Kathryn Loundree and four others tried to scrap art from a Portland home for money
The caper was cursed from the get-go.
The thieves, who knew no one was home at the Vollum estate that night, thought the four massive bronze sculptures on the grounds could be taken with no one the wiser.
If only they had a truck.
So they stole a pickup and parked it nearby on Skyline Boulevard, but by the time they wrenched the heavy sculptures free and dragged them through the woods, the truck was gone. The police had towed it away.
That setback forced them to beg for a truck from friends. They ended up leaving two sculptures behind.
It took them almost a month of hard labor to saw the bronze artworks into pieces they thought they could safely sell. They did such a poor job they were caught at the metal recyclers, where workers recognized a bronze hand in a bucket of fragments.
The band of thieves destroyed an estimated $81,000 worth of artwork to pocket $264 in scrap metal, before getting caught a month after the Dec. 18 heist.
Last week in Multnomah County Circuit Court, prosecutors outlined the metal-for-money scheme in painstaking detail to cement their case against 37-year-old Kathryn Michelle Loundree, a security guard who was working at the estate that night.
Although she insisted she was not guilty, Deputy District Attorney Charles Mickley said Loundree was the mastermind.
Prosecutors said Loundree -- struggling to support Rodney Remmick, her unemployed boyfriend -- hatched the plan to supplement her $9.25-an-hour job. One place she patrolled was the estate of the late philanthropists Jean and Howard Vollum, a co-founder of Tektronix.
Police say Loundree, Remmick and co-defendants David Dahlman, Erin McConnell and Anthony Starns may have wanted the money for meth.
On the other hand, defense attorney James Britt argued that Loundree was being unfairly accused by her co-defendants, "a bunch of roaches." Britt said Loundree had no criminal history and was the only one with a job. He criticized her choice of boyfriend and associates.
"If my client is guilty of something, she's probably guilty of bad judgment," Britt said.
Jurors, however, didn't agree.
It took them two hours Friday evening to find her guilty of 11 charges including aggravated theft.
She'll be sentenced next month. The other members of the scheme are either in prison or awaiting sentencing. The most time any one of them has received is a little more than three years.
A dark and stormy night
Missing from the estate were two large sculptures by Northwest artists: "Mother and Child" by the late Frederic Littman and an untitled sculpture by Lee Kelly.
During the four-day trial, Dahlman, Starns and Starns' girlfriend, Rebecca Post, testified that Loundree was involved from the beginning, was present as the sculptures were cut apart in her Northeast Portland trailer and complained to her boyfriend about how they'd now have to divide the profits.
"She was upset that so many people were involved," Post testified. "It was supposed to be her and her boyfriend's gig."
It was sometime after midnight and raining the night Dahlman, McConnell and Remmick unbolted and shook the sculptures free. Stunned to find the stolen truck gone, the trio walked more than three miles to find a pay phone. They called Post and begged a ride. Starns came along.
"Instead of saying, 'This is ridiculous. I'm going home. It's cold.' They collectively decide to go back," said Keith Krafve, the sheriff's detective who investigated the case with Portland police.
Portland police Detective Mark Georgioff received a call from Metro Metals in Northeast Portland when an employee at the recycling business thought some metal brought in matched the description of one of the sculptures. Police found a 250-pound piece of "Mother and Child" in the closet of Loundree's trailer, at Northeast 64th Avenue and Killingsworth Street.
Dorie Vollum was the first in the family to go to the sheriff's office and view the dozens of cut-apart pieces of the artwork.
"It was like identifying a body," Vollum said.
Metal stolen for drugs
When they learned that the acclaimed sculptures were missing, Dorie Vollum and her sister-in-law, TC Vollum, told police some aficionado must have taken them.
"We thought it was an art theft," TC Vollum said.
". . . That it was sitting in someone's garden somewhere," Dorie Vollum said, finishing the thought.
Detectives shook their heads, knowing all too well the likely motive. Thieves scour the countryside for metal to sell to recyclers as metal prices have skyrocketed.
Nationally, thieves grab everything from copper wiring to catalytic converters in cars, but they also have taken works of art. A month after the Vollum sculptures were stolen, someone made off with a statue of Sacagawea and her baby from Fort Clatsop National Memorial Park near Astoria. It was dismembered, too.
Both "Mother and Child" and the untitled sculpture stolen from the Vollum estate are damaged beyond repair. But the extended Vollum family -- all 22 members -- are trying to retrieve as many pieces as they can.
Just last week, in the middle of the trial, Loundree's boyfriend told detectives he buried a piece of the upper arm of "Mother and Child" in a shed outside the trailer. Remmick also showed police were he tossed another piece of the sculpture -- possibly the baby -- over a bluff and into some blackberry bushes near the Willamette River.
Upon hearing the news, Dorie Vollum said she's hoping to join searchers. The family plans to melt all the pieces they find, so they can be cast into a new work of art.
