For untold years in the mouse-infested, secret crawlspace of an attic in Newark, Delaware, a man named Michael Kintner Corbett kept priceless American history locked away from the world.
That is, until the FBI came calling.
On May 24, 2017, FBI agents led by art crimes Special Agent Jake Archer executed a search warrant and found the hidden upper room of Corbett’s Newark residence and a safe tucked in the basement.
In the process, the agents broke open a 50-year mystery spanning six states, 16 museums and dozens of historic firearms whose provenance spans the entire history of America – a rash of museum burglaries Archer calls “one of the largest of its kind that we’re aware of.”
In the end, 73-year-old Corbett would serve just a single day in prison.
But after a long and cheerful repatriation ceremony at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution on Monday, March 13 – broken often by laughter and the sound of curators’ ill-contained relief – those historic firearms are finally going home and back into the public trust.
n 1971, a multi-museum spree in Connecticut led to the loss of a painfully rare Colt Whitneyville Walker revolver: the holy grail of gun collectors everywhere, inscribed into the 19th-century history of Connecticut and Texas as the world’s first six-shooter. The guns were made specially by Samuel Colt for legendary Texas Ranger Samuel Walker; another gun from of the same make fetched $1.8 million at auction back in 2018.
The U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was disabused of a pair of Luger pistols once granted as a gift to America’s last five-star general, Omar Bradley, after being seized on the World War II battlefield in Tunisia.
The cold case of those guns went hot in 2009, when Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania, detectives Andrew Rathfon and Brendan Dougherty caught an unusual tip.
“An elderly gentleman came into our station, and he thought he had seen a gun for sale at an antique gun show," Rathfon said. The man believed the gun had been stolen, long ago, from the Valley Forge Historical Society.
That tip wasn’t true, it turned out.
But it was the spark that led Rathfon and Dougherty to begin a cold-case investigation that would last 14 years.
Pennsylvania’s Hershey Story museum – yes, the one with all the chocolate – is bringing home a volcanic pistol from a disastrous Civil War skirmish that saw Oregon Sen. Everett Baker fall in battle, the only sitting U.S. senator ever to do so.
At least one of the recovered guns, a Colt Whitneyville Walker stolen from Connecticut, might be worth as much as a million dollars.
That is, until the FBI came calling.
On May 24, 2017, FBI agents led by art crimes Special Agent Jake Archer executed a search warrant and found the hidden upper room of Corbett’s Newark residence and a safe tucked in the basement.
In the process, the agents broke open a 50-year mystery spanning six states, 16 museums and dozens of historic firearms whose provenance spans the entire history of America – a rash of museum burglaries Archer calls “one of the largest of its kind that we’re aware of.”
In the end, 73-year-old Corbett would serve just a single day in prison.
But after a long and cheerful repatriation ceremony at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution on Monday, March 13 – broken often by laughter and the sound of curators’ ill-contained relief – those historic firearms are finally going home and back into the public trust.
n 1971, a multi-museum spree in Connecticut led to the loss of a painfully rare Colt Whitneyville Walker revolver: the holy grail of gun collectors everywhere, inscribed into the 19th-century history of Connecticut and Texas as the world’s first six-shooter. The guns were made specially by Samuel Colt for legendary Texas Ranger Samuel Walker; another gun from of the same make fetched $1.8 million at auction back in 2018.
The U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was disabused of a pair of Luger pistols once granted as a gift to America’s last five-star general, Omar Bradley, after being seized on the World War II battlefield in Tunisia.
The cold case of those guns went hot in 2009, when Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania, detectives Andrew Rathfon and Brendan Dougherty caught an unusual tip.
“An elderly gentleman came into our station, and he thought he had seen a gun for sale at an antique gun show," Rathfon said. The man believed the gun had been stolen, long ago, from the Valley Forge Historical Society.
That tip wasn’t true, it turned out.
But it was the spark that led Rathfon and Dougherty to begin a cold-case investigation that would last 14 years.
Pennsylvania’s Hershey Story museum – yes, the one with all the chocolate – is bringing home a volcanic pistol from a disastrous Civil War skirmish that saw Oregon Sen. Everett Baker fall in battle, the only sitting U.S. senator ever to do so.
At least one of the recovered guns, a Colt Whitneyville Walker stolen from Connecticut, might be worth as much as a million dollars.
Delaware attic held secret to museum burglary spree 50 years ago – and a $1 million gun
After spree of museum burglaries 50 years ago, historic firearms have been returned to 16 museums all over the Eastern U.S. Who stole them?
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