Vanessa Becker and six other convicted car thieves share their secrets next Wednesday on 9NEWS.
The crime scene photos from the night it all ended tell a story of a life that Venessa Becker knew was in disarray.
"After I lost everything and started doing drugs again, you become desperate because it’s so expensive," Becker said. "We would wake up, get high, and figure out what we were going to do to pay for our next night at a nice hotel… what we were going to do to get money."
From the visitor’s room at La Vista Correctional, Becker told 9NEWS about her all-consuming cocaine habit and the crimes that once fueled it.
After being sober for eight years, she relapsed in 2014, sinking deep into a dangerous routine, stealing cars with her boyfriend so the couple could get by.
“It was just easier for me to just get a car, that way I could stay on the run easier,” Becker remembered. “I could have my stuff in it, and if I needed to get money for it, I could take it to a chop shop and they would pay you for the parts.”
Becker said she and her boyfriend stole more than 30 cars in four years. The suburbs were their targets. Places where people would leave their nice, new cars unlocked, their garage doors open, and many times, their keys in cup holders or ignitions.
Quintessential communities, like Kathi and Paul’s home in Arvada.
“It’s always seemed very safe,” Kathi told us with her husband sitting by her side. “We have great neighbors, we know all our neighbors. I’ve never heard about anything happening… no… not at all.”
The couple remembered their garage was shut early in the morning on January 29, 2016. The door from the outside leading into the garage was safety locked, but not deadbolted. Arrest records show that thieves broke that lock, making it possible for them to get inside.
The records also show that one of those thieves was Vanessa Becker. She told us she stayed in a car parked outside while her boyfriend and a few others handled the heist. Police said after breaking through the outside door, the thieves went through another door between the garage and Paul and Kathi’s home.
That’s a door they often left unlocked, thinking a closed garage door was enough.
While the family slept upstairs, thieves took Paul’s wallet, Kathi’s purse and then the keys to her Mazda.
“I think it took me three months to sleep through a night again,” Kathi recalled.
“You hear something,” Paul said, “just something… you think it’s the worst.”
Five days later, according to arrest records, Kathi’s car had already been given away. Becker was now driving a stolen Toyota Camry, but she was worried that she had it for too long.
“I left our hotel at about 3 o’clock in the morning and I was on the highway to see if I could find us another car,” Becker told us. “I fell asleep… and it had started snowing, and I flipped [it].”
Despite a broken humerus and leg, head trauma, and blood all over her face, Becker crawled out of the car only to find some people who had stopped to help.
“I actually took their car to try to get away. And I got in a chase [with Aurora Police]…and I passed out unconscious due to my injuries.”
Becker had finally been caught. In the crashed Camry, police found purses, IDs and credit cards. Kathi’s were among them.
Becker was arrested and spent weeks recovering in the hospital before being transferred to Arapahoe County Jail.
Even she admits the mugshot she took is alarming.
“It’s a scary picture.”
A snapshot, of a woman who had just reached rock bottom.
“It was the best day of my life, but the worst day of my life…" Becker said. "I was just so glad it was over.”
She was eventually sentenced to four years in prison, convicted on various charges, including motor vehicle and ID theft.
After two years, she made parole and was supposed to walk free at the end of May. But until she gets a housing plan approved, she will stay in La Vista Correctional in Pueblo.
“I mainly did this [interview] so I can try to give back and say how very sorry I am,” Becker told 9NEWS. “If I can help anyone out there to prevent them from having it happen to them, then I feel like maybe doing this was worth it for me.”
Kathi and Paul told us they now keep all of their doors on the outside of their home deadbolted, the door leading from their garage into their home locked, and even the cars in their garage locked to keep people from stealing from them again.
