Ex-girlfriend, GPS help nab trailer suspect

A man from Norman who allegedly stole at least four large trailers, two of them in Clinton and two in Elk City, made another mistake – for him – when he shared his GPS location with his girlfriend who put it on her phone.
She told Clinton Police Detective Capt. Mike Murley that ever since the former boyfriend was arrested for the Elk City thefts she had been following his location on her phone, and on Sept. 26 she called Murley to say that he was leaving Norman headed for Elk City via Interstate 40. Thanks to her further help, the detective was waiting at the gas pumps when the ex-boyfriend pulled in at the Love’s store east of Clinton, and was arrested.
He didn’t stay in jail very long, though. A spokesperson at the Custer County Jail said he was released Friday (two days after his latest arrest) on bond of only $5,000.
The ex-girlfriend’s phone allegedly had him at the scene of one trailer theft in Clinton on Sept. 21, and at other locations where evidence was found. “She was a big help,” said Murley.
But she wasn’t the only person who used modern technology to help police in the case. A Clinton woman who worked next door to where a $6,000 trailer was stolen here turned over seemingly incriminating pictures of both the suspect and his pickup to police. So did the victim, Trey Arney, whose images came from his building’s security video.
The suspect in the thefts is Elisha Earl Fite, 39. He is charged in Custer County with two counts of grand larceny and in Beckham County with two counts of knowingly concealing stolen property, one of possessing a controlled dangerous substance, and one of unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia.
Alleged details of the crimes here are told in a lengthy affidavit written by Captain Murley.
It says that Officer Bill Gerstenkorn was called Sept. 21 to 422 Gary Blvd. where he met with Arney, who said he had arrived at his building about 3:30 p.m. that day and found his 14-foot, 2015-model GR black dump bed trailer valued at $6,000 missing. He said it had a metal lock on the hitch but had been taken from the front parking lot of his business. 
Gerstenkorn went next door to CTC (the Clinton Textile Corp.) and met with employee Lena Cardenas. She said she had noticed a red four-door Ford pickup drive several times that morning through the parking lot CTC shares with Arney.
She also said it parked next to a trailer and she heard sawing noises coming from the location. She described a white male in his mid-30s being at the scene.
Ms. Cardenas said she took photos of the pickup, and she turned them over to Gerstenkorn. Murley said they included a chainsaw sticking up out of the bed.
The detective reviewed them and found they matched a red Ford pickup that had been used Sept. 19 in another trailer theft from 2D Trailer Sales at 535 S. Fourth St. The trailer stolen there was a 22-footer valued by Manager Chad Lierle at $5,000.
Lierle said 2D’s security video also showed that someone in a red Ford F-150 crew cab pickup with a silver tool box in the bed had taken that trailer too.
Murley sent pictures of the pickup to other law enforcement agencies in the area on Sept. 21, and about 5 p.m. that day Lt. Scott Goodman – a former Clinton policeman now working in Elk City – contacted him and said that on Sept. 5 he and other officers had arrested the driver of the “very same vehicle.” Goodman identified him as Elisha Fite and said he was out of jail on a $20,000 bond in Beckham County. Goodman said the pickup Fite had been driving had an orange and white chainsaw sticking up out of the bed.
Three days later Murley spoke with a woman named Shanna Jones who identified herself as a former girlfriend of Fite’s. She said she had broken up with him after his arrest by Elk City police but while they were dating he had allowed her to view his GPS location on his phone from her phone. She said she had been tracking him ever since his arrest and taking “screen shots.”
Murley asked for any she had on Sept. 21, the date Arney’s trailer was stolen, and she supplied them. The first allegedly showed Fite at 422 Gary Blvd. – the location of Arney’s business – at 11:39 a.m.
The next showed his location 29 minutes later on Custer County Road 1070 near where items last seen in the bed of Arney’s trailer had been dumped by the side of the road.
Next was a shot showing a red pickup pulling a dump trailer passing by La Quinta Inn in Weatherford at 2:21 p.m., still on the same day. Murley said he showed a still picture taken from La Quinta’s video to Arney, and he positively identified the trailer in it as his.
Then on Sept. 26 Ms. Jones, the former girlfriend, contacted Murley and told him Fite was leaving Norman and traveling to Elk City via I-40. The detective said she sent him Fite’s GPS location as he approached Clinton. He said the red pickup was traveling west and he met the suspect at the Love’s fuel pumps east of town.
In the bed of the pickup, the affidavit said Murley found two orange and white chainsaws.
“Your Affiant questioned Mr. Fite, and he denied any involvement in the thefts of any trailer and stated that he was not in Clinton at the time of the thefts,” Murley’s affidavit concluded.