Ornament thieves plague posh neighborhood
Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 11:49 am
NAPLES, Fla. (Court TV) — Lock your gates and bolt down your life-sized bronze alligators.
That's what police are telling residents of the exclusive Port Royal neighborhood, where a bandit has been prowling the posh locale and lifting thousand-dollar lawn ornaments.
The case is still under investigation, according to Naples police.
The thief or thieves have lugged away eight statues, including a bronze alligator and a ballerina, since mid-July. The suspects went on a September stealing spree, swiping four statues in an 11-day span, police said. Three of them reportedly came from the same $8.2 million estate belonging to Wanda Polisseni.
In August, the lawn-ornament bandit hit the Polisseni mansion for a $4,800 bronze girl on a swing. Then in September, someone snagged $3,500 worth of bronze toucans from the front-yard sculpture garden. The next day, the $3,000 statue of children climbing a ladder was gone.
Experts are hesitant to call the bandit an art thief, since the pieces in question are mass-produced and have little value on the black market as art. For example, a $20,000 bronze sculpture may have $1,000 worth of metal in it.
Still, it's a more valuable than a garden-variety pink flamingo ornament.
That's what police are telling residents of the exclusive Port Royal neighborhood, where a bandit has been prowling the posh locale and lifting thousand-dollar lawn ornaments.
The case is still under investigation, according to Naples police.
The thief or thieves have lugged away eight statues, including a bronze alligator and a ballerina, since mid-July. The suspects went on a September stealing spree, swiping four statues in an 11-day span, police said. Three of them reportedly came from the same $8.2 million estate belonging to Wanda Polisseni.
In August, the lawn-ornament bandit hit the Polisseni mansion for a $4,800 bronze girl on a swing. Then in September, someone snagged $3,500 worth of bronze toucans from the front-yard sculpture garden. The next day, the $3,000 statue of children climbing a ladder was gone.
Experts are hesitant to call the bandit an art thief, since the pieces in question are mass-produced and have little value on the black market as art. For example, a $20,000 bronze sculpture may have $1,000 worth of metal in it.
Still, it's a more valuable than a garden-variety pink flamingo ornament.