Enterprise, Probst aid in collaring jewel thief



GUILDERLAND — After years on the run, Carl Dinatale has been caught. Police have charged him in several jewelry heists along the East Coast — one of them in Guilderland.

America’s Most Wanted, the national television show, has credited The Enterprise and a former Altamont resident for identifying Dinatale and linking his string of robberies together.

A viewer of the popular television show called and said Dinatale may be living in the Boston area after seeing his story, according to American’s Most Wanted website, and police arrested him.

Ells Probst, a faithful Enterprise reader, retired from the New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation and moved near Raleigh, N. C. Probst tipped off Raleigh police last spring after he remembered reading a Dec. 8, 2005, article in The Enterprise about a diamond robbery in Guilderland.
"They only had a composite [of Dinatale]. I called them up and told them the Guilderland Police have a photograph," Probst said last year.

Guilderland Police had surveillance video photographs of the robber, which The Enterprise ran with its article.

Public information officer Jim Sughrue, of the Raleigh Police Department, said at the time that Probst and The Enterprise "played a key role" in identifying Dinatale.
"He’s not a young guy anymore; it’s going to be harder and harder for him to outrun people," Probst said about Dinatale last spring.

Now, Dinatale is facing larceny charges in Raleigh and Boston and grand larceny charges in Guilderland and possibly in other locations.

In Guilderland, a man who police now identify as Dinatale walked into Northeastern Fine Jewelry on Western Avenue in December of 2005 and pretended to be a customer, according to Guilderland Police. He asked to see two diamond rings, worth $45,000, and, after a sales clerk handed him the rings, he ran out of the store, police said at the time.

A red jeep Cherokee was waiting outside and Dinatale and the driver got away, said Guilderland Police who found the vehicle parked at Crossgates Mall later that the day. The vehicle was reported stolen from another town and no evidence or merchandise was ever recovered.

America’s Most Wanted wrote on its website that Probst was visiting his family in upstate New York, and that he "brought back his hometown newspaper. An article in The Altamont Enterprise described Dinatale’s alleged heist in Guilderland and the ‘snatch and run’ style stuck in the retired cop’s mind""

No stranger to the Capital District, Probst retired from the state BCI in 1982 and then opened a private investigators firm in Voorheesville. His wife, Edie, was a town clerk for New Scotland. The couple moved to Wilmington in 1998 and enjoy their new home.