Three Arrested, Two More Sought in June Beatrice Burglaries

BEATRICE – After an ongoing lengthy and detailed investigation, Beatrice Police have now arrested three people and are seeking two more suspects, in connection with two summertime burglaries in Beatrice.
Both break-ins happened at vacant houses, where several guns were stolen from one property along North 11th Street, and coins and other items were taken from a property along North 7th.

Beatrice Police Lieutenant Jay Murphy says the forced-entry burglaries happened in late June.
"The first one had several coins, just a bunch of miscellaneous items taken out of that house. The second one, was mostly guns that were stolen".
The weapons stolen included older handguns, shotguns and a rifle, valued at about $4,000, along with cases.

On the North 7th burglary, the value of items taken totaled about $10,000…including the value of coins, an older slot machine and miscellaneous items.
Murphy says in early July, two suspects were arrested in alleged connection with the North 11th burglary…. 18-year-old Trey Billesbach and 18-year-old Dalton Blair.
Police have recovered five of the eight firearms that were stolen and some of the property from the other burglary.
Lieutenant Murphy said, "after these guns were stolen, they were kind of dispersed between several different people. We eventually got some of those guns back...we recovered five of them, but there were a lot of people involved in handling these guns and transferring them from one person to another. So, there was a lot of cover-up as to where these guns went, where some of this property went. It took a lot of work to narrow this stuff down".

Murphy said police investigating the crimes did a lot of background work and collaborated with other departments, including Lincoln Police, the Nebraska State Patrol, Gage County and Jefferson County Sheriff’s Offices.

With the North 7th burglary, Murphy says one of the suspects turned herself in on an arrest warrant this morning (Thursday). She is identified as 41-year-old Mindy Thomsen. Also arrested by police was Hannah Thomsen.
"These warrants have been in the works for some time. The county attorney's office finally put those out toward the end of last week and we had warrants for five different people. Of course, it gets put on the Gage County Sheriff's website, so we knew that they knew, they had warrants".

Murphy says the investigation got a boost when authorities decided Wednesday to publicize the arrest warrants on Facebook. From that, a suspect in the investigation, Shawn Hatfield surrendered to police on Wednesday, along with the Thomsens.
Murphy said, "we all worked probably a good month and a half, at least six weeks on this. It was really a cooperative effort between several different departments...and officers in those departments, as well as a couple of businesses that helped us out in identifying some of the stolen property".

Murphy says police are still searching for two other suspects.