By Andy Ostmeyer
aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com
BUTLER, Mo. — A Joplin man and woman have been charged with stealing a picture of George Washington that hung outside the prosecutor’s office in the Bates County Courthouse in Butler.
Simon M. Williams, 26, and Jennifer M. Benitez, 21, are each charged with Class C felony stealing and on Friday night remained in the Bates County Jail in lieu of $15,000 bond each.
“He wanted to show his friends in Joplin what he got from the Bates County Courthouse,” Vicki Conley, a paralegal and spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said in a phone interview Friday.
Judy Schwander said she was arriving to work at the Bates County News-Xpress when she said she observed a man running out of the courthouse about 7:15 a.m. Wednesday carrying a large picture in a frame. She said she also saw Benitez allegedly run out of the courthouse, and get into the same car as Williams.
Schwander said she hadn’t even shut her car off and decided to follow the vehicle to try and get a license plate number.
About two hours later. She noticed the car was back on the Butler square.
“They came over to the east side of the courthouse and parked right in front of our office,” she said.
Benitez was scheduled for a court hearing at 1 p.m. Wednesday on a speeding violation from August, Conley said. She is not sure why the couple were in Butler so early.
According to a probable-cause affidavit, police arrived at the courthouse about 9:20 a.m. and approached Williams, who fit the description of the man who left the courthouse two hours earlier.
“After asking Mr. Williams several questions, Simon Williams stated that he took the picture of George Washington,” according to the affidavit written by Randy Beshore with the Butler Police Department.
“George was hanging outside our office on the upper floor of the courthouse,” Conley said. “It has been here forever.”
The couple apparently took the picture out of town, Conley said, and it was later found by a state worker and returned to its historic spot on the wall with little damage.
“We’re thinking they were going to go back and get it,” she said.
Picture’s worth?
The trick, said Vicki Conley, a paralegal and spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, was finding a value for the picture of George Washington. They used the Internet to determine its value. State law places the threshold for felony theft at $500.
“We charged them with it being valued at at least $500,” Conley said. “George has got to be worth something.”
