Stolen Car Seats : It’s No Ordinary Police Lineup

Cigarette burns, coffee stains, scratches and rips became the identifying marks Tuesday night for car-theft victims who showed up at a different kind of police lineup.

Instead of viewing suspects from behind a one-way mirror, these victims walked through the roll-call room of the Police Department’s Van Nuys headquarters to examine car seats.

Police had propped up nearly 100 black, blue, rust, tan and gray-colored front car seats, mostly from Toyota Supras, along the room’s aisles and walls. The seats were among $200,000 in auto parts confiscated Feb. 21 from an auto dismantling shop in Van Nuys and the garage of a North Hollywood home.

“This is the first ray of hope we’ve had out of this,” said John Henrichsen, 20, of Simi Valley, as he stood by a pair of rust-colored seats he had identified through a warp on the back of one. “At least I got my seats back.”

Henrichsen was among the Toyota owners who had reported car thefts to police and who were, in turn, alerted to the lineup. They started arriving at 5 p.m.; by 7:30 six had identified their seats, police said.

But many of the approximately 25 people at the lineup went home disappointed after getting down on their hands and knees to look for telltale burns on upholstery or, in the case of one beach enthusiast, grains of sand in the cracks.

Henrichsen, a clerk at a Tarzana supermarket, said his 1983 Supra disappeared from the store’s parking lot Jan. 29 and was discovered three days later--minus the front and back seats, stereo and airfoil.

After Henrichsen found his seats, police asked him whether he would testify in the case against Jeffrey Green, 28, Maria Horrocks, 47, and Philip Rebaub, 21, all of North Hollywood, who were arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property.

Henrichsen was told he could get his seats back after the case is closed.

One Van Nuys resident thought he spotted the front seats of his Toyota Corolla, but apparently he was mistaken, Detective John Metcalf said. Alexander Kahn, 38, thought the seats were his after he spotted a small tear along the side of one.

The problem was that Kahn had reported that his car was stolen on Feb. 25. The seats on display, however, had been seized four days earlier.