Posted by parhad (204.120.48.3) on December 15, 2001 at 22:32:11:
Got a call from Narsai tonite who got a message last night from an administrator at Stanislaus State Univeristy in Turlock to say the stolen head of Ashurbanipal has been found. He didn't say much else, just that it's in good shape and the cops are dusting it for prints. Damn...there goes an easy fifty grand...the insurance value for replacing it...sure could have used it now!
But there is a providence...this whole thing was weird from the start. When people steal something it's usually because they seek to profit somehow, unless the people are Assyrians in which case all bets are off...no telling what motivated them.
I thought from the start that it had to be an inside job. Someone had to have access to the administration building at night. As far as I know there was no evidence of breaking and entering. I set the piece in concrete on its granite pedestal and I know you couldn't just walk in and lift it off. It weighs a lot, I know...I had to carry it from the truck. The administration building is smack in the center of campus...no easy access to a road. There are security guards all over the place and the lobby of the administration building is probably lit all night, what with janitors and all.
To break into the building would be hard enough...to spend the time it would take to cut through the thick bronze rod attaching the sculpture to the pedestal would be very noisy and take time. I wanted to go there and see if I could figure out how the theives cut the sculpture away...there were no bolts visible to undo and even using a crowbar would have been noisy and attracted attention. They couldn't have done it during the daytime because there are scads of students and such walking through the place. And again, to have broken into the building would be a lot of noisy trouble to go through. An inside job would mean that at least someone had access to the means for entering the building without drawing too much attention. If I were the cops I'd interview any Assyrians working for the college. Of course it is just possible that a non Assyrian who just loves Assyrian art might have done it.
That raises the question of what the person intended to do with the piece. Someone who loves Art isn't usually the kind of person to risk a prison sentence...after all at fifty grand this becomes a serious crime, especially in these Republican days. A lover of Art would just spend as much time as he or she needed to view the piece...doesan't cost anything after all.
If someone stole the piece to just do away with it, they wouldn't have waited this long...the longer you keep the evidence around the greater the risk of detection...if the point was just to remove the piece and disappear it, it would have been disposed of the same day or night it was stolen. It's a pretty distinctive piece, not the kind you could display to your friends in Turlock before someone put things together and figured out how and where you'd all of a sudden come up with the piece.
If you can't display it safely...unless you remove it quickly from the area,,,and you haven't removed it so that you were willing to run the risk...didn't particuloarly care if you got the piece to Kansas or Cuba right away...and if you couldn't very well pawn it because it is so distinctive and limited...and since it isn't worth much just as raw bronze...what exactly could be the motive???
If the desire was to show me that I was vulnerable, or my work was....or that someone resented the easy attention I get for myself and my work and would get rid of the work that brings me attention or "fame"...keeping it in Turlock, however it was found...only increased the risk of detection...better to have thrown it into an irrigation canal the same night it was stolen.
To keep it means the person values it, yet what good can ever come from owning it...unless, as I said, the point was to deprive me of the recognition someone resented my getting...whatever that was worth. The cops are going to be tight lipped for as long as it takes them to conduct their investigation...things might get out that would tip off any guilty parties. I am curious to find out who did it...hear the reasons and also ask who they knew, who they are related to...what club etc.
Something is not quite right here. It isn't a "sensible" crime...one in which simple greed or a desire to benefit monetarilly is evident. Something else drove the perpetrators here...and it would seem to back up my claim that there has been, and is still, a conspiracy or at the least a many pronged attack on my credibility and work. To steal the piece right from under the noses of the university is a way of letting me know that I can be "got" to.
What could be the motive otherwise...where is the incentive, where is the "pay off". A crime has to have a motive...what could it have been in this case.
I am as sorry as hell that the piece was stolen, and only as sorry as propriety will allow me addmitting that it was found. But now that it has been, I am eager to know who did it, if that can ever be determined...and I think it can. This was not the work of a mastermind...but whoever it was had access to the building...that's for sure, I think.
I have a guardian angel, maybe it's Helen after all, watching over me...so long as I remain true. While I would certasinly have liked to have profited from the insurance company, I'm convinced that the discovery of the piece will eventually turn out to be an even more providential thing than any insurance money I might have gotten for the short haul.
Something very fishy is behind all this...something I suspect will in the end help out the entire case...any bets??