The case of a stolen Mercedes G Wagon from the downtown Nantucket Stop & Shop parking lot on Sunday had many on the island captivated for nearly 48 hours.
How the vehicle was taken, and its ultimate return to the owner on Tuesday, ended up being one of those "only on Nantucket" stories that was more comical than sinister.
The owners of the 1991 Mercedes G Wagon reported it stolen from the downtown Stop & Shop just after 5 p.m. on Sunday. They told police that they had not left the keys inside the vehicle, and no one else was authorized to use it.
The family asked the Current to share a photo of the vehicle, and the fact that it had been reported stolen. The post set off a deluge of messages along the lines of: "Who steals a car on Nantucket? Where are they going to go?"
Good questions. And as Monday came and went without any sign of the missing Mercedes, the mystery deepened, and more theories continued to pour in: had it been hotwired and moved to a chop shop? Was it used for a joy ride and ditched in some remote corner of the island?
Then we got another message: "Hey, case solved on the missing wagon. Let me know if you want the whole story."
It was island resident Alex Miccio who told the Current how he had driven his own 1985 Mercedes G-Wagon downtown on Sunday. He was catching a Hy-Line Cruises ferry, so he parked in the downtown Stop & Shop lot and gave his keys to an elderly family friend who was arriving and getting off the boat for a visit. This friend found the other Mercedes G Wagon parked in the lot (not Miccio's), and somehow his key worked in the wrong car. His friend drove it to their home and parked it in a driveway off the road, not knowing it belonged to someone else.
"So then I saw the story on the Current, and another friend called and said your G Wagon is still in the Stop & Shop parking lot," Miccio said. "And it occurred to me, shit...I called them and asked for the license plate. They're on their way to the police station now.
"The funny thing was, when I saw the story on Monday, I said, 'Geez, good thing I didn't leave the keys in the car! '"
Nantucket Police Department Lt. Angus MacVicar confirmed the vehicle had been returned, and no criminal charges would be filed.
"The vehicle was taken by mistake and has now been returned to the rightful owner," MacVicar said. "There will be no criminal charges filed against those involved. This is not the first time a vehicle has been taken by mistake. If you could include in your coverage of this story this important PSA: If you are sent to retrieve a vehicle, please double-check you have the correct vehicle by verifying the registration plates BEFORE you drive away with the vehicle."
While actual stolen car cases on Nantucket are exceedingly rare - the official statistics were not immediately available on Tuesday - vehicles do go missing more often than people realize.
MacVicar said the most common scenario is like the one that played out with the Mercedes G-Wagon. There are so many similar vehicles on Nantucket these days that drivers often mistake another car for their own.
"There are so many like vehicles, and so many people leave their keys in the vehicle that we often find it's a case of mistaken identity if you will," MacVicar said. "That's the most common, and it happens at the airport, or at one of the Stop & Shops - especially at the downtown Stop & Shop. We're very aware of that: there's so many red Jeeps with the keys under the mat."
Another scenario in which vehicles go missing on Nantucket is when people find an unlocked car with the keys inside and decide to take it for a joyride before abandoning it. While that has become less common in recent years, MacVicar said, it's always a possibility when a vehicle goes missing.
"That's often a case of a one-off scenario, or the case of a couple of juveniles who take this on as an extracurricular activity, doing it multiple times until we ultimately catch them," MacVicar said. "Normally, the way these things would go, the joy ride vehicles end up at a remote area, a beach, Surfside, or behind Bartlett's Farm. The ones used for just getting home are in the neighborhood where the person needed to go."
Over the past 20-plus years with the Nantucket Police Department, there was only one case MacVicar could recall in which police officers didn't quickly recover the missing vehicle.
"The only vehicle in my tenure at NPD that I know of that was stolen, if you will, long enough for the insurance to pay off the owner of the vehicle, was a Jeep that was ultimately located months later by a hunter on the back side of Altar Rock deep in the bushes. That was many years ago. It was unbelievable we couldn’t find it. But once the foliage dropped and the hunters got out, there it was."
Anyone stealing a vehicle would indeed find it difficult to get away with the crime. MacVicar confirmed that the Steamship Authority is alerted to the make, model, and license plate of any vehicle reported missing.
"We typically always make that phone call to the Steamship," he said.