Masked Men Grabbed Her Safe in 7 Minutes Flat. One of Them Used to Work for Her

The man who broke into his ex-employer’s Taunton home, stealing over $70,000 in cash, two firearms, and a family heirloom, has been sentenced. And the details of how it happened are still hard to shake.

The Morning Everything Went Wrong

On January 13, 2025, just before 8 a.m., three masked men forced their way into Brittany Devine’s home on Winthrop Street in Taunton. One kicked in the front door and headed straight upstairs while two others waited outside in a silver Ford Explorer.

In under seven minutes, the safe was rolled down the stairs, loaded into the vehicle, and they were gone. The whole thing was caught on the home’s surveillance cameras.

The Part That Makes This Case Different

Inside the safe was over $70,000 in cash, two firearms, and a family heirloom. The burglar didn’t touch anything else in the home.

That precision wasn’t luck. It was knowledge.

Brittany Devine, co-owner of Devine Fence, recognized one of the suspects as Jonathan Hatch, a former employee.

“We watched training videos on the TV. He’d go up the stairs to go to the bathroom,” she said. He knew the layout. He knew where to go.

What Police Found and How the Charges Stacked Up

When detectives executed search warrants, they found a backpack in Hatch’s Buick Regal containing $25,100 in cash, 90 grams of cocaine, 109 grams of pressed fentanyl pills, and 159 grams of methamphetamine pills.

The burglary suddenly became something much bigger.

What broke this case open was investigators following the trail beyond the break-in itself. In the Union Parish case, a BOLO alert led deputies directly to suspects in a Farmerville home.

A Philadelphia teen’s crime spree unraveled the same way, by connecting crimes across county lines instead of treating them as isolated incidents.

Hatch pled guilty and was sentenced to 7 to 10 years in prison, with credit for 460 days already served. His charges included breaking and entering, firearm larceny, and three drug trafficking counts.

Vachon, who had no drug charges, received 2 to 3 years. Rodrigues’ case is still pending, with a lobby conference scheduled for June 18. The drug charges are what separated Hatch’s sentence from everyone else’s.

Why This Matters

In 30% of burglaries, the offender personally knows the victim, and in 54% of cases, they live within 2 miles of the targeted home. Hatch fit both.

In 2024 alone, 779,542 burglaries were reported across the U.S., roughly one every 51 seconds. Yet clearance rates sit at just 11%, meaning most cases go unsolved.

Read the full sentencing report from Taunton Daily Gazette for the complete court record.

Does it surprise you that nearly 1 in 3 burglaries involves someone the victim already knew? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

The Real Loss Nobody Talks About

Devine said: “The money doesn’t bother me. I can earn back money. What I can’t earn back is feeling safe.”

She had always believed in giving people second chances. That’s why she hired Hatch. Now she says: “It made me not want to help anyone, like, ever again.”

A Newhall family targeted by a South American burglary crew described the same thing. The cash was replaceable. The feeling of safety was not.

If you follow cases like this and want to stay updated when similar stories break, there’s a WhatsApp channel covering real crime cases and home safety news as they happen. Worth bookmarking if this kind of reporting matters to you.

Three Takeaways Worth Remembering

• Your home’s layout is information. A contractor, a former worker, a repair person. Anyone who’s walked through your space carries that knowledge.
• Cameras don’t prevent crime, but they solve it. This case cracked because footage existed. Most burglaries go unsolved because it doesn’t.
• About 75% of burglars go to the master bedroom first. Cash and firearms stored together in one spot create a single high-value target. Spread the risk.

Wrapping Up

This wasn’t random. It was planned by someone Brittany Devine had trusted enough to hire. The sentence is done for Hatch. Rodrigues’ case is still open. Devine’s sense of security is still rebuilding.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only, based on publicly available court records and reporting from Bristol County District Attorney’s office.