A Royalton woman is accused of breaking into six area homes over a two-month period to steal drugs.
Prosecutors have filed four felony cases against 27-year-old Marina A. Goza. She is charged with multiple counts of burglary, theft and possession of narcotics.
Goza first came to the attention of law enforcement on Aug. 17 of last year. Her foster parents told Waupaca County Sheriff’s Deputy Pat Gorchals that Goza visited their home in Royalton with her new baby a week earlier.
After she left, they were missing 30 oxycodone tablets.
When she visited them again on Aug. 17, she said she may have left her baby’s nook at their home. She was later seen crouching by a chair. After she left, a prescription bottle was found on the floor beside the chair. Fifty pain pills were missing, according to the criminal complaint.
On Jan. 12, the parents of Goza’s boyfriend told Deputy Jon Loken that someone pried open a small safe in their bedroom and stole the father’s pain medications that were prescribed after cancer surgery.
They suspected Goza because she was in trouble for allegedly stealing other people’s prescription drugs and she knew about the safe.
On Jan. 28, Goza called Loken and asked to speak with him, Loken drove to her home on Zirbel Road in Royalton.
“You probably already know why I asked you to come here,” Goza told Loken, according to the criminal complaint. “I wanted to tell you that I had taken the pills from my in-laws.”
Goza told Loken her family encouraged her to seek treatment. She said she went to a clinic in Milwaukee and described it as an eye-opening experience because she had learned abusing prescription meds could lead to other drugs, such as heroin and meth, the complaint says.
On Feb. 11, Goza was charged with two counts each of theft and possession of narcotics.
On Feb. 13, a man living on Bags Hill Road reported coming home and finding a brown-haired woman sitting in a red Ford Focus in his driveway. When he asked why the woman was there, she said she was looking for the person who sold her something on Craig’s List.
After the woman drove away, the man found tracks in the snow that led around the house, apparently stopping at the windows. Entry was made through an unlocked patio door, and 10 oxycodone pills were missing.
On Feb. 17, Deputy Michael Richter was dispatched to a home on State Highway 54 in Royalton. Another break-in had occurred, and more than 80 hydrocodone pills were stolen.
Goza has also been charged with two other burglaries involving the theft of narcotics in early March.
Shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 8, Loken was dispatched to a home on State Highway 110 in Royalton. The woman who lived there said she had been asleep when her dog began barking. When she came downstairs, she discovered a stranger in her house, walking down a hallway that leads to the bathroom.
The stranger was described as a woman with dark hair and a bun, wearing leggings and a light-colored jacket. She allegedly told the woman she was looking for Shelly, who told her to come into the house through the garage in order to get her Girl Scout cookies.
After the stranger left, the woman discovered an old bottle of oxy-percocet was missing.
Deputies Andrew Thorpe and Jon Loken met with Goza at the sheriff’s office shortly after 11:30 a.m. Her clothes and hair matched the description of the woman whose meds had been stolen earlier that morning. Goza was also driving a red Ford Focus, the complaint says.
Goza reportedly admitted to entering the woman’s home earlier that morning, but denied taking any drugs from her.
“She stated she wanted to get past all of this and move on,” the complaint says. “She believed one of her problems was that she lost a good job she had in Neenah. She had gotten a job and a day later she had been let go due to the fact of her past record.”
On March 14, Goza was charged with burglary, theft and possession of narcotics.
On March 15, she was charged with three counts of burglary, three counts of theft, two counts of possession of narcotics and one count of possession of a controlled substance.
After Goza made her first court appearance at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, Judge Raymond Huber released her from custody on a $3,000 signature bond that covered all three cases.
At 4:40 p.m. that same day, a 911 caller reported seeing a suspicious car parked in his parents’ driveway on Butternut Ridge Road in rural Waupaca. He described the car as a red Ford Focus.
The man told police he pulled into the driveway and saw a woman walking out of the garage and peek into a window.
The woman, who was later identified as Goza, told the man she lost her dog and gave her name as Marina, the complaint says.
When Deputy Pete Kraeger went into the garage, he found pry marks on the door between the attached garage and the home.
Dispatch later informed Kraeger that Goza was at the sheriff’s office to speak to a deputy. He found her waiting in a red Ford Focus in the parking lot.
According to the criminal complaint, Goza told Kraeger that after she left the jail between 3:45 p.m. and 4 p.m. March 15, she drove toward her mother’s home in New London, but took back roads and stopped at several homes along the way. At each home, she said she knocked on the door and if someone answered, she said she lost her dog.
When nobody answered the door at the Butternut Ridge home, she tried to pry open the door with a screwdriver, but was interrupted when a man pulled into the driveway.
Kraeger searched Goza’s car and reported finding five prescription bottles for prescription pain pills in the trunk.
On Thursday, March 17, Goza appeared before Judge Raymond Huber again, who set a $1,000 cash bail as a condition of her release from custody.
Goza posted bail and was released from custody on Friday, March 18.