The break-in occurred July 17, although details of the burglary and McFarlin’s August 2 arrest are now just becoming public. The house was being renovated last month, and nobody was home at the time, Tsui said.
Tsui declined to say whether the computers and other items belonged to Jobs or another family member. The prosecutor said McFarlin was likely unaware of the home’s significance.
“It appears to be a random deal,” he told CNN. “We don’t have anything to show that (Jobs’ family) was targeted.”
Police tracked McFarlin down through the use of the stolen computer equipment, Tsui said. He declined to provide more specifics.
McFarlin could face a maximum prison sentence of seven years and eight months, Santa Clara County prosecutor Tom Flattery told the San Jose Mercury News.
Jobs, the longtime Apple CEO, died in October at age 56 after a long bout with cancer. He shared the two-story, red-brick home with his wife, Laurene Powell, and their three children.
In his recent book “Steve Jobs,” biographer Walter Isaacson describes the house as on a corner in a “family-friendly neighborhood” of old Palo Alto. Jobs bought the home in the early 1990s.
“It was a privileged realm … but the homes were not ostentatious, and there were no high hedges or long drives shielding them from view,” Isaacson wrote.
Source: CNN
