A St. Pete home burglary unravels a zany case of stolen rare books, tortoises

Keith Lawless’ phone buzzed, but he ignored it.

He didn’t want to disturb his wife and daughter, who slept next to him. Christmas Day spent in Southern England had tuckered out the St. Petersburg family.

The phone buzzed again. And again.

Finally, Lawless grabbed it. The blue light illuminated the pitch-black bedroom.

Security cameras at the family’s Old Northeast neighborhood home sent the notifications, an ocean away.

There was movement in their living room.

Lawless flipped through the camera feeds and saw a man loading guitars into his BMW, which he drove a few blocks and emptied into his own vehicle.

Lawless, who worked in local radio for years, recognized them right away: They were his guitars, signed by various artists, like Jared Leto and Chester Bennington.

He felt a chill and woke his wife, Lucy.

“We’re being robbed.”

Untangling a crime spree

That buzzing phone set off a chain of events that unraveled a crime spree across county and state lines. The St. Petersburg police report on the investigation alone would balloon to nearly 2,800 pages.

Investigators would connect two men to several unusual burglaries across the state, from Pinellas to St. John’s counties, in which thousands of dollars in rare books and endangered tortoises went missing.

Police eventually arrested the pair in connection to four Florida burglaries, including the Lawless break-in. One of the men was implicated in at least three other thefts.

The zaniness of the tortoise caper—the thieves hauled one out of a St. Augustine zoo in a baby stroller — captured international headlines.

But for Keith Lawless and his wife, Lucy, the crimes were personal: The tens of thousands of dollars worth of items taken from their home included family jewelry, like a baptism bracelet with three generations of family names engraved into it.

They waited months while detectives pieced together the case, making arrests and negotiating to get their things back.

And while the local cases ended with guilty pleas and prison sentences for the burglars recently, the family and other victims may never get everything back — including their sense of security.

“There’s a certain experience when someone goes into your most private and personal space,” Lucy Lawless said.

“When you lose things that are strongly associated with your family roots, or the things that have been placed in your care for your child’s future, it is pretty devastating.”

A history of thefts

About 15 years before the Lawless burglary, the FBI investigated a series of peculiar thefts across the Midwest.

Rare books had been stolen from a well-known bookstore in Chicago. Unique maps had been taken from a book collector in Pennsylvania. And two 18th century books were missing from the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums in Ohio.

An investigation focused on a man named Joshua McCarty-Thomas, who had been peddling rare books, including the ones from the Hayes library.

Agents searched his Ohio apartment and found a cache of stolen books. McCarty-Thomas was charged in federal court. A judge called him a “young man (who) does not have insubstantial intelligence” before sentencing him to about four years in prison.

It’s there, authorities believe, that McCarty-Thomas met Michael Campbell, who was serving time for manufacturing methamphetamine.

Federal records show their sentences overlapped for about two years.

After their release, the pair would be implicated in a string of thefts across Florida.

A series of thefts across city and county lines

A trail of Florida burglaries and thefts, many in Pinellas County, began on Oct. 14, 2019, when someone, likely picking the lock, broke into Lighthouse Books, in St. Petersburg. About a week later, the store was broken into again.

Several historic books vanished. The owner, Michael Slicker told the Tampa Bay Times that the pilfered books retailed for more than $100,000.

Other burglaries followed.

Read More Comics in Brandon reported stolen comic books in 2022, including a Fantastic Four issue worth $1,000, and some of a collection of Marvel “Silver Age” books valued at $3,000.

In Ocala, men broke into and stole several issues from Vibranium Comics. Some were valued at nearly $2,000.

That year the iconic Haslam’s Book Store, which closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, was broken into throug a small window. The thieves swiped several of the store’s most valuable books, including “the complete writings of Elbert Hubbard,” a writer from the early 1900s. A list provided to police estimated the books were worth about $27,000.

In November, perhaps the most high profile of the burglaries occurred — two juvenile Galapagos Tortoises were taken from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park.

Police watched surveillance video of the park from the day of the thefts but had no leads. The crack in the case wouldn’t come until after the burglary at the Lawless home.

The Lawless house break-in

The Lawless family were in South England visiting Lucy’s mother for Christmas in late 2022 — a month after the tortoises went missing.

Lucy Lawless worked with children with developmental disabilities and Keith Lawless oversaw six radio stations in Tampa Bay. The couple had taken a sabbatical to travel with their toddler. In the meantime, they had listed their St. Petersburg home for more than $2 million.

