The burglaries of two planes stored at a Strother Field hangar in May 2005 have been blamed on a Hutchinson man who was recently indicted by a federal grand jury, according to Capt. Bill Mueller of the Cowley County sheriff’s office.
Michael S. Wagner, 26, is charged with burglarizing six airports in four states, including the Strother Field Airport and the Municipal Airport in Ponca City, Okla., in July 2005,?the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.
Two planes owned by Dennis Knackstedt, Winfield, and Kevin E. Kill,? Douglass, were burglarized. Property worth $1,500 was stolen including a GPS system, a hand-held radio and radio headset. An antenna was also damaged, according to Mueller.
Wagner may?have looked through two other planes that were unlocked but nothing was taken. Mueller said Wagner was actually identified in January 2006 by the Lyon County Sheriff’s office after officers caught him breaking into some hangars at the Emporia airport.
“The FBI got involved and connected him (Wagner) to all the others, but it took a while to get that done,” Mueller said.
Wagner is serving 24 months of probation after being convicted in Lyon County in September 2006 of three counts of burglary for airport thefts.
Other airports involved include the R.L. Jones Riverside Airport in Tulsa, Okla.,; Front Range Airport in Denver; and Collin County Airport in McKinney, Texas. Investigators determined that some of the stolen merchandise was sold on eBay and buyers paid by mailing money through the U.S. Postal Service.
Wagner is charged with three counts of interstate transportation of stolen property, two counts of wire fraud and two counts of mail fraud. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000 on each of the charges of interstate transportation of stolen property, and a maximum penalty of 20 years and a fine up to $250,000 on each of the other charges, according to the indictment.
