EUREKA SPRINGS : Baby Jesus taken from park found
Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Carroll County News/MIKE ELLIS Eureka Springs police arrested the man who stole the baby Jesus from the creche at Basin Park. Police said they found the statue covered with graffiti that included Nazi symbols and racial epithets.
Eureka Springs police have recovered the baby Jesus stolen from a Basin Park Nativity scene, but the figure - covered in graffiti that includes a Nazi swastika and racial slurs - is too damaged to go back on display.
Christopher Robin Bell, 19, of Green Forest is charged with misdemeanor theft and is in the Carroll County jail on $525 bond.
Assistant Police Chief Morris Pate said Bell told officers that in late November, he stole the fiberglass figure, valued at $375, but that he did not damage it. Like others caught before him, Bell told police he felt taking the small statue was a game, Pate said Tuesday.
Bell had been overheard bragging about the theft, Pate said, and that information was given to police. Bell was arrested Friday, and the statue was recovered from an abandoned house on U.S. 62B near downtown.
Police gave baby Jesus back to the Eureka Springs chapter of Beta Sigma Phi sorority, which has sponsored the Nativity display since 1950. However, they returned it to police because of the extensive damage and graffiti.
Someone used black marker to scrawl racial epithets, satanic symbols and other obscene references on the body. The eyes are blacked out and the face has an Adolph Hitler-style mustache drawn on it.
Pieces of the fiberglass statue also were broken off.
"It's rude and uncalled for," Pate said.
The statue has been stolen three times in the past four years, and police have found the culprits every time, Pate said.
"It's no different than stealing a DVD player from Wal-Mart," Pate said. "Everybody tries to make it like it's no big deal. It is for those that pay for it."
This is not the same prank that has been carried out in years past, said Virginia Voiers.
Voiers was 70 when she stole baby Jesus in 2005. She admitted being talked into the stunt by her granddaughter, who had commented that no one had taken it that year. At the time, the Eureka Springs resident told police she wanted to show her husband a blue-eyed Jewish baby. Police caught her shortly after taking the statue, which she said she wanted to return because that is how a prank works.
When the statue was stolen this year, Voiers joked about it and offered her support to the culprit. That changed when she learned what had been done.
"I'm really sorry the way this turned out, because it's lost the humor, it's lost the fun," Voiers said. "It's just mean."
According to The Associated Press, baby Jesus is targeted by thieves across the country. Statues are stolen so often from mangers that GPS tracking devices increasingly are being mounted to them to aid in recovery.
New York-based BrickHouse Security offers some nonprofit religious groups a free month's use of security cameras and LightningGPS products to watch over the scene, according to the report.
In addition to the Nativity, Beta Sigma Phi also raised money for a camera to watch the creche. The group also chained the figure to a concrete block. That wasn't enough this year to deter the thief.
Whether more measures will be in place next year, or even if there is a next year for the Nativity, remains undecided, said Shirley Bird, extension officer for the sorority.
Bird said the group is leaving the matter to police and focusing on Christmas. The group's comment, she said, "is no comment."
"We just don't know what we're going to do," she said. "We've got a whole year to decide what we're going to do."
To contact this reporter:
awallworth@arkansasonline.com
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
