[CPProt.net] $5, 000 reward offered to track down thieves who stole Highwaymen art / Eleven paintings were stolen from two Jetson stores on the Treasure Coast last week

[MSN CPPnet]

$5,000 reward offered to track down thieves who stole Highwaymen art
Eleven paintings were stolen from two Jetson stores on the Treasure Coast
last week.

By Tyler Treadway 
staff writer
June 29, 2005

FORT PIERCE - Jetson TV & Appliance Centers are offering a $5,000 reward for
information leading to the arrest and conviction of thieves who stole 11 or
more Highwaymen paintings and about $10,000 from two stores. 

Also, Treasure Coast Crime Stoppers will pay a reward up to $1,000 in the
case. 

Chief Deputy Garry Wilson of the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office said 10
paintings and about $1,500 in cash and checks were stolen in two break-ins -
one late Wednesday or early Thursday, the other late Friday or early
Saturday - at the Jetson store at 4145 S. U.S. 1 south of Fort Pierce. 

The Vero Beach Police Department reports that thieves entered the Jetson
store at 1231 20th St. some time between 5:30 p.m. Sunday and 6:14 a.m.
Monday and stole one Highwaymen painting and cash and checks worth about
$9,200. 

St. Lucie County deputies responded to an alarm at the Jetson store at 10530
S. U.S. 1 in Port St. Lucie shortly after midnight Monday and found that
burglars had cut a hole in the roof and entered the building. Wilson said
nothing was reported missing at the Port St. Lucie store. 

"But employees are still doing inventories at all the stores to determine
what was taken," Wilson said. 

Thieves apparently tried to break into the Jetson's in Okeechobee; over the
weekend, someone unsuccessfully tried to throw a rock through the front
window of the store. 

Kathleen Piowaty Fredrick, executive director of the A.E. "Bean" Backus
Gallery & Museum in Fort Pierce, said the collection of Highwaymen paintings
owned by John Jetson, owner of the appliance store chain, "is known to be of
high quality. At least the thieves had good taste." 

Trey Thofner, Jetson's son and executive vice president, declined to talk
about the thefts but said his father was proud of his art collection, which
has included as many as 114 Highwaymen paintings. 

"He liked them before they were cool," Thofner said of the paintings by a
group of 26 black artists from Fort Pierce and Vero Beach who, beginning in
the mid- to late 1950s, painted vivid Florida scenes and peddled them from
the trunks of their cars, which earned them their nickname. 

"He liked the way they depicted the Treasure Coast, the Indian River
(Lagoon) and the scenery here," Thofner said. "He had no idea the paintings
were ever going to be this popular. That's why this (thievery) is such a
shame. It's personal." 

Jetson started collecting art by the Highwaymen soon after he moved to Fort
Pierce from Fort Lauderdale and opened his first store in 1974, Thofner
said, sometimes trading artwork for appliances. 

"One of the artists would come to him and need a washer and dryer or a
refrigerator," Thofner recalled, "and he'd either have a painting with him
or my father would have him do a painting - he'd have a painting done on
commission." 

James Gibson, a member of the Highwaymen from Fort Pierce who still paints,
once did two paintings for Jetson - one for his mother, the other for an
aunt - based on a photo of a royal poinciana tree in Jetson's great-aunt's
front yard. 

Thofner remembers an incident in the 1970s when his father, wearing a
brand-new leisure suit, accepted a painting in exchange for an appliance. 

"The paint was still wet," Thofner said. "It got on that suit, and my father
could never get it out." 

Wilson said any information on the thefts should be reported to the
Sheriff's Office Criminal Investigations Division at (772) 462-3230. 

Treasure Coast Crime Stoppers can be reached at 1 (800) 273-TIPS (8477).