Update on the status of my stolen miniatures:
First, let me apologize for the lateness of this update. My father has been very ill, and as a result, I've not spent much time socializing online. Aside from a few posts at a few forums about my painting progress with other projects, and a few things related to Black Army, I just haven't had much energy for it. Hopefully things will get back to normal now. The fact that the wife had to go in for yet more surgery certainly hasn't helped my chipper mood. I do apologize to all my friends here, and apologize for failing to be more active.
Anyway, thought you might want to know how this stolen KUK thing has panned out. To put it bluntly: this is still a developing saga.
As many of you can well appreciate, the theft of the miniatures in August was very demoralizing, particularly as they had been some time in the making/planning phase. I'd already purchased a great deal of terrain, etc, to go with my project. So, I've been avoiding painting miniatures from that period for the last month or so... it just makes me too angry, if that makes any sense?
On the last Friday of August, late in the evening, Jen and I were returning from a dinner/movie date, and pulling into our neighborhood. As Jen was swinging the car into park, her headlights picked up on a strange shape under hedgerow that borders the parking lot area. In the passenger seat at the time, I asked her to stop, and got out of the car, as the shape looked vaguely familiar. When I approached it, I found the carrying case that I'd used for the Austro-Hungarians - with the tag I'd put on it still in place. It had been completely emptied of contents, was filled with water, and was surrounded by foam trays scattered around the bushes in various states of disrepair - they looked as if someone had ripped them initially, and then, that children had been playing with the trays.
The contents were completely gone.
However, I got the sudden thought that maybe, just maybe, the troops were scattered around under the bushes as well. So I picked up a flashlight and began searching the hedgerow. Jen ran into the house, took care of the dogs, and then joined me in the search. We found nothing approaching miniatures, but we did find a few more foam trays and bits of foam trays. Around 2am, we decided to give up (maybe we'd have better luck in the morning, we said) and were about to turn in, when a neighbor, who was in her front yard with her dog at the time, saw us with the flashlights. She asked us if we were looking for anything.
Jennifer explained what had happened, and the woman made an odd face, as if something she recognized had struck her. After waiting a minute, she said. "You know, my husband found something like that in the parking lot last week(!), and I think he may know something. He has some of them, too. At least thirteen of them, I think, he said. Let me go get him." The husband was up late, watching soccer/football on the television, and came out to join us.
According to him, he had been going to work the week before when he discovered a series of "toy soldiers that looked like germans" very well painted and scattered around the parking lot, predominantly in and around his parking space. He said that he felt like they looked like someone had spent a great deal of time and effort working on them or that, maybe, they might be antiques. At any rate, he decided to pick them up.
At this point in the narrative, he paused in that account to explain that, on the first or second week of the month, several cars had been broken into in the parking lot, with their contents stolen. His wife had her GPS stolen, he had his cellphone and an empty wallet stolen, someone else lost a laptop, a local student had his textbooks taken. Oddly enough, my car hadn't had any sign of being broken into, but he said that was the case with several of the cars. He said that the thieves had obviously been surprised, because when Security came upon the scene, they found several cars with their doors open, and a few things scattered around the parking lot, as if someone had been rifling through them. The general theory was that the thieves were somehow getting into cars that were unlocked, or picking the locks with great skill (maybe using some kind of electronic thing? Idunno..it was all very odd.), but that they had still been sorting through their loot when they'd had to make a run for it. In light of other things you'll read here, this may all sound quite strange. However, I have since spoken to neighbors who said they had things stolen. All agreed that it was odd. It was particularly odd because some of the neighbors found their car doors open in the morning, -after- Security had been through and supposedly chased off or cleaned up the area. It was doubly odd because, so far as anyone can tell, several items were still scattered around the lot.
But the plot thickens. Read on, gentle reader!;)
He then resumed his story of finding the toy soldiers. It was early in the morning, he said, and he was almost late for work. He had collected around thirty to forty of them (he wasn't sure of the exact number). He then placed them on the sidewalk next to where he'd been parked, and headed to work.
Let me repeat that for you.
He thought they might be of value to someone and chose to place the miniatures on the sidewalk next to where he'd been parked, and headed to work.
Doesn't that seem extremely strange? Wouldn't you have at least put them in your car? Hell, put them in a box near the mailbox? Something?
At this point, his wife gave him an odd look. "I thought you brought some of them into the house." He shook his head. No, he'd mentioned finding them to their son, but he hadn't kept any of them. After placing them on the sidewalk, he never saw them again.
But it gets better.
The next morning, Jen was walking the dogs (well, just Claudius, the others are too lazy to get up that early;) ), and looking carefully through the hedgerows, and around the parking lot. A local boy who lives in the house behind us approached her and asked her if she was looking for something. He explained that his father had several credit cards stolen from his truck a few weeks before, and that he'd since managed to find them all. "I'm good at finding stuff," he said. So she told him what had happened. The kid nodded enthusiastically that he'd be happy to find the toy soldiers for us, no reward needed. However, he said, he could distinctly remember one of the kids playing with some metal toy soldiers he'd "found" in the neighborhood. Where, Jen asked? Why, the son of the guy who'd told us he'd found the miniatures in his parking space and left them on the sidewalk...
So the wife goes to this guy's house and asks if maybe the kid has seen any of them. He says no, but that there is a little girl across the way who had some. She, in turn, says no, that she was playing with them with the kid who lives right next door to us. The next door neighbors were, coincidentally, not home that weekend. On Monday, when Jen was working from home, she then approached the neighbors and asked about them. The neighbor boy's father said that he hadn't seen anything like that, but that he'd immediately ask his son, when he got home that evening. We heard nothing from them for several days. However, in the meanwhile, we posted signs on every mailbox in the immediate vicinity, explaining the situation, the personal value of the miniatures to me, and offering a cash reward for every miniature returned, no questions asked.
The next week (which was the first week of September) two miniatures were returned. One was an officer, the other was a spotter for an HMG Team. The officer had been played with roughly, and had lost some paint; the spotter had obviously been run over by a car. Both were found by the helpful young lad who'd volunteered to look for them before. He wanted nothing in return, but promised to keep looking for them. Since then, we've heard little about the situation until about a week ago, when we heard from the neighbor boy's father, who said that his son's toy soldiers were plastic, and not what we were looking for.
But ah, the plot thickens even more!
Because two weeks after those signs were posted, they began to disappear. Someone was taking them down. Now, that may seem normal to you (two weeks is a long time to have an item posted, true) but this made no sense, as a number of other items (ads for services, lost pet notices, even local vote registration drive information) had been posted for months and had not yet been removed (nor have they been removed, since). We suspect someone is removing the signs for any of a variety of reasons. None of them particularly neighborly.
So that's where it stands. I have two returned miniatures from the set of forty five. The greens that were also in the case (objective markers for the new miniatures range we're developing) are probably gone forever. But I still strongly suspect that someone in the neighborhood knows -something- more than what they are telling us. And it really irks me. Just the other day I was walking Yoshi, one of my Bostons, and was stopped in the street by someone who recognized my dog because her kids had played with him. She said, "Hey, you were the one who had his figures stolen, right?" I replied that I was. She shook her head, "Damned kids! I'm keeping my eye out, though!"
...
Aren't people wonderful?
I realize these are just toy soldiers. But hope you can appreciate my displeasure/unhappiness about all this.
Will get some pictures posted of the damaged survivors in the next day or two.
-Doc
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April 26, 2024, 03:30:26 PM
March 16, 2010, 11:56:06 AM