During my short tenure as a college student, I knew a guy that lived a few dorms down from me. We became minor friends and I soon learned he grew up on NW 16th back when the Plaza District was just a bloodshot glimmer in a crack addict’s eye.
I went over to his former house one evening to help him grab a few boxes when, in the middle of the dining room, there was a life-size Sinclair dinosaur, a former gas station mascot that, apparently, used to sit in front of one of their stores. When asked about it, he told me of a high school prank that got out of hand.
Even though that was some twenty or so years ago, the why’s and how’s of stealing a large plaster dinosaur has always intrigued and astounded me, like a Flintstonian theft of stone age art that should continue to be explored. Every time I go past that house, part of me wonders if it’s still in there, though I seriously doubt it.
I wonder if Tulsan Bob Morton had similarly grand designs when he, allegedly, stole one of the dinosaurs—a Deinonychus, if you must know—from the front of Decopolis in Tulsa.
From KFOR:
He was arrested on complaints of malicious injury or destruction of property, petit larceny, larceny of copper after a felony conviction, two counts of malicious injury to property after a conviction, two counts of grand larceny, possession of burglary tools, and transporting stolen copper.
So far, investigators have not found the missing dinosaur statue.
Yabba-dabba-doo, that’s a lot of charges!
What I’m wondering, however, is much like the Sinclair dinosaur, where could Morton have stored an obtrusively large statue of a terrifying lizard like that? And, even more so, being the small-time copper thief that he seems to be, what did he hope of achieve with this Jurassic heist?
While I’m sure most people would immediately say money, there’s a part of me that hopes the man is an avid collector of black-market prehistoric works and has a secret storage locker that has the Deinonychus and so many more—maybe even the Sinclair dinosaur!—on display to the highest bidders in the world.
Sadly, he probably just wanted to strip it for parts and buy some mediocre-rated meth with it, especially when police soon discovered that Morton was tied to stealing $10,000 in copper plating from an air-conditioning unit at a church.
If it's possible Tulsa, just once, could you could bless us with an international super-thief of prehistoric eccentricities?
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Follow Louis on Twitter at @LouisFowler and Instagram at @louisfowler78.
