Game camera helps police catch serial burglar

A $50 dollar piece of equipment helped police take down a serial burglar. Detectives say the man was on a three week break-in spree, hitting anywhere from two to four homes a day.

They're designed to help track animals, but a South Austin couple used a motion-sensitive game camera to hunt for burglars. On April 17th they caught one.

"It was pretty devastating actually to see it," said Debbie Saykally.

Debbie Saykally says her daughter came home to find the door kicked in and her drawers scattered.

Saykally pulled images from her game camera to see what happened.

"He took my jewelry out of the box and threw it on my grandmother's quilt, wrapped it up, put it under his arm and left," said Saykally.

Saykally gave the photos of the burglar and his vehicle to police.

Detectives tracked the car to the Dollar Rent-A-Car at Austin Bergstrom International Airport and identified the burglar as an employee 56-year-old Milton Anderson.

Anderson is a convicted burglar who was released from prison in 2012. He told officers he spent 30 years of his adult life in jail.

He was still on parole when officers arrested him last week.

"This guy was very active in a short amount of time. We're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 cases."

Detective Axel Goldman says Anderson committed all of those crimes within three weeks.

He says having Saykally's photos was a blessing.

"Sometimes it takes up to two years to get fingerprints back with these images we didn't have to wait for the fingerprints we were able to nab him and get him into jail and there's no telling how many burglaries or future potential burglaries we solved or prevented I should say," said Goldman.

"I was ecstatic. I was jumping for joy. I couldn't have been more pleased," said Saykally.

Saykally has since added two more cameras to her home just in case.

Anderson is in the Travis County Jail. He's got nine burglary charges thus far and a parole violation.