stolen car recovered after 39 years

Saw this in the Tennessean, pretty amazing. One hell of a lucky guy!!




By Kate Howard
THE TENNESSEAN


The 1965 Corvette was worth maybe $2,200 when a thief stole it off Lower Broadway 39 years ago. The rightful owner will drive it back home this week, worth 30 times what he lost, after it was recovered nearly four decades later in Arizona.

Chance Mayfield parked the convertible, Nassau blue with a white top, on Lower Broadway and went to the honky-tonks in November 1970. It was a great night at the Broadway Barn, he said, until he walked out to the parking lot and the like-new muscle car was gone.


"That ruined my night," Mayfield said with a chuckle.

The pain of losing the spotless car was already long forgotten when he got a phone call this summer from a detective who said his car had been found. Once he got his mind around what car he was talking about, Mayfield thought someone was playing a prank on him.

After four or five years passed with no sign of the car, Mayfield figured he'd never see it again. But dreams, he said, do come true, and on his 68th birthday he got word that court cases with the most recent owner had been resolved.

The completely restored Corvette, which looks like it spent years as part of various collectors' stock, is now his to take home. He's taking a trailer out to Arizona and he'll bring it home to Putnam County - about two hours east of Nashville - next week.

The car was discovered when a collector, who bought the car for about $65,000, took it to the department of motor vehicles for an inspection. The inspector ran the serial number through the National Insurance Claims Bureau, and it came up stolen from 1970.

Of all the things that seem unbelievable about this case - that nobody checked the car against the insurance database before this year, or that the car looks better than ever - most amazing to the detectives involved was that the original 1970 police report was still sitting in an archive box. Mayfield's insurance had lapsed just before the theft, so he never got a paid claim for it. The Metro police clear their stolen car cases of the national crime database every six years or so. That piece of paper was enough to determine the car belonged to Mayfield.

"It helped me a lot because it helped me verify Mr. Mayfield's story," said Detective Mark Wagner of the Scottsdale, Ariz., police department. "We couldn't believe it still existed.

"When I called Nashville to tell him we found this car and the detective stopped laughing, he said he'd check the archive, and there it was."


Oldest case solved


Metro car theft detective William Dillon took the call, and says it's definitely the oldest case they've resolved. Detectives tracked the car back to California and then to New Jersey in 2000, and the business that sold it has since closed.

"We'll never figure out who stole it in the very beginning," Dillon said. "It's just an old theft that will actually come to a conclusion."

An old theft with a lesson: "Just because you put your car (behind) you as stolen, don't think we won't recover it sometime," Dillon said.

 

This is also a reason why you take care of paperwork BEFORE investing money in the car.

 

So what happened to the last buyer who is out $65,000.00?

 

That is one hell of a story man.

1shot

 

that would suck to be the guy that just droped 65k on it

 

That means there is still hope my 49 Ford Buss. coup will surface after 41 years being stolen.

 

This is kind of scary, considering how little many of us know about the true history of the cars we "own".

I'm wondering if some politician someday is going to claim, maybe rightly so, that the King of Spain had no right to "claim" (steal) from the "indians" the hunk of land I currently have a piece of paper saying I "own" and give all the California land grant land back to the local tribes.

YEs, it is the same thing as this pile of steel and plastic called a car that once was stolen, (like the California Spanish land grants, that the Sate of California decided to continue honoring, probably because most of them had already been bought up by "Americans") but has since been passed through too many innocent hands to have a claim like this happen.
If they can trace the car back that far, they should also be able to trace it through each past owner and get ALL the sale moneys returned to the progression of owners on it!

 

The seller who received the $65,000..sold a STOLEN CAR. He probably did not represent it as stolen..but as a valid title. If he did...

He has a problem

 

$65K - poof.

 

Now adays they just stab ya on lower Broadway. Well that and butcher country music. Great story.

 

Something else to think about, regarding VIN's and titles. Even if you are not buying a number's matching car, make sure the most important numbers match.

 

There's a similar situation close to here. A local guy had a '65 Shelby Mustang stolen back about '72 or '73 from his work parking lot. It just turned up in N.Y. Last I knew a judge declared it his car and confiscated it from the guy trying to sell it, but won't give it back as the seller is a lawyer and claim's to have legal paper on it.

 

Sometime in the last couple years Cutoms found a Corvette that was being exported was stolen about the same time this 1 was.

 

read recently that customs found a 67' vw van headed for the neatherlands that had been stolen in 74' from spokane wa. the thing is completly restored now.

 

good to hear. what a surprise.

 

some darn good police work there..

 

the sad thing on this one is the insurance co.is keeping it{i think}.they said they paid the claim for like $1000.00 and its now thiers.i think they said is worth over ten times that now.

 

the vw van is for sale on copart auction the bid on it at this time is $5100

 

Cool story!!LUCKY!!!

 

Where in NY ??

 

Wow that is amazing.
I have always heard of horror stories of this happening and I get a little nervous every time I go to the High Po office.
Good for the original owner, feel sorry for the 65,000 guy.

 

That would suck but how can he have legal paperwork if it is proven stolen. lol

Yeah read about that. Sucks the original owner couldn't get the van back but they did pay out his claim.

 

an we slam the cops. here we have one doing his work by the book. a salute to him.

 

Just cause title matches VIN doesn't mean VIN matches car .
I had a friend look at a camaro once, title and VIN matched a 69 IMpala : O
I wouldn't have known , but he is a #'s matching guy and knows these sort of details.

Locally in St.Louis a guy had his vette stolen off the hwy when he ran out of gas, found it locally in a junkyards warehouse 20yrs later untouched . I'll leave the name of tow company out , car was never tagged for two and tow was not reported .....

 

That's terrible,,I had an ex bro in law who would borrow his friends tow truck and pick up cars off the highways to feed his dirt track racing habit. He never got caught. Then my neighbor told me a story about how he had an old '50 Merc stolen around the mid 60's. Then 25 years later he said he got an envelope in the mail claiming where his car could be found,,which was in the bottom of a nearby pond.

 

Metro might not KNOW who stole it, but I'd lay odds it was "Rabbit" Veach---Nashville's most notorious habitual car thief!

Good for Chance! He's a nice fellow. I love stories like this.

 

It was amazing the insurance company even logged the VIN into the database if they never paid the claim. Good work by the Dick!

 

No worry, you could still buy it back then with liquor, glass marbles and fly buttons. Oh, don't forget the blankets prepped with smallpox virus.

They say history repeats itself, don't they? oh... I know I'm being mean...!

 

I had a friend from overseas buy some bikes for export.He's pretty savy.He ran the numbers through the State of Ohio.They came up clean.The owners had titles to them etc. The FEDS keep an older data base.It turned out that they were stolen in 1970! They confiscated them in the Port of Los Angeles and said that they would have to contact the insurance companies.
If you buy a car and it is proven to be stolen,then you have recourse against the person who sold it to you.You may have to sue them. Remember there are numerous ways to "get" a title to a vehicle. Years ago,it was looser. Always a good idea to keep YOUR receipts,canceled checks etc.
The guy who got his Corvette back was plain lucky.I'd say 99% of the people who have them stolen are sucking eggs later.

 

Everywhere I lived up untill here in north indy never looked at your vin tag to see if it matched your title, but they do here, before you can plate it.