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ST. LOUIS — The house was packed with so much stuff, police officers couldn’t get through the front door.

Instead, they piloted a drone into the home, capturing a space packed with lawn mowers, bikes, weed eaters, drills, furniture, appliances, table saws and shop vacuums.

“We had to get a department box truck to bring it in,� said Tim Simms, a police detective.

The items were the spoils of a monthslong burglary spree in south St. Louis that resulted in one man — Gage Luttman — being sentenced recently to 14 years in prison for 240 theft-related charges.

He hit dozens of homes, garages and storage units, from Lindenwood Park to Tower Grove, taking whatever he could find. He drove stolen cars to pick up the items and then sold some of his haul out of the house, located on Hermitage Avenue, detectives said.

Neighbors said the house became a nuisance as Luttman filled the backyard with junk. People were coming and going from the house at all hours.

It took a tip from a witness — plus surveillance video and help from the public — for the police to put the case together.

“I’ve been in the burglary unit for 10 years, and this is the largest case that we’ve worked,� said Detective Erica Kenney.

The 2900 block of Hermitage Avenue is a dead-end road where many of the residents have lived for decades. In the summer of 2022, rain dumped into an already swollen River Des Peres, flooding the street and homes. Neighbors spent months gutting their houses and trying to recover.

Some of the houses sold. One — a small rectangular home with gray siding — was sold at auction for $7,000. The purchaser got permits to fix it up.

But over time, neighbors said, the upgrades on the home stalled. Luttman eventually moved into the house, which, neighbors said, had been purchased by a friend of his. Junk piled up in the backyard.

Meanwhile, Luttman came on detectives’ radar, popping up in surveillance videos from homes and businesses with his distinct hairline and tan boots. He was stealing mostly lawn equipment, usually from unlocked garages. He didn’t cover himself up very well, so it was easy to identify him, detectives said.

Luttman was arrested for the first time after a garage burglary in the Hill neighborhood in early 2023. He was charged with one count of burglary and released on bond, court records show. But before too long, he popped up again.

Over the next six months, Luttman committed dozens of burglaries and stole hundreds of items valued at tens of thousands of dollars.

He stole a chainsaw and a bike from a garage in the city’s Northampton neighborhood near Tilles Park.

He cut out drywall to burglarize a basement storage unit in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood. He stole trimmers, tools and furniture from garages across south city.

He broke into storage units and took tools, leaf blowers, weed trimmers, guns, jewelry, watches, laptops, liquor, car jacks, a scooter and a car, court records say.

In January 2024, he stole a red Hyundai Accent from in front of a home in the Clifton Heights neighborhood, a few blocks north of Arsenal Street.

Around the same time, neighbors started complaining about the home on Hermitage Avenue that had accumulated junk. Witnesses told police they suspected illegal activity.

Officers went to check it out. They found the stolen red Hyundai sitting outside, along with other stolen vehicles.

Detectives Simms, Kenney and their colleagues Richard van Duetekom and Gregory Rodden started watching.

On surveillance video, they saw people pulling up to buy some of the stolen items — usually tools or lawn equipment. One time, Luttman even cut a neighbor’s grass with a stolen mower, detectives said.

About a week after they started surveillance, they applied for a warrant to search the home.

Inside, they found appliances, microwaves, generators, Tesla tires, bicycles, furniture and boxes of memorabilia taken from storage units — baseball cards, jerseys and autographs from former Cardinals players like Willie McGee.

When they got back to the South Patrol headquarters on Sublette Avenue, they enlisted a team of officers to cart the goods — loaded in a 14-by-16-foot box truck — to a secure area in the basement because there was no elevator.

Detectives then posted photos of the stolen property online and asked the public to reach out if they recognized anything.

Sgt. Robert Lammert said he fielded dozens of emails from people looking for their stolen goods. Some of the stuff couldn’t be found.

But in other cases, people found their belongings.

“There was one lady who had several tools stolen but found her DeWalt radio, and she was just ecstatic,� Simms said.

Luttman was charged in May 2024 with more than 250 theft-related charges. He pleaded guilty in March to about 240 of them and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The house on Hermitage was sold and is now being renovated. The homeowner was never charged.

Burglary cases can be especially challenging, Kenney said, because there is often minimal evidence. And in a city known for violence, people may believe that crimes like burglaries aren’t investigated.

But that makes it more rewarding when the cases are solved.

“When people do hear from us and we’re able to get some closure and maybe get some of their stuff back,� Kenney said, “it’s always worth it.