LAPD detective earns state investigative honor

LAPD Detective Bill Longacre got the tip in December 2005: Someone had rented a storage locker and filled it with stolen guns and jewelry.

When he opened the locker, he found a bag mixed with family heirlooms and other valuables taken from across Los Angeles County. And he discovered photos and copies of a visa, all with the same name - Ignacio Del Pe a Rio.

Showing the photos to the clerk and manager of the storage facility, Longacre discovered that the man was the same one who had rented the locker.

Over the next two months, Longacre used a database that matches suspect descriptions, and he came up with a few matches for Rio, who turned out to have 35 aliases and whose real name was Roberto Caveda. Quickly, he realized he had a big case on his hands.

As Longacre closed in, Caveda made a crucial mistake on Feb. 16, 2006 - when he was caught during a burglary in Sherman Oaks.

The arrest capped a spree in which Caveda admitted to burglarizing more than 1,000 homes in two years and led police to $16 million in recovered property, some buried near the 118 Freeway in Granada Hills.

Partly because of his work on that case, Longacre, 61, was honored Thursday with the 2008 Robert Presley Institute of Criminal Investigation Investigative Excellence Award.

That's Longacre in the photo above. I interviewed him in the third floor interview room at Parker Center, the same room Charles Manson was interrogated in the 60s and later O.J. Simpson. Behind the air conditioning gauge in the room the department had a video camera set up to record confessions back in the day.