The Houston Police Department arrested Adrianne Hart, 31, and Sage Grider, 29, now charged with burglary of a habitation in the case.
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Last Tuesday afternoon, as Caryn Papantonakis and her son and daughter left the funeral, her son noticed on their home surveillance system that someone was breaking into their home.
According to her cameras, the two women were inside her home for more than 30 minutes and left it ransacked. The grieving woman said they took jewelry, silver, her kids' backpacks, car keys, their stockings for the holidays, and several other things.
Papantonakis said what they took totaled more than $50,000.
In the following days, HPD was able to track her children's AirPods to the women's apartment. From there, investigators found a number of the family's stolen goods. They located more of it at a pawn shop.
"It is such a violation," Papantonakis said.
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She added that she has not been able to properly grieve her mother's death because she has been re-keying her home and her car and trying to identify what else is missing.
In 2020, the same women were arrested by Memorial Villages police and charged with burglary for doing something similar. Police said at the time that the women had stolen a recently deceased person's car during their funeral and found the trunk full of stolen goods.
Among the stolen items, Memorial Villages police found a list of names of recently deceased people and their family members.
Both Grider and Hart are still on probation from that case.
Throughout the investigation into Papantonakis' case, HPD was able to link the two women to another recent burglary and car theft where the victim is a 97-year-old woman.
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They appeared in court on Monday separately on both sets of charges. They were ordered to keep away from each other as the case plays out.
Their bonds are each set at $105,000.
"Just seeing them today and knowing that they were going through all of our things and that they were in my children's rooms, it was emotional," Papantonakis said after sitting in court.
Now, Papantonakis and her kids intend to start a foundation in her mother's name to provide someone to sit at people's homes during funeral services so the same does not happen to others.
Hart is back in court on Jan. 31. Grider's next setting is Feb. 7.
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