Lancaster Man Pleads No Contest to Painting Theft

A Lancaster man who admitted stealing an $18,000 painting from an Antelope Valley College exhibit pleaded no contest Tuesday to a charge of grand theft.

Jerald Christopher Sharitz, 23, entered the plea in San Fernando Superior Court after prosecutors agreed not to seek a jail sentence of more than one year, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald L. Smalstig said. Sharitz could have been sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison, Smalstig said.

Also on Tuesday, Sharitz’s roommate, Timothy Daniel Cain, 27, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of being an accessory to a felony. Cain confessed to stealing the painting when Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators inspected the men’s Lancaster apartment in November. But Sharitz surrendered to authorities shortly afterward and said it was he, not Cain, who stole the artwork.

Smalstig said Cain’s admission was made to protect Sharitz. Deputies searched the apartment after an acquaintance of the pair told officials that he had seen the painting in their apartment and recognized it from news reports.

Sharitz lifted the 17th-Century Dutch painting by Gerard Hoet the Elder, titled “Nymphs Gathering Flowers in a Landscape,” from a gallery wall on Nov. 6, authorities said.

Smalstig said Sharitz, a student at the college, had become enamored of the painting while conducting an inventory of artworks in the exhibit. “He said he stole it for inspiration,” Smalstig said.

Sharitz and Cain, who are free on their own recognizance, are scheduled to be sentenced May 29.