Nine post office burglaries in seven months: Are they the work of the same suspect?

The overnight burglaries of two post offices in Butte County last September were not exactly whodunits, court documents say.

Video from the scene of the first one on Sept. 11 in Bangor shows a car parked outside bearing the license plate of a sedan registered to the suspect, according to court files. Video from inside the building shows a man whose face matches the suspect’s driver’s license photo, as well as distinctive tattoos on both his legs, the files say.

Evidence from the second burglary the next night in Stirling City includes blood left behind on locked drawers that had been pried open, blood that matches the DNA of the suspect, court files say.

Now, postal inspectors are looking at seven other post office break-ins in recent months to see if they are linked to their suspect: Jeremy Anthony Elguez, a 32-year-old Chico man currently being held in the Sacramento County Main Jail without bail.

Elguez, who was booked into the jail Saturday, was charged in a federal criminal complaint with burglary of a post office in connection with the Bangor and Stirling City break-ins in Butte County.

The complaint, which was unsealed in federal court in Sacramento Monday morning, says video from Sept. 11 shows a suspect in gray shorts and a sweat shirt break into the Bangor post office at 3:26 a.m. using a “crow bar like instrument” to pry open a door from the 24-hour lobby.

“The suspect did not wear a mask or gloves,” according to an affidavit by U.S. Postal Inspector Emily Horn, which adds that the video shows the man putting a calculator and credit card machine into his backpack, rummaging through drawers and taking packages and other items.

“When the suspect exited, he dropped pieces of mail and a parcel on the floor,” the affidavit says.

Evidence investigators looked at includes Elguez’s criminal history, which dates back to 2002, and the video of the suspect’s tattoos: one on the lower left leg of a “skeletal type face,” and one on the inside of the lower right leg of “a woman wearing a headdress,” Horn’s affidavit says.

“I reviewed photos of Elguez from Colusa County jail records from 2009, including a photo of a tattoo on the outside of his lower leg of a skeletal type face and a photo of a tattoo on the inside of his right lower leg of a woman wearing a headdress and determined that they were consistent with the tattoos visible in the video surveillance of the Bangor Post Office burglary described above,” Horn wrote. “Based on my experience, tattoos are generally semi-permanent and can remain substantively similar on an individual’s body for several years.”

And then there’s the blood.

The blood samples from the Stirling City burglary - where mail, post office box keys, money orders and other items were taken - were fed into a postal service lab for analysis and on Dec. 20 came back with a match for Elguez’s DNA, court files say.

Horn’s affidavit says officials are looking at seven other “potentially related post office burglaries,” including:

▪ a Jan. 27 break-in at the Oregon House Post Office in Yuba County 16 miles from the Bangor burglary.

▪ a Jan. 31 burglary at the Glenn Post office in Glenn County 50 miles from the Stirling City scene.

▪ Break-ins on Feb. 1 at the Gerber Post Office in Tehama County, on Feb. 2 at the Artois Post Office in Glenn County and on Feb. 28 at the Cassel Post Office in Shasta County.

▪ And an attempted burglary at the Glenn Post Office on March 1 and a break-in that same night at the Butte City Post Office in Glenn County.

Elguez is not charged in any of those incidents, although the affidavit says there is probable cause to believe Elguez also committed post office burglaries other than the two he is charged with, as well as mail theft, identity theft and theft of postal property.