INDEPENDENCE, Mo. – Police reported that a third suspect, Randy Perez Jr., has been arrested and charged with felony theft in connection with the ‘Woman of the West’ statue theft from the National Frontier Trails Museum.
Perez Jr. joins Jeremy Ratliff and Kelli Summers as the accused parties responsible for taking the statue and trying to sell it to a scrap yard. Investigators believe that the trio stole the statue and hammered it into pieces.
Authorities believe they caught both Perez Jr. and Ratliff on surveillance footage at the 12th Street Recycling in Kansas City, Mo. A manager at the center refused a large trash bin full of the statue scraps after she identified a part that looked like a hand. A Kansas City ordinance prohibits scrap yards from buying sculptures or works of art.
Perez Jr.’s bond has been set as a $75,000 cash only bond.