Following a tip from his property manager, Fairfax County police found in a Herndon man’s apartment a statue stolen from a Reston arts festival, amidst a cache of other allegedly stolen items, including power tools, camping equipment, musical instruments and golf clubs.
The statue of a bikini-clad woman, titled "Legs Crossed" and worth an estimated $38,000, was taken from the Northern Virginia Arts Festival at Reston Town Center on Sunday, May 30. Witnesses told police they saw a man carrying the statue through the crowd, but assumed he had bought the sculpture.
A massive hunt ensued, with Fairfax County police searching through the afternoon crowd at the festival while the police helicopter watched for the suspect from above.
But the search for the pilfered statue was fruitless and police were left with no leads in the case, said Bud Walker, a Fairfax County Police public information officer.
Then, last Thursday, police served a search warrant at the home of Michael Star, 45, to find roughly 30 items he had allegedly stolen from in and around the Archstone Apartments complex on Rolling Fork Circle Drive in Herndon.
Police found the stolen statue inside Star’s apartment, along with a long list of other goods he had allegedly stolen from his neighbors' apartments and cars, including a Yamaha keyboard, a circular saw, a cordless drill, a car battery, a Palm Pilot, a red Coleman lantern and a red golf bag filled with Callaway golf clubs.
Investigators were led to the apartment by Star’s property manager, who had noticed the items while checking on his apartment earlier in the week after he had been arrested on other charges.
Star had been arrested on May 30, for an incident two days earlier, for disorderly conduct and assault and battery. And on Wednesday, he was arrested again for huffing what police believe was paint and for allegedly concealing or altering the price of merchandise last November.
Star was charged with grand larceny and is being held without bail at the Fairfax Adult Detention Center.
Walker said additional charges are expected to be filed in the case.
MARC SIJAN, the sculpture’s artist, said he is thankful his work had been recovered, but had been told by police that is was damaged beyond repair. It was found covered in a lotion-type substance and had at least one hole in its body, he said.
"Once you deface that surface, there’s not much you can do," Sijan said, in a telephone interview from his Wisconsin art studio. "It was a sensitive painting on a 3-D canvas."
Sijan said "Legs Crossed" took him 6 months of meticulous painting and sculpture, often using a magnifying class to add realistic details, such as fingerprints, moles and veins.
He said he was as surprised that his statue had been recovered as he had surprised it was stolen in the first place.
"I picture myself in Louvre, and someone picks up a Van Gogh and starts walking off with it," he said. "Everybody watching stands there in awe, thinking ‘Huh. That guys taking a Van Gogh. He must work here or something.’"