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LEGO San Franciso Street Scenes Stolen From Truck
February 10, 2010
FREMONT, CA -- Fremont police asked for the public’s help Wednesday in locating
several elaborate Lego scenes of San Francisco landmarks that were stolen out of
a locked truck parked in the owner’s driveway last week.
The highly detailed scenes, including LEGO renditions of Ghirardelli Square, the
Palace of Fine Arts and the Hyde Street Pier, were reported stolen Feb. 3. The
owner, 49-year-old Mark Benz, designed them all himself and is a founding member
of the Bay Area Lego Users Group, a club of LEGO enthusiasts.
The scenes’ value is estimated at $6,000. However, that figure doesn’t begin to
factor in the months and years of effort Benz devoted to their creation, said
his wife, Janet.
The couple brought the scenes home the previous evening from the Museum of
American Heritage in Palo Alto, where they spent more than a month in the
venue’s popular Living LEGO-cy display.
“The entire back camper shell was full and we had pieces strapped to the
backseat of the truck,” Janet Benz said. The next morning, her husband came
outside and discovered somebody “punched the locks on the car and took all of
it.”
The truck was parked in the driveway of Benz’s home in the 600 block of Geyser
Court. Police do not know whether the thief - or thieves - knew what was inside
the truck, Detective Bill Veteran said.
Benz said the truck has tinted windows, and the burglary occurred between 7:30
p.m. and 7:30 a.m. when it was dark outside.
Mark Benz devotes months to each of his creations, his wife said. She described
the entire diorama as “a 10-year evolutionary process.”
His most recent project, a replica of the Conservatory of Flowers in San
Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, was particularly challenging because of the
building is both transparent and curved.
Each miniature landmark is an original creation, Janet Benz said. Her husband
begins with a picture of the structure, then creates a LEGO version through
trial and error. The scenes include hundreds of custom pieces he special-ordered
from LEGO.
Specialty pieces cost a few dollars each, and Janet Benz estimated that hundreds
of thousands of traditional and specialty Lego pieces were stolen.
Police have advised the Benz family to keep an eye on eBay and Craigslist in
case the stolen LEGO appear for sale.
However, Janet Benz is not optimistic.
“They can take it apart and sell it and probably make as much money,” she said.
“If they dismantle it, it becomes difficult to prove that it’s ours.”
The stolen scenes represent the majority of Mark Benz’s LEGO accomplishments,
his wife said.
“We still have the Bay Bridge,” she said, as well as an elaborate replica of
Mission San Jose her husband and son built for a fourth-grade project, using
1,800 LEGO pieces.
Police said they have no leads and are asking for the public’s help in locating
the distinctive LEGO structures. Anyone with information should call Fremont
police at (510) 790-6800.
KTVU.com
Other links.
MercuryNews.com
KGO-TV
On a side note there was crime over in Europe in United Kingdom.
BBC News
-end of report-
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