Trail unravels after capture.

On July 4, 2003, William Burden and an accomplice tried to rob a Deerfield, New Jersey, home, but a gun-owning resident interrupted their plans. On December 9, 2005, Burden was finally sentenced after being found guilty of that crime. At the sentencing hearing, it became clear how significant the actions of that gun owner, Robert DuBois, were.

In court, Burden bemoaned the fact that DuBois had armed himself, and had not answered the door, when Burden and a cohort, Howard Dunns, were preparing to invade the home: "I wish they had answered the door. Had they done that, me and my boy would have gone on our way." According to the Daily Journal, he also added, "Maybe it wouldn't have brought down all these other burglaries and stuff I didn't commit on me.... I'm going through a terrible situation because of all these charges I'm facing." The other "charges" that Burden was referring to and that so bothered him were the crimes the police charged him with after DuBois caused him to be caught.

In 2003, DuBois refused to answer the door when Burden came to the house because DuBois had already discovered that his phone line had been cut and therefore expected the worst. He had armed himself with a pistol and used a cell phone to call both the police and his neighbors to alert them to possible trouble. When Burden tried to kick in DuBois' house door, DuBois fired through the door, sending the robbers running. The robbers ran into DuBois' armed neighbors, who cornered the pair and held them for police.

After the robbers were captured, police began connecting them to a rash of previously unsolved crimes: Burden was charged with supplying a gun to a teenager who used it to kill a man; with multiple home invasions; with shooting two elderly gentlemen during two of those home invasions; and with shooting at a woman.

DuBois' actions helped police wrap up what the Daily Journal called "the largest state police investigation in the region's recent history." Burden is a career criminal who had previously "been arrested 28 times since 1992 and convicted of 11 serious crimes."