Thieves Steal and Destroy Solid Silver Statue of Abraham Lincoln Created by Mount Rushmore Sculptor Gutzon Borglum
Police have arrested and charged three suspects in connection with the incident, which took place at at the Houmas House Estate and Gardens in Louisiana
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Police in Louisiana have arrested three suspects in connection with the theft and destruction of a statue depicting Abraham Lincoln, which was created by Gutzon Borglum, the American sculptor who designed Mount Rushmore.
The incident took place at the Houmas House Estate and Gardens, a historic plantation located in Darrow, a small town between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Located on a curve of the Mississippi River, the site first attracted European settlers in the early 1700s; construction on the property’s large Greek Revival-style mansion started in 1829. Today, the 38-acre site is a tourist destination, offering tours, a restaurant and cottages for overnight guests. It has also served as a filming location for various movies and TV shows.
Kevin Kelly, the site’s owner, noticed the antique, solid silver statue of the nation’s 16th president was missing on September 7, reports the Times-Picayune’s Doug MacCash. Someone had apparently smashed a window in the middle of the night to nab the foot-tall artwork, which depicted Lincoln sitting on a bench with a stovepipe hat near his outstretched hand.
The 64-pound statue was worth an estimated $166,000 as a historic work of art, per the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office. Its value in silver alone was around $46,000, per the Times-Picayune.
Kelly contacted local authorities, who alerted other nearby departments to be on the lookout for the stolen statue. Not long after, pieces of the statue began turning up at pawn shops and precious metal exchanges in suburban New Orleans. One chunk ended up at Southern Coins & Precious Metals in Metairie, where staffers paid $3,330 for it before ultimately contacting the police.
“We want to see stolen items returned to the owners,” says Beth Higgins, the shop’s manager, to the Times-Picayune. “That’s not the game we want to play.”
Investigators with the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office arrested three suspects, they announced in a September 11 Facebook post: 28-year-old Steve Coronado, 20-year-old Alma Fontenot and 49-year-old Bruce Shelvin. The suspects have been charged with simple burglary and felony theft over $25,000.
Authorities recovered as many pieces of the statue as they could—eight in total—but the artwork is beyond repair. The statue’s destruction was a major blow to Kelly, who wrote in a post on the Houmas’ Facebook page that it was “one of the most cherished pieces of the collection.”
“Most guests seemed to think it was their favorite item on the tour,” he added.
Kelly found the likeness at a garage sale in New Orleans, paying $1,200 for the piece—which he describes to the Times-Picayune as a “great steal.” He suspects Lincoln might have passed the Houmas while traveling south on the Mississippi River on a flatboat in 1828 and 1831.
Per the Houmas’ Facebook page, the sculpture “was cast from Borglum’s original plaster [maquette] by the Maiden Foundry in 1990 for the Borglum Historical Foundation.” A silver cast from the same series sold at Heritage Auctions for $23,750 in 2016. According to the listing, Borglum created a life-size version of the statue in 1911, which was cast in bronze and currently stands outside of the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey.
Looking ahead, Kelly plans to display the eight pieces of the now-destroyed statue in some way. “I’m talking to an artist who creates a metal framework where the pieces I have can be placed … and be [an] abstract piece of art, showing what it was,” he tells the Louisiana Radio Network’s Jeff Palermo. In the meantime, Kelly has upped security at the Houmas.
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