Thursday, May 07, 2015
Charlestown — Authorities in New York have located property that was stolen from a Charlestown home during a weekend robbery that left one woman hospitalized after being tied up in the basement of her home, police said Wednesday.
Police say the two men who pawned the items broke into Christine and Arthur Beebes’ home around 11 p.m. Sunday, tied Christine Beebe up in the basement and stole jewelry and gold and silver coins before fleeing the state. The Beebes own and operate Twin State Coin & Treasures, a coin and gold shop in West Lebanon.
Christine Beebe, 64, was found Monday morning by a contract worker who arrived at her home to start his workday. She had been tied up for nine hours.
“She was bound in the basement to a support beam,” New Hampshire State Police Sgt. Shawn Skahan said. “She couldn’t get out of the ties.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Christine Beebe’s condition had improved from critical to good, according to a Valley Regional Hospital spokesman. Had the worker not arrived at the home, Skahan said, Beebe’s critical condition could have become more precarious due to a pre-existing medical condition that requires her to take routine medications.
Skahan said an Internet search performed in software used by Keene, N.H., police for items taken during Sunday night’s home invasion at 437 River Road led police to a pawn shop in Manhattan.
Charlestown Police Chief Patrick Connors said local and state police are working with the New York Police Department to lawfully recover the items from the pawn shop and review all surveillance videos that may lead to the men’s arrests. Based on images captured by a video security camera in the Beebes’ home, the suspects are two white males in their 20s or early 30s.
Connors said the robbery was an isolated incident, and that the public is not in danger.
“We know that house was specially targeted because of what was in (it),” Connors said. “This was an attack by two men who blindsided a (64-year-old) woman to tie her up and take her stuff. It is disgusting.”
Skahan said the men made off with $20,000 to $25,000 worth of property from the Beebes’ home, most of which were sets of rare, uncirculated coins and precise amounts of silver and gold coins and bars.
“It is not something you would normally see except for in a coin shop or collection,” Skahan said.
Arthur Beebe is serving 1 1/2 to three years in the New Hampshire State Prison after pleading guilty in April 2014 to receiving stolen property and falsifying physical evidence.
Authorities said he accepted a stolen bracelet at his shop in 2013 valued at more than $1,500 and led investigators to believe he had sent it away when it was in his West Lebanon store.
No one answered a knock at the front door of the Beebes’ house on Wednesday.
Some neighboring business owners in the Route 12A plaza that houses Twin State Coin & Treasures said they had heard about the home invasion.
Toni Maxham, owner of the Colonial Antique Market, said Christine Beebe is as “a wonderful person” who has an “open heart to all.”
As a business owner, Maxham said the incident is worrisome.
“What is this world coming to,” Maxham asked, “for anyone to go in and do something like this?”
A sign on the front door of Twin State Coin & Treasures says the store will reopen Friday.
Theresa Ferland-Blaisdell, a neighbor of the Beebes, also described the robbery as unsettling. Ferland-Blaisdell said she was home when the robbery occurred.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Ferland-Blaisdell said from her front porch on Wednesday afternoon, casting an eye toward the Beebes’ front door. “And the dogs didn’t hear a thing. They usually let us know.”
Ferland-Blaisdell described her small-town North Charlestown neighborhood as secure, safe and quiet. The incident is unique, she said.
“You don’t think that something is going to happen in Charlestown,” she said. “Nothing ever happens here.”
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com .