The Prohibition-era home was quirky and included a hidden speakeasy.

The home had been featured in an Orlando Weekly article in November 2022. Photos showed lush, dark furniture and a floor-to-ceiling wine collection.

The family disabled the house alarm so their real estate agent could easily show the home.

But they kept the cameras on, including phone alerts of movement, which is what tipped off Keith Lawless in the early morning on Dec 26, 2022.

Upon seeing that their home was being burglarized, Lucy and Keith Lawless tried calling 911, which didn’t work in England. They found a number for St. Petersburg dispatch and reached police, who sent officers to the house.

The family watched on their phone what happened next.

Lights blazed and a dozen police officers descended.

Police found a man inside, who they took in for questioning.

Meanwhile, the Lawlesses scanned footage. The burglar had been inside for hours, they realized.

He even brought a steak and cooked it in their kitchen.

They were initially relieved, believing just one person had been in their home and officers had apprehended him.

Police told the couple to send footage of the burglary to help with the interrogation of the suspect. About 30 minutes in, Keith Lawless saw there was another man.

“We called the detective right back and said ‘Hey, there’s a second guy,’ and immediately they locked down the house,” Keith Lawless said.

But the second burglar was gone.

One investigation leads to many more

The burglar police arrested inside the home was Michael Campbell, the man who had spent time in prison with Joshua McCarty-Thomas, the rare book thief.

Campbell was found with lock picks, a pry bar and a flashlight. He wore black latex gloves. Police booked him at the Pinellas County Jail.

Keith Lawless flew home that day.

The house was disheveled and covered in fingerprint dust. He found a McDonalds McFlurry cup in his car, left behind by one of the burglars.

A lot was missing. In addition to the jewelry and guitars (signed by alternative rock bands like Twenty One Pilots and My Chemical Romance), a wine collection the couple had accumulated from guests on their 2015 wedding day was gone. Written on many of the bottles were well-wishes from guests.

Police got some things back quickly. Much of it was recovered from the family’s BMW and from Campbell’s car, parked down the street.

“Ultimately, they got a warrant to search (Campbell’s) car ... it was literally stacked to the brim — the trunk, the back seat, the side seat, everything,” Keith Lawless said.

Police also got a warrant to search Campbell’s phone. They found an exchange of texts with McCarty-Thomas in which they planned the burglary. They found photos of the Orlando Weekly article on the phone, Keith Lawless said. In their texts, the men called the home the “vino house.”

McCarty-Thomas was arrested in early February for the Lawless break-in, but made bail soon after.

Two months later, St. Petersburg police detectives interviewed Campbell, whose address was listed in Ohio, at the jail. He and McCarty-Thomas were involved in several thefts, he admitted, including the theft of the St. Augustine tortoises.

Campbell said that McCarty-Thomas had planned the crimes and that he had served as his “apprentice.”

St. Petersburg police reviewed surveillance footage from the St. Augustine alligator farm. They spotted McCarty-Thomas and Campbell in the video, records show. Both appeared to be talking into earpieces. McCarty-Thomas was pushing a baby stroller, which they believe he used to steal one of the tortoises.

Later, a detective surveilled McCarty-Thomas’ home in the area of Lake Maggiore in St. Petersburg and saw tortoises in the front yard. State wildlife investigators said the size and color of the animals matched the stolen tortoises.

Meanwhile, workers at the St. Augustine alligator farm were scouring the internet looking for the tortoises, which were worth about $10,000 each.

“As time goes on, you start to think ‘Are we ever going to get them back?” said Gen Anderson, the general curator at the farm. “How are they being taken care of?”

Lucy Lawless did the same, searching for the family’s lost valuables online.

“I spent, over months, hours on the internet looking for items that had been taken from me,” she said.

Meanwhile, police were unraveling more clues about McCarty-Thomas. They learned of an eBay account, “YOU_CAN_NEVER_HAVE_TOO_MUCH_AWESOME,” run by his wife, Dashae McCarty-Thomas, who worked as a trainee for the Florida Department of Corrections.

Records show the couple sold, or tried to sell, several items, including an item taken in the Lighthouse Books break-in and comics believed to have been stolen from the Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum in Elkhart, Indiana.

Allen Stewart, the executive director of the museum, told the Times that 50 comics worth about $1.5 million were taken from the nonprofit during a March 2023 burglary.

Stewart had found one of the stolen comics on Dashae McCarty-Thomas’ eBay account, and had a board member of the museum buy it. Once they saw from where the comic book originated, they notified St. Petersburg police.

