PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Quick thinking by police, recorded phone calls, digital forensics and body-cam footage helped catch a jewel thief who will now spend more than 7 years in prison, the Washington County District Attorney’s Office said.
Robert David Duke was convicted by a jury Wednesday for stealing $250,000 in jewelry along with cash from a Beaverton consignment shop on October 28, 2018. Duke held a woman working at the store at gunpoint during the heist.
But he was arrested just a few hours later when a Beaverton police officer used his knowledge of the area to figure out where Duke — and his still at-large associate, Jason Patton — might hide the getaway car. As he walked out of trail, the officer spotted him and arrested him.
The investigation continued. While he was in the Washington County Jail, Duke made a jailhouse call to a woman he knew and tried to tell her where she could find the jewels.
But all the calls at the county jail are recorded.
Police got to the spot before the woman did and recovered the stolen items. When she arrived, police seized her phone and used information from it to put together the remaining pieces of the robbery puzzle.
The digital forensics on the phone were a key piece that helped investigators conclude the robbery had been planned for some time. This information plus the jailhouse recordings helped convince the jury Duke guilty of 1st- and 2nd-degree robbery.
Duke was sentenced to 90 months in prison.
The consignment store worker was not hurt and all the stolen items were returned to their rightful owner, the DA’s office said.
