PHILADELPHIA — A Pottstown man faces a day in prison and a period of house arrest after he admitted to stealing an antique firearm from the Valley Forge State Park Museum five decades ago.
Thomas Gavin, 78, whose exact address was unavailable, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to one day in a federal prison and three years of supervised release with the first year to be served under home confinement after he pleaded guilty to a single count of disposal of an object of cultural heritage stolen from a museum.
As part of his guilty plea, Gavin admitted that he stole a Christian Oerter rifle from the Valley Forge State Park Museum in Upper Merion in 1971.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Kearney ordered Gavin to pay $23,385 in restitution for selling an antique rifle dating back to the American Revolution. Gavin also was fined $25,000.
“Stealing an artifact from a museum – literally a piece of American history – is a serious federal offense,” U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams said this week. “After four decades, justice finally caught up with this defendant. Thanks to the work of our law enforcement partners, the Christian Oerter rifle is safely back where it can be enjoyed by all Americans.”
The antique is a rare surviving 1775 rifle made by Christian Oerter, a master gunsmith from the Christian Springs Philadelphia-area gun-making center. The rifle is known to be one of two such rifles to have survived with its original flint mechanism bearing the maker’s name, site and date of manufacture, and is worth in excess of $175,000, according to federal officials.
The other Christian Oerter rifle is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle in England.
Gavin also admitted that he kept the rifle for more than 40 years and sold it in 2018, along with other items that he had stolen from museums back in the 1970s.
Authorities did not reveal how the antique was recovered.
“Thomas Gavin kept the stolen Oerter rifle squirreled away for decades, depriving all of us of this Revolutionary piece of our past,” said Jacqueline Maguire, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division. “It is way past time for Mr. Gavin to be held accountable for his actions. This case is a great example of the FBI’s commitment to protecting and preserving the cultural property that helps tell the story of our nation.”
The case was investigated by members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Art Crime Team and detectives with the Upper Merion Township Police Department, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney K.T. Newton.
Source: Berkshire mont
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