Museum thief a step ahead during decades-long spree

Changing identities, ailing man amassed collectibles and guns

Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News

Monday, December 25, 2006

He called himself a "traveling collector."

But what Robert John Kea really was, authorities say, was an obsessive-compulsive thief who frequented small museums across the country and helped himself to rare items, sometimes hiding them inside a fake oxygen tank.

He also was an ailing 53-year-old so adept at changing his identity that he eluded police for more than two decades and a sometimes- nurse who, with U.S. marshals closing in on him in Texas last month, put a gun to his head and killed himself.

Kea - also known as Robert J. Keys, Robert L. Anderson, Robert Cook and Robert Beverlin - was a modern-day Frank Abagnale Jr., the real-life con artist portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can, police say.

Years on the lam

Kea most recently lived in an Aurora townhouse packed with collectibles and manuals on committing and solving crimes, police say.

His criminal record in Colorado stretched back to 1978, when, according to court records, he pulled a gun on an Arapahoe County deputy.

Kea disappeared for the first time shortly after that arrest. He may have gone to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where he had family, and worked and lived for a time, police say.

In 1991, Kea was arrested again in Colorado, this time on federal bank fraud charges, under the name Robert L. Anderson. But before his case could go to trial or anyone could connect him to the Arapahoe County warrant, Kea posted bond and slipped away again.

It wasn't until 2004, when the U.S. Marshals Service's fugitive team picked up Kea in Colorado, that police thought they finally had their man.

By then, however, Kea was working as a nurse and appeared to have turned his life around. A U.S. District Court judge ordered him to pay back the nearly $10,000 in bad checks he wrote 15 years earlier.

But on both the federal and Arapahoe County charges - despite his years on the lam - Kea walked away with probation.

Then in September, a detective in Elgin, Ill., got a phone call from Kea's estranged wife.

What Lisa Keys had to say about her husband would lead federal and local law enforcement officers to the couple's townhouse on Fairplay Circle and a storage locker on Chambers Road.

In the home and storage unit, police found loads of collectibles missing from museums in Colorado and Illinois, more than 30 guns and two silencers, and identification cards police believe Kea used to assume other people's identities.

Passion for museums

There is a lot authorities don't know about Kea and his amorphous past - where he lived for each of the past 20 years, for example, and what he did with some of the items they believe he stole.

What they do know is that Kea was born in 1953, that he had a brother in Texas and at least two ex-wives, and that he may have had a son who died in infancy years ago.

They know that his father, now in his 70s and living in Mississippi, was recently indicted for insurance fraud, and that Kea - a member of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors - used different names when he signed the registries at small museums.

According to his ex-wife, Kea also had a mean streak.

"She was definitely in fear of him," recalled Brian Gorcowski, the detective in Elgin, Ill., who first spoke with Keys. "She believed he was never going to let her get a divorce . . . She was trying to get him not to bother her."

During their first phone conversation, Keys told Gorcowski about 15 historic pocket watches her husband told her he stole from the Elgin Area Historical Society Museum during a vacation in June 2005.

The watches, made by the Elgin National Watch Co. between 1893 and 1945, were part of a museum exhibit on watches with railroad- themed faces. The museum had reported them stolen the previous summer, Gorcowski knew.

Each watch was worth at least $1,000.

Kea had an interest in railroads because his grandfather had worked for one, Keys said. Kea had shown her the watches at least three times and said he stole them while on a trip to a museum in Wisconsin.

During the same visit, he also stopped at a railroad museum in Union, Ill., Gorcowski later learned.

Keys said her husband of 12 years also told her he had stolen a .52-caliber Leman rifle from an Estes Park museum in December 2005.

The couple had visited the museum during a stay at the Stanley Hotel in November 2005, she said, and Kea had stared for a long time at the weapon, which was mounted on a wall in a secluded area, away from the information desk.

He told her he went back a month later, while she was in Mississippi visiting family, and took the rifle from the wall, Keys said.

The museum reported the rifle stolen in January 2006.

According to Clyde Yee, a special agent for the National Park Service's Office of Criminal Investigations, the rifle was made in Pennsylvania between 1845 and 1870 and was the type popular with white hunters and American Indians. On loan from Grand Teton National Park, it was worth between $4,000 and $6,000.

Keys said her husband - who tipped the scales at 375 pounds and sometimes used an oxygen tank for a medical condition - told her he could conceal items under a long trench coat he often wore.

He also had a fake portable oxygen tank that he could take apart and hide items inside, she said.

He sold some of the items on eBay, Keys said.

His screen name?

"Traveling collector."

A search and a shooting

After credit card receipts and cell phone records backed up Keys' accounts of her husband's travels, Gorcowski traveled to Colorado, where he and Yee compared notes and obtained a search warrant.

When officers forced their way into the couple's home, they found Kea in his upstairs bedroom.

He was nervous, Gorcowski recalled. Almost immediately, he asked for a lawyer.

Inside were collections ranging from Hummels to an antique pop machine, an old pinball machine and nutcrackers, Gorcowski said.

Officers also found the hollowed-out oxygen tank, articles from the Estes Park Trail Gazette about the theft of the Leman rifle and numerous fake identification cards with Kea's photo, an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court states.

At some point, Kea - who suffered from diabetes and congestive heart failure - asked detectives if he was under arrest. Because they still did not have probable cause for an arrest warrant, authorities said no, and Kea left the house.

Before he went, however, he called his brother and told him what was happening. He also told him he was leaving Colorado and didn't plan to come back.

Later that day, police hit the motherlode.

At a U-Store-It facility, investigators found the Leman rifle and eight of the 15 missing Elgin watches, the affidavit says. Each watch was in its own plastic bag, numbered and cross-referenced in a meticulously kept ledger, Gorcowski said.

They also found other items believed to have been stolen from two other museums in Colorado and one in Illinois, and 30 weapons, including some machine guns.

The next day, Yee informed Kea's probation officer that Kea had violated his probation. On Nov. 2, a federal judge signed an arrest warrant.

Ken Deal, chief deputy for the U.S. Marshals Service office in Colorado, said he couldn't divulge exactly how they tracked Kea to Texas. He would say only that they knew Kea had a medical condition that would lead him to the Amarillo area.

The marshals fugitive task force personnel traveled to Texas, where officers learned Kea was staying at the Camelot Inn on Interstate 40.

Shortly before noon on Nov. 15, task force members watched as Kea drove up to the motel. As he got out of his car, officers approached and identified themselves, Deal said.

Kea got back in the car and drove toward the officers' vehicle, ramming it at least once. Officers fired an unknown number of shots, Deal said, but Kea was able to drive away.

Kea drove about a mile on the interstate before veering off the highway and into a parking lot near a service station. There he put a gun to his head and shot himself, Deal said.

It was two days after his 53rd birthday.

Sorting through

Since Kea's death, investigators have been busy sorting through the items found in the storage locker, trying to determine which collectibles Kea legitimately bought and which were stolen from museums.

It will be a while before the items are returned, Yee said, because the investigation is ongoing.

The investigation, he added, was a textbook example of agencies working together to crack a case - one with a sometimes ingenious target who, despite health problems, managed to stay one step ahead.

In the end, Yee said, it was probably Kea's passion for collecting that did him in.

That "intense interest" likely led Kea to steal, carving out a livelihood through frauds and schemes.

"He just had a real fixation," Yee said.

But Yee also said that on the day officers forced their way into Kea's Aurora home, the "collector" didn't seem overly surprised.

"I think there was always the thought in the back of his mind that 'someday, my past will catch up with me.' "

About Robert John Kea

• Born: Nov. 13, 1953

• Height: 6 feet, 1 inch

• Weight: 375 pounds

• Aliases: Robert J. Keys, Robert L. Anderson, Robert John Beverlin, Robert John CookSource: Court Documents, Investigative Reports

Kea's cache

Among the items found in a storage unit belonging to Kea were the following, which authorities say Kea stole from museums throughout the country:

• .52 caliber Leman Trade Rifle

Circa 1845-1870

Value: $4,000 to $6,000

From: Estes Park museum

• 15 Elgin National Watch Company watches

Circa 1893 to 1945

Value: Insured at $1,000 each

From: Elgin Area Historical Museum in Elgin, Ill.

• Other items, believed to have been taken from museums in Colorado and Illinois, include military memorabilia and American Indian artifacts.Source: Court Records, Law Enforcement Reports

How he did it

Lisa Keys said her husband - who weighed 375 pounds and sometimes used an oxygen tank for a medical condition - told her he could conceal items under a long trench coat that he often wore. He also had a fake portable oxygen tank that he could take apart and hide items inside, she said.

burnetts@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5343