QUINCY, ILL. -- A 35-year-old woman from Kahoka, Missouri is going to prison for two and a half years after being convicted of stealing several big screen televisions from the Quincy Super Walmart.
Heather Bradley was sentenced on Tuesday in an Adams County Courtroom in Quincy.
The case originated back in October of 2007 when Bradley and her mother purchased two big screen tv's from the Walmart store with a credit card.
The pair then went back into the store two other times that day and actually placed other big screen tv's in a cart, showed the receipt and placed them in their car.
An alert Walmart employee noticed when the two women were struggling trying to get the fifth and sixth tv into their van. He copied down their license plate number.
A few hours after the original theft took place, the women went back to the Walmart store and returned the two original tv's they had purchased for a credit on their credit card.
Bradley was eventually indicted by an Adams County Grand Jury on theft charges in 2008.
Adams County State Attorney Jon Barnard says it took authorities almost a year to gather evidence connected to the case.
In court on Tuesday, Barnard told Judge Diane Lagoski that Bradley wasn't a candidate for probation because, "probation is about trust and if we release her their will be another victim."
Barnard also told the judge that, "Bradley is a one woman crime spree that has to be stopped and that she is an exhibit as to why we build prisons."
During the sentencing hearing, it was submitted into evidence that Bradley had several prior convictions including five theft convictions, three assault convictions, a harassment conviction and also a conviction on filing a false police report. Those convictions were in the states of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa.
With time served in the Adams County jail and also the Illinois Department of Corrections policy of a day for a day good time, Bradley could be out of prison by the middle of next year.
The judge also ordered her to make restitution in the amount of $3,184.
As for the remaining four television sets, they have never been located.
And as for Bradley's mother who was also involved in the case, she was killed in a car accident last year.
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