Employee Of CIA Accused In Thefts
Bags of Underwear, Valuables Linked to Fairfax Burglaries
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0700922_pf.html

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; B01

Lori Meyer walked into her darkened McLean home one evening last month, her 8-month-old son, Samuel, in her arms, and found a strange man dashing down her stairs. As the intruder fled, Meyer ran outside, screaming, and flagged down a passing minivan.

Fairfax County police said yesterday that the man that Meyer and the driver of the minivan cornered in a cul-de-sac that night, George C. Dalmas III, 44, works at the CIA. He has now been charged with 17 burglaries in the McLean area. And in a search of his Falls Church home, police said, they found a stunning trove of cash, jewelry, antiques, license plates -- and bags filled with more than 1,000 women's undergarments.

Dalmas was arrested Jan. 31, and at a hearing Friday, a Fairfax judge set bond for him at $50,000 on each count, for a total of $1.65 million. Dalmas was still being held in the county jail last night.

His attorney, Michael Lindner, did not return a call seeking comment. A woman who answered the phone at Dalmas's home hung up promptly yesterday.

Dalmas is a "mid-level administrative employee," a CIA spokesman said yesterday, and he has been suspended without pay pending the outcome of the investigation. Some of the houses that were burglarized belonged to CIA employees, and Dalmas may have targeted them because he knew they wouldn't be home, said Fairfax Officer Richard Henry.

By late December, police had linked seven burglaries to one person, mostly on or near Kirby Road in the Chesterbrook area of McLean, and made an appeal for the public's help. The burglaries were occurring mostly during working hours, Henry said, and employed the same break-in method. A search warrant affidavit filed by Detective Wesley A. Kuemmel said the burglar normally targeted a ground-level window in the back of the home, used a lever or pry bar to break a window lock and then re-secured the window when leaving to cover his tracks.

The burglaries extended beyond the Chesterbook area after police asked the community for help, said Supervisor Joan M. DuBois (R-Dranesville). "The community awareness was heightened," DuBois said. "People were getting nervous. People were getting scared."

Arnold Braswell, president of the Chesterbrook Woods Citizens Association, said he spread the word to the 530 homeowners in his area. The association's volunteer anti-crime patrol shifted some of its rounds to daylight hours, and residents grew more alert as they realized that their relatively crime-free community was in the target area, Braswell said.

On Jan. 4, a homeowner on Dead Run Drive encountered a man with a dark ski mask in her home, who she believed was a white man, and he fled in a green Mazda minivan. Detectives, patrol officers and bike officers from the McLean station began watching for green Mazda minivans. On Jan. 20, officers saw Dalmas driving such a van, Kuemmel wrote in the affidavit, and began keeping an eye on him.

Meyer, a lawyer staying home with her baby, was unaware of the rash of burglaries in which the intruder often stole women's underwear. When she arrived at home about 6:15 p.m. Jan. 24, with Samuel in tow, the house was dark and the man inside had not been invited. He also was not masked. She said he sprinted away from her, while she dropped her purse and ran screaming out of the house.

Meyer said she continued screaming to try to attract attention and eventually persuaded a woman in a minivan, with two young boys in the back, to pull over. As she was describing her situation, Meyer said, "he walked right past me. I said, 'That's the guy!' "

The man hurried into a black Honda sedan and drove off. Meyer jumped into the stranger's minivan, "and she floors it."

Police don't encourage such pursuits, and Meyer said she now knows it was ill-considered. But soon they were close behind the Honda. Then it turned into a cul-de-sac. "Now what do we do?" Meyer wondered aloud.

The Honda worked its way back out of the cul-de-sac, and Meyer was able to see the man, his license plate number, a child seat in back and a tassel on the rearview mirror. She called it in. The police told her to stop following the car.

The license plate Meyer spotted was unregistered, Kuemmel wrote. But the same license number had been reported Jan. 4 on the green Mazda minivan. Two officers headed over to Dalmas's home and saw him arrive in the black Honda with a child seat and a tassel on the rearview mirror. Police continued to investigate and raided Dalmas's home at 7 a.m. Jan. 31.

Their discoveries have led them to other burglaries they had not connected to the string, police said. A collection of antique radios, taken from a Vienna home in April, was found, according to another search warrant. And a collection of valuable coins and bills, similar to a $50,000 collection stolen from West Virginia in June, also was found, Kuemmel wrote. Along with that cash was a clipping from Coin World magazine reporting on the theft, Kuemmel wrote.

Police said they also found "meticulous records," including real estate open house fliers in which Dalmas listed the security vulnerabilities of houses, maps, journals, datebooks and logs -- all of which authorities believe were used to track his work.