Some would call it the Capri Sun caper.

Others, like detectives with the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office, call it a gang of burglars that, according to Capt. Barney Tyrney, were “not the smartest of criminals.”

Friday afternoon, standing behind a table piled high with recovered stolen property that included rifles, handguns, computers, sound systems, DVDs, CDs, cell phones, jewelry and more, Sheriff Jack Strain announced the arrest of four Slidell area residents who allegedly broke into houses in the northern part of the parish and stole at least $100,000 worth of property.

(Use arrows above to view more photos)

Despite the thousands of dollars in stolen items, the four were arrested because of the theft of three Capri Sun drink packets and the watchful eye of a deer camera.

The burglars, Thomas Inman, 24, William Inman, 17, and Christina Perronne, 21, all living at 1507 Hickory St. in Slidell, and Brian Kelly, 17, 441 Fourth St., Pearl River, were arrested May 24 and charged with various counts of burglary, possession of stolen property, plus narcotics and weapons charges.

For the past several weeks, the Sheriff’s Office has been trying to solve a series of home burglaries along the Louisiana Highway 41 corridor in the northern part of the parish. The deputies had no luck on the case until May 24, when a victim called the Sheriff’s Office with not only a complaint, but video of the burglary.

The victim had a camera set up in a tree next to his house to catch deer when they came by. Instead of deer, the camera caught the four suspects breaking into the house.

When the victim came home, he noticed his windows were broken. He downloaded the video from his deer cam into his computer and watched his house being burglarized.

The only things the burglars took were three Capri Sun fruit drinks. In fact, they overturned a whole case of the drinks, but only took three of the packets.

Detectives enhanced the video and got a license plate number off the car. With that information, they were able to locate Inman’s house in Slidell. Inman allowed deputies to search his house, and they found three packets of Capri Sun in the refrigerator. Detectives were able to match the lot number of the packets to the cardboard case in the victim’s house, plus the suspects’ fingerprints were found on the packets.

Deputies got a search warrant for the house and found over $30,000 worth of stolen property. Tyrney said the quartet may have committed between 20 and 40 home burglaries, that all the property has not been recovered, and the final tally could go over $100,000.

Besides all the electronics and guns, odd items like vacuum cleaners, toy car collections and a box of poker chips were also recovered.

The four had even stolen a full size office copying machine. Tyrney said the burglars also stole prescription drugs, and some of the property was exchanged for drugs for the quartet’s recreational use.

Also recovered were two bulletproof Kevlar vests stolen from a Mississippi police department.

“These were not one-time hits,” said Sgt. Bobby Juge. “This was their day job, and a lot of thought went into it.”

Juge added that Thomas Inman had recently been released from prison, where he served a sentence for possession of stolen property.

The burglars may have been smart about their crimes, but it was their egos and arrogance that contributed to their downfall. Detectives recovered a stolen camcorder with a disc of Inman driving Perrone to a local pawn shop to hock some of the stolen equipment. Perrone was the photographer, and Inman is seen bragging about all the heists they had pulled.

Detective Melissa Sperling said some of the stolen jewelry was recovered at pawn shops in the area, and more stolen property may turn up in pawn shops.

While the sheriff was announcing the arrests at his Slidell office Friday, one of the burglary victims showed up to retrieve his property. Walter Mizell of Bush was able to reclaim two knives, two cell phones and prescription drugs that had been taken from his home.

“It feels really good to get this stuff back,” Mizell said.

His house was burglarized on May 22, and Mizell said the thieves trashed his house.

“They demolished the place,” Mizell said. “They turned over all my furniture, tore up things. I was dumbfounded.”

Mizell, who lives on a fixed income, said getting his property back was a godsend for him.

Several of his other neighbors were also burglarized, but it was his neighbor’s deer camera that caught the quartet. Mizell said he and his neighbors all have deer cameras on their property, but his was turned off the day of the burglary.

“You can bet I will leave it on all the time now,” Mizell said. “Plus, I’m telling everybody to lock their doors and windows.”

Sheriff’s detectives are hoping other residents will come forth to claim their property, as will those who have been burglarized but have not told the authorities.

If anyone thinks their property has been recovered, they should call Sperling at 646-4163.