Suspect Seized in 1978 Theft of Oriental Art
A man suspected of stealing a million-dollar collection of hundreds of ancient Nepalese and Tibetan art objects in New York 11 years ago was arrested Thursday at his South Los Angeles home, where he had been hiding the antiquities, police said.
Craig Warner, 40, was arrested at his home on suspicion of receiving and transporting stolen property and was being held on $5,000 bail, said Detective William Martin, the Police Department’s art crimes specialist.
The collection is made up of hundreds of Tibetan and Nepalese statues and art objects, many dating to the 8th Century. The antiquities, many of them depictions of Oriental gods, were stolen Christmas Day, 1978, from the Manhattan home of antiquities collector Jane Werner, Martin said. Martin said the suspect and Werner were acquaintances in New York and that Warner had been an original suspect in the case.
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