It was certainly no petty theft when the guitars of legendary rock band Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were stolen recently from a soundstage. The instruments were taken last Thursday (April 12, 2012), reports The Associated Press, and amounted to an estimated $100,000 between them; the models stolen were Petty's blond 1967 maple 12-string Rickenbacker and his Gibson SgtvJunior, Mike Campbell's blue Dusenberg, Ron Blair's Fender Broadcaster and Scott Thurston's 1967 Epiphone Sheridan.
However, in good news for the middle-aged rockers, police have now recovered the items and arrested a man, 51 year-old Daryl Emmette Washington of Los Angeles. A break in the case came, said Police Chief Don Pedersen, when Washington - evidently not really aware of the goods he'd just managed to thieve - pawned one of the instruments to a shop for just $250. The severity of the incident had been such that the band had offered some $7,500 for mere information on the whereabouts of the guitars, stolen from the group's rehearsal space at The Culver Studios in Los Angeles. A huge place, with several different stages to rehearse on, it's highly feasible that someone could simply come in and take a load of guitars without anyone realising.