NJ: Home invader gets 10 years, blames victims
Date: Dec 11, 2005 8:13 PM
One of the recent articles blaming gun laws in other states for
crime in their state, had Ceasefire of NJ blaming “Pennsylvania’s
lax gun laws” for crime in NJ. Of course, a guy like the one in this
article, with 28 arrests, with 11 serious convictions running free to
commit more crimes plays no role in NJ’s crime problems.

Home invader gets 10 years, blames victims
By MILES JACKSON
Staff Writer
[email protected]

BRIDGETON — William Burden laid the blame for many of his
problems at the feet of an Upper Deerfield couple who
wouldn’t answer their door when he and an accomplice tried
to burglarize their house on July 4, 2003.

In addition to a 10-year attempted burglary sentence handed
down Friday, Burden’s problems are many:

# The 32-year-old Bridgeton resident already is
serving a 20- to 30-year sentence for burglaries
and other crimes committed in Cumberland and Salem
counties in 2002 and 2003. His crime spree
triggered the largest state police investigation in
the region’s recent history.

# He faces additional years if convicted of two
robberies where police said he and Howard Dunns, a
28-year-old Fairfield Township resident, shot and
seriously injured two elderly Salem County men.

# Police also tied the handgun used in the two
shootings to the murder of a Millville youth.
Burden has been charged with providing the gun to
the accused killer in that case.

In court Friday, Burden faced Robert and Wanda DuBois, an
Upper Deerfield couple who happened to be at home when
Burden and a man police said is Dunns called on the
afternoon of July 4.

“I wish they had answered the door,” Burden said before he
was sentenced Friday. “Had they done that, me and my boy
would have gone on our way.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have brought down all these other
burglaries and stuff I didn’t commit on me,” Burden said.
“Not to minimize what I did, but I’m going through a
terrible situation because of all these charges I’m facing.”

But Robert DuBois, who chased the two men away from his
rural house by firing two shots from his own handgun, wasn’t
buying Burden’s tale of woe.

DuBois chased down Burden and Dunns until state police
arrested the pair.”I think Mr. Burden and all the career
criminals ought to get new jobs,” DuBois said. “It gets
dangerous when you try and do what he did out where I live.”

Superior Court Judge Timothy Farrell said he didn’t believe
Burden had only a simple burglary in mind when he and Dunns
kicked down the door of the DuBois residence.

Although neither Burden nor Dunns have been convicted of the
two home invasion robberies in eastern Salem County in which
two elderly men were shot, he said Burden’s actions on July
4 pointed to a more sinister crime.

Farrell noted that the telephone lines to the DuBois home
had been cut before the two men kicked in the couple’s door.

“Had not Mr. DuBois fired his weapon, we might be here for a
very different kind of offense,” Farrell said. “I don’t buy
Mr. Burden’s story that he would have just gone away.”

Assistant Prosecutor John Jesperson declined to comment
because of pending charges against Burden and Dunns, but he
said Burden has been arrested 28 times since 1992 and
convicted of 11 serious crimes.

“It is obvious by his prior record that all attempts at
rehabilitation have failed,” Jesperson said. “I’m sorry to
say that all that is left to do is warehouse Mr. Burden.”

Jesperson said it was important to make sure the public is
kept safe from a man he called a career criminal.

“I have no doubt that if he is released that he will commit
another crime,” Jesperson said.

The series of home invasion robberies and home burglaries
that plagued western Cumberland County and eastern Salem
County during the spring and summer of 2003 left the area’s
residents frightened, Jesperson said.

Robert DuBois, in a written statement, said he and his wife
felt their lives would never be the same because of the
random attack on their home.

They have cut down 30 trees around their house to eliminate
hiding places for intruders and are afraid to leave the
house alone or return to a house that may or may not be
empty.

“It has changed the way we live,’ DuBois said. “We feel
violated.”

While life has returned to normal for many of the residents
of the area, at least two other households and two men have
suffered lifetime injuries from crimes that have been
attributed to Burden and Dunns, police and prosecutors said.

On March 10, 2003, two or three masked men broke down the
door of his Almond Road home in Pittsgrove Township and
confronted Umberto Bifulco, then 71.

When Bifulco resisted, one of the men shot him in the leg,
shattering the femur and sending him to the trauma unit of
Cooper University Hospital in Camden.

A little more than two months later, masked men barged into
the bedroom of Bernard Mayerfeld, then 68, who also lives on
Almond Road in a house less than a mile from Bifulco’s.

When Mayerfeld refused to tell the men where to find money,
he was shot several times in the legs.

Mayerfeld also ended up in the trauma unit of Cooper.

Several other crimes, including the attempted shooting of a
Gershal Avenue woman and the home invasion of another Upper
Deerfield Township family, were attributed to Dunns and
Burden. The only person left unidentified in the case is a
third suspect, who left Burden and Dunns at the scene of the
July 4 crime when DuBois began firing shots.

The man fled in a blue Honda van before state police
converged on the scene.

“There were 65 state police cars in my yard,” DuBois said of
the response.

While the man in the blue van escaped, Wanda DuBois said he,
too, will be identified.

“His day is coming,” she said.