookkeeper Linda Call realized the company had not received a June gas or phone bill and had to ask for duplicates from the utilities. But she did not realize mail had been stolen until the post office notified her. She got back about 15 letters last week, which she said looked like one day's bundle from June.
A check sent to a lawyer last month never arrived, so she doesn't know if there may be more mail that was stolen.
Neighbors began taking precautions after they noticed stolen mail. LMW is installing a slot in its door and getting rid of the porch mailbox. The company is also considering getting a post office box. Cornett Realtors has asked the mail carrier to hold its weekend mail until Mondays.
by CNB