On the 13th we reported that a truck and trailer and a radical El Camino had been ripped off from Spectre Performance. We just got word that the stuff has been found! Here’s the email text from Mike Morrow, VP of Marketing at Spectre.
“Thanks to the efforts of the Ontario Police Department, the Riverside CHP and the Apple Valley Police Department we were able to recover both the Truck and Trailer and the El Camino.
The Truck and Trailer were recovered last Sunday by the Riverside CHP, abandoned near an industrial area in Riverside, California….. about 20 minutes from our warehouse. At the time, the El Camino was still missing along with several items in the trailer. With the pending investigation ongoing, we were asked to keep the recovery low key until the Ontario PD investigators could follow up on all leads.
On Wednesday, Ontario PD was done processing evidence from the truck and we we’re allowed to pick up the truck and trailer from the towing company (a little worse for wear….. all the locks and latches broken, one storage door tweaked out of shape and the dash torn apart….. but overall not as bad as expected). Later in the day a somewhat “enthusiastic” (quote: “we love it when we actually find stuff and get to nail someone”) group of detectives from the Ontario Police Department were able to recover some of the missing property (including our 15 x 60 canopy with the Spectre name and logo all over it….. not sure why they kept that!)……… although arrests were made and the investigation continued, we still had no information on the El Camino.
Thursday brought continued investigation and conversations with Ontario PD Detectives, when out of the blue we got a call from the Apple Valley PD, who said they found the El Camino in the high desert community of Apple Valley abandoned behind a new shopping center. Fearing the worst we picked up the car Thursday afternoon and were surprised to find that other than a missing mirror and a few scratches here and there it was fully intact and drivable.
All of us at Spectre Performance would like to express our extreme gratitude for the overwhelming support and attention given to the incident. There is no doubt that without everyone’s help in getting the word out and broadcasting this to the press and automotive community at large that the results to date would have been much different. It just goes to prove that with the a little luck and a whole lot of help, the bad guys don’t always win. We’ll continue to post updates on our website regarding the results of the ongoing investigation.”
