Bob, doesn't your sister- in- law live on, or very near your property? . . . I'd also like to know why your neighbour (you know, the guy who is close enough to wave at you from across the way-- the one you had a problem with recently).. wasn't aware of any of this going on...
As for the closest neighbor (that is my sister in law) she lives in the apartment above my workshop/garage. She cannot even see our home from there because of window orientation, but more so because of trees and terrain. She was leaving for work and as she drove past our driveway (she has hew own drive 275' south of mine) she saw someone in my driveway. As this happened another neighbor was approaching in his truck, she alerted him and both went into action as other neighbors also got involved.
As for the neighbor who doesn't like me, he lives on the other side of the workshop/apartment and even if he was looking straight at it from his house could not see my house because the view is blocked by terrain, trees, and my workshop. He is only 350' away but unless I am in my yard and he is in his we cannot see each other. In the winter when the leaves are off the trees I can only see the peak of his roof.
The neighbor to my north is also separated from me by about 350' but his house is also absurd by terrain and trees and our houses are totally shielded from each other.
Across the street is similar. Even standing in a clearing at the front of my property I can see NONE of the houses on the other side of the road.
My home is visible from the road, as are most along the road, but because of the terrain and trees, several of us have quite a large degree of privacy. Just like any other "neighborhood" most homes are lined up along the roadway, but unlike most neighborhoods, many of us cannot actually see the houses "next door" to us because of trees/terrain UNLESS we are outside in our front yards. The neighbor to my south can see my workshop and visa-versa. But the house just 1 door south of him is all but invisible to him. Then from that next house south there are 5 or 6 houses that can 'see each other' until the road turns into the woods and houses all disappear again. The road goes through the woods and on the other side is former farm land where another half dozes homes have views of each other. But the homes on the lots in the woods are totally obscured from each other and from the roadway. So in a neighborhood of 29 homes, roughly 20 can be seen from the road, but just because your home can be seen from the road (like mine) it does not mean that I can see my neighbors or visa-versa.
Below is a satellite image of our neighborhood. One road in, it splits into a small cul-du-sac at the southwest corner and goes through the woods to the east. At the extreme east it dead ends into a cross street that services only 6 houses as that street dead ends one both ends. This image is from Google Earth, it does not show my new workshop/apartment. It also makes the land appear flat, and while it is relatively so, my lots elevation changes 60'. Just from my front door to my back door the elevation drop is 8 or 9 feet. My workshop sits at roughly 5' higher elevation than my house, but between the 2 structures (maybe 120' apart) the elevation drops about 8' before it rises again up to the workshop which, as I said, actually sits higher than the house. So it is the combination of dips, rises and trees that create privacy. In the summer my workshop is NOT VISIBLE from the house, even if you are outside standing on the patio looking toward the workshop, heck I can barely see the edge of the new swimming pool from my kitchen patio
(faces the pool) and the pool is between the house and the workshop.
Fortunately, after a quick review of the recordings we had the punks and their parents sitting at the police station with us that same day. What is baffling is, in my cases, the families had money; their kids were just thugs. Hopefully you get your missing items back. I don't know about you, but I felt violated and nobody even entered my home or shops.
