Sunday evening has not particularly been a time of rest for one Gainesville restaurant owner for the past two years.

Ronnie Neu, owner and manager of The Neu Ranch House and Catfish Louie’s on East U.S. Highway 82, reported his restaurant was broken into Sunday evening around 12:45 a.m. early Monday morning. Nearly $2,000 worth of merchandise and currency was found missing.

The Neu Ranch House was but one victim of a string of burglaries of restaurants and church buildings over the weekend and late last week — including the Woolf Den, Jack-in-the-Box, the Woolf Den, Fair Avenue Baptist Church, Harvest Time Ministry Center on Fair Avenue and Big Fatty’s On the Square in Valley View.

“It worries me, about every Sunday night for sure,” Neu said of the repeat burglary.

A previous incident occurred in early August 2005, when about $1,000 was taken between a Sunday night and a Monday morning. The burglar was caught on camera, and in one scene was staring directly at the lens.

Investigations are pending on each recent burglary, and it is not clear if the incidents are related.

Neu said the same tactic was used as the last time the restaurant was robbed — prying open the back door.

“It was the same method as last time, and they wore gloves and had masks on,” Neu said, noting security camera footage.

He said the $1,500 in cash was taken — as well as some change, an Internet radio worth $650, a computer hard drive and a handheld personal data assistant (PDA).

Neu said he installed burglary prevention equipment, but the equipment did not put in a call to his telephone as it was designed to.

Gainesville Seafood (Seafoodville) was robbed seven times in the last two years, according to owner and manager Johnny Glass.

Glass said his business was burglarized Sunday night. A dial on a safe was dismantled and a burglar made off with an undisclosed amount of cash from inside of it.

“There’s nobody to blame for this in the police department,” he said. “The point is we don’t have enough police officers in Gainesville. They’re doing the best they can with what they’ve got.”

Glass said he was a peace officer for 16 years in Denton.

He said the timing of the burglaries was ironic for him, in that at Tuesday’s Gainesville City Council meeting the Gainesville Police Department released a crime report noting less overall crime in the city and more calls.

Jennifer Oldaker, a co-manager of the Woolf Den, a combination restaurant, tanning salon and Internet cafe, said between late Wednesday and early Thursday morning, someone pried open the back door, cut phone cables at the utility pole, ripped an alarm system off the restaurant’s wall and destroyed cash registers.

“They busted our registers and went through the stuff in our office,” Oldaker said. “Pretty much, they took a bunch of money. We were in the habit of leaving money in the register overnight to make change next day, But we’re not doing that anymore, obviously!”

Oldaker said the burglary upset she and her husband, co-manager Charlie Oldaker.

“It’s more of a disgusted feeling than anything else. It makes me very upset,” she said. “Here we are working 80 hours a week on average, and working hard for everything we got. And then these people come in and just take whatever they want.”

Big Fatty’s On the Square in Valley View was burglarized Friday evening, and a cash register taken. According to a note on the door Saturday signed by owners Ricky and Gail Patterson, the barbecue and eclectic cuisine restaurant was closed temporarily “so we can lick our wounds.”

Gail Patterson noted a CD changer with a “lifetime collection” of music was taken, along with some change, a cash register and two dozen cookies.

“Loosing all our music is what probably hurt the most,” she said.

She also noted a glass door on the front of the building was shattered. A standard white wooden door replaces it.

“In a way, we’re kind of lucky, they didn’t trash the entire place or anything,” she said.

She said her insurance did not cover the losses as the building lacked a security alarm system.

“We’re going to have to eat all of this,” she said.

Harvest Time Ministry Center, 705 Fair Ave., was burgled between 2:37 a.m. and 3:25 a.m. Monday.

According to police reports, a door was forced open to gain entry, as with the other burglaries. A Panasonic video recorder and a Peavy monitor speaker were found missing.

Neighboring Fair Avenue Baptist Church was robbed at some point after Harvest Time Ministry Center. Damage was found to the door, according to police reports. Nothing was found missing, the report read.

Anyone with information on the above incidents may contact the Gainesville Police Department at 668-7777 or the anonymous Crime Tips Hotline at 612-0000. For information on the Valley View burglary, or incidents elsewhere in the county outside the city limits, contact the Cooke County Sheriff’s Department at 665-3471 or the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1(800)388-8477.

Reporter Andy Hogue may be contacted at andyhoguegdr@ntin.net