Incredibly Messy/Capitol Hill/Fri Dec 30/10:15 pm: Officer Whitlock reports: "[Victim] said she was babysitting a small child for the homeowners, who were on a date. She was in the living room at approximately 10:15 p.m. watching TV. [It was the penultimate day of 2005.] Suddenly, she heard noises from inside the residence, but at first thought the homeowners had returned. She went into the front area of the residence and saw two unknown males standing in the office. One was a black male; the other was an Asian male. Both appeared to be in their mid-20s, wearing baggy jeans and red bandanas over their faces. She tried to escape out of the front door, but the black male ran after her, caught her, and punched her twice in the face. The black male then told her to sit on the floor and not to look up at them. 'Don't mess with me, bitch,' the black male said, and then asked her when the two people he saw leaving the residence were coming back. She told him that they would be back in five minutes. 'If they come back while I'm here it's not going to be pretty,' said the black male. 'I have Asians after me.'

"The suspects then tried to pull the plasma TV off the wall. It wouldn't come off the wall. He asked the babysitter several times if she knew how to remove the plasma TV. She didn't know how to do this. She then saw the black male place some computer items into a green woven bag. The Asian went upstairs; the black male made her take him downstairs to the back door. The black male made her count to 20, then he shut the door and left the house. Shortly afterward, the Asian male came downstairs looking for the black male. She was unaware where the Asian went after she saw him looking for the black male. She put her shoes on, grabbed her keys, grabbed the child from the crib [the suspects never noticed the sleeping baby], and ran out to her vehicle to call 911."

One of the homeowners in this report is Sara Dickerman, The Stranger's food critic. She and her husband were watching Brokeback Mountain at the time of the crime. "Have you watched Brokeback Mountain?" she asked me over the phone from her home. "No, and you can tell me the plot because I'm never going to watch it," I answered.

"Because of the gay sex?"

"No, because it's a love story and I hate spending money on any kind of love story."

"Oh, well, there is this brutal death scene in the movie. One of the characters, Jack Twist, is kicked and beaten to death. Just after that scene, we received the call about the robbery."

"It says in the report that they stole a cell phone and some electronics."

"Basically, they took all of our Christmas booty, including a digital camera we used to capture our baby's first steps."

"Any new developments in the investigation?"

"No, and the cops spent the whole night in our house looking for prints. When they were done it looked like we got robbed by chimney sweeps; black marks were all over the walls. I'm glad the cops did all of that work but it's incredibly messy."