Perfect heist falls apart

A story by Jaxon Van Derbeken in the San Francisco Chronicle reports how a crime self-destructed.

It looked like the perfect crime.

Starting on Christmas Eve, a ring of thieves -- mistaken by neighbors as a moving crew -- removed $2.5 million in art, antiques and rugs from a Jackson Street mansion in San Francisco's Presidio Heights, taking two truckloads of loot without being detected.

It took months of planning to execute but afterward just days to become a perfect mess -- when one of the burglars decided to try to sell back some of the loot to the victim.