December truck theft still a mystery

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

GAYLORD -- Although most of the vehicles stolen from a car dealership here last December have been found, authorities say many of the questions surrounding the crime are still unanswered.

Four Fords worth a total of $120,000 were stolen from the sales lot at Wolf Motors in Gaylord on Thanksgiving weekend when some lock boxes were broken into and the vehicles' keys were stolen.

Three of the four stolen vehicles have been recovered and at least one arrest has been made, but the recoveries have yielded few if any clues about the actual theft.

"Any information that anyone can give about a suspect would be greatly appreciated," said Gaylord Police Chief Dale Roiger.

The theft was the largest case of its type in the city of Gaylord. It followed closely a series of vehicle thefts that happened in Owatonna around Halloween.

Three of the four missing vehicles have been recovered in places south of Minnesota. The first recovery happened in Iowa in early December. A second vehicle was found near Miami in late February and the third was found in Florida a few weeks ago.

Investigators in Iowa and Florida have checked two Ford F-350 pickup trucks for fingerprints, but neither of those searches turned up any evidence. Police in Florida arrested a man after he tried to register one of the trucks but the investigation found that he probably wasn't a part of the thefts.

Dick Uecker, sales manager at Wolf Motors in Gaylord, said the thefts hurt business because they forced the dealership to remove the lockboxes from all of its vehicles, making test drives tougher because of the extra time it takes to get a key.

"It would've been nice if it wouldn't have happened to us," Uecker said.

Sibley County Attorney David Schauer said extradition of any suspects to Minnesota would probably depend upon what facts investigators can come up with.

"If they can show that someone was involved with the thefts, then we would want to charge them in Sibley County," he said.

The recoveries happened slowly, starting in the days after the thefts supposedly took place when one of the vehicles, a white Ford F-350 pickup truck, was found near Osceola, Iowa, when a farmer called Clay County authorities to report the truck was sitting on a flatbed trailer in his field. Osceola is 45 miles south of Des Moines.

A second vehicle, a green Ford Excursion SUV, was found abandoned in Hialeah, Fla., a city 10 miles northwest of Miami, on Feb. 28. after the arrested man tried to get a Florida registration for the SUV.

The most recent recovery was a blue F-350 found on a state highway just south of the Ocala National Forest in Lake County, Fla., which is north of Orlando.

Roiger said the truck's keys were found inside its cab. Roiger said he's hasn't received any more information from Lake County since the truck was discovered.

He said Hialeah police made an arrest after they learned that the truck was reported stolen from Gaylord. A national database of vehicle identification numbers revealed that the F-350 was one of the trucks missing from Wolf Motors, he said.

But investigators realized the man was not involved with the thefts of the trucks and SUVs after they did a background investigation on him. The investigation also revealed that the man bought the truck from an unidentified private party, Roiger said.

Roiger said Sibley County authorities decided not to extradite Hernandez to Minnesota because the information about him did not prove he was linked to the thefts; it just proved he received stolen property.

With the exception of the first pickup truck, all of the recovered vehicles have been turned over to Wolf Motors' insurance company and will likely be sold at an auction to recover part of the settlement that followed the thefts.