Keith King, the less-than-better half of a marriage built on stolen
luggage, was sentenced to some pretty lengthy prison time during a hearing in a Maricopa County courtroom this morning.
King, whose wife, Stacy King, was already sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for her role in the massive theft operation, was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison by Judge Paul McMurdie. He was also ordered to pay more than $83,000 in restitution.
The Kings' theft operation was discovered last year, after cops noticed Keith King snatchin' bags at Sky Harbor Airport.
Police raided the Kings' house and uncovered about 1,000 pieces of luggage,
stacked floor to ceiling. Police believe many of the items taken from
the luggage were sold at garage sales.
Keith King pled guilty to two counts of burglary, one count of theft,
one count of drug possession and one count of trafficking stolen
property in September.
Police arrested Keith King after watching
him take luggage from the baggage claim area at the airport. He was arrested and issued
a misdemeanor citation for theft. A few days later, he was at it again.
Surveillance video showed King in a parking garage before he went into
the airport to steal more bags.
The thefts prompted the airport to review it's baggage claim procedures.
"We're looking at our options -- we're working with police,
and looking at procedures that other airports are doing to prevent
luggage theft," Sky Harbor spokeswoman Julie Rodriguez tells New Times at the time of the thefts.
Rodriguez
says a procedure that was used in the past, where passengers had to
match their tickets to their bags upon leaving the airport, was
abandoned shortly after 9/11 because it was too expensive to operate.
The
matching system, according to Rodriguez, was run at the expense of the
airlines, which collaboratively paid for operations. After 9/11,
airlines were forced to divert money from protecting baggage to fund
counter-terrorism measures.
Rodriguez says the matching system is definitely an option but not necessarily the solution.
"Most
other airports aren't using a matching system," she says. "We're not
ruling it out, but there are a lot of measures that we take that people
don't see that have worked in the past."
Rodriguez
says currently there are police officers and camera systems that are constantly
monitoring the baggage-claim areas at the airport.
Those measures were actually how the two were caught -- eventually.
