A bit of unbelievable news today

[GerColctor]

It is very interesting that the ATF had custody of these firearms. The ATF doesn't investigate murders, so it makes me wonder why they were in their evidence room. Normally they would be held for evidence at trial by the agency or department that investigated the murder. If they were sent to the ATF lab for some sort of testing they would have, upon completion been returned to that department.

If the case was ajudicated about 20 years ago, why were they not returned to the rightful owner (hayhugh), unless they were being held until the killer's many appeals were exhausted. Obviously someone in AFT did an inventory of the evidence room and realized they still had the guns and tracked down hayhugh's family.

Based upon hayhugh's explanation as to who originally stole his guns, just shows the unintentional consequences of a simple burglary conducted by a couple of teenager "friends" who knew he had these firearms in his house and later must have sold them "on the street", until they ended up in the killers hands. heyhugh didn't state the burglars were the shooters. What are the chances that these two pistols staying together all of the years they were on the street?

You would be surprised how many stolen firearms, when recovered, often in far away places, are returned to their rightful owner many years later by law enforcement agencies. Some never get returned, because the owners, who often inherit them from family, forgot to record the serial numbers, resulting in the info not getting into the police report and therefor never submitted to NCIC.

In this case hayhugh must have written down not only the serial number, but the letter suffix for both guns and the years they were made. If you run the just numbers for a P 08 or P 38 w/o the letter suffix, you normally get 4-6 hits or more reporting "that gun" being stolen all over the US over many years. Most owners think only to record the actual numbers and they often unaware of the importance of the suffix or just can't read it. Police officers taking the complaint are unfamiliar with the German military system of numbering guns, so they don't realize the value of the suffix. All 3 pieces of info are needed to be in the police report, serial number, letter suffice and year, if you have any hope of ever seeing your stolen Luger, P-38 or 98k again.

This really is a great story with a happy (delayed) ending. Congrats hayhugh.

Joe