Five months after the Lawless burglary, police raided McCarty-Thomas’ home. They found several tortoises, including the two stolen from St. Augustine, though one was dead in a freezer.

Police found other reptiles: three Redfoot tortoises, three endangered African Spur Thigh tortoises and a Leopard tortoise.

An official from ZooTampa evaluated the animals, and said they appeared in poor health. They were thin, and some had shell deformities. They were without proper food or water. When officials placed them in a grassy area, they immediately began chomping.

That day, Joshua and Dashae McCarty-Thomas were arrested on several new charges. This time, Joshua McCarty-Thomas did not make bail.

Despite the inventory collected by St. Petersburg police, detectives still had not recovered all the Lawless’s items.

Cases resolved, others still open

Joshua McCarty-Thomas faced several charges including burglary, grand theft and dealing in stolen property.

In November 2023, nearly a year after the Lawless burglary, prosecutors held a meeting with McCarty-Thomas and his lawyers to discuss a plea deal in exchange for information.

McCarty-Thomas told officials he had a local storage unit that held items, like the guitars. He also said the Lawless family’s jewelry was buried in his backyard. Police pried open the storage unit and dug in the yard.

After the meeting, police and Jordan Meyer, the prosecutor assigned to the case, phoned the Lawless family and put them on FaceTime.

“They were in the St. Pete Police Department, in a conference room, and they turned the camera around — the table was full of all of our stuff,” Keith Lawless said.

But Meyer believed McCarty-Thomas was holding out. Officials suspected he had a $1 million comic, an original Captain America #1 from the 1940s that was stolen from the Hall of Heroes in Indiana. Just one other museum holds an original — The Library of Congress.

About a week before McCarty-Thomas was set for trial on the Pinellas charges, his lawyer handed over the comic to investigators.

McCarty-Thomas then entered an open plea to the Pinellas charges, leaving it up to a judge to determine his sentence rather than hammering out an agreement with prosecutors.

Meyer argued that McCarthy-Thomas should get 15 years in prison based on his previous record.

“This is somebody who is not just your average burglar who’s doing this just to supply a habit, or just going into cars,” Meyer said. “This was somebody that was a professional.”

Judge Julie L. Sercus, citing that some items had been returned, settled on 12 years in prison followed by 15 years of probation, Meyer said. Campbell received a similar sentence and McCarty-Thomas’s wife, who the Department of Corrections had fired, pleaded guilty and got probation, records show.

Joshua McCarty-Thomas, 48, and Campbell, 47, plan to appeal their sentences. They still face charges in St. Augustine in the tortoise theft and more charges in Marion County.

Joshua McCarty-Thomas’ lawyer, Johnathan Hackworth, declined to comment when reached by the Times.

The Sixth Judicial Circuit’s public defender’s office representing Campbell declined to comment, citing the appeal.

The stolen wildlife, including the surviving tortoise from St. Augustine, were returned. The other tortoises were taken to the Central Florida Wildlife Center, a rehabilitation facility.

A necropsy on the dead tortoise in the freezer found it was too decomposed to determine a cause of death, Anderson said.

The other tortoise was placed in quarantine for months before it was returned to its enclosure with others. The farm named him “Salvo,” which means “out of danger” in Spanish. Salvo has tripled in size since his return.

Anderson said she counts the tortoises every time she walks by to make sure they’re all there.

Slicker, the owner of Lighthouse Books, which is now in Dade City, upped security after the burglary. Just a handful of the dozens of stolen items were returned, Slicker said. It took years to receive insurance money.

The theft caught him off guard. In the four decades owning the bookstore, Slicker said he’d only ever had four bad checks.

“People who like old books are generally honest people,” he said.

In Indiana, Stewart said about 20 of the 50 stolen comic books remain in the wind.

“That’s about over $200,000 in value,” Stewart said. “We’re a nonprofit, so we can’t afford to replace those.”

A spokesperson for the local police department there said detectives are working with Florida police on the investigation. No one has been charged in the case.

As for the Lawless family, they moved to Chicago after the St. Petersburg home sold in March 2023.

“Prior to this burglary, we lived in this blissful state of ignorance,” Lucy Lawless said. “We felt completely safe leaving our intruder alarm off.”

But now, they have a heightened sense of awareness.

“Things that you have that you value, sentimental or otherwise, that’s probably better to not take shortcuts as it comes to home security,” she said. “That’s a reality — I guess it always has been.”