Music to the Ears : A Stradivarius Lost for 27 Years Resurfaces, but Who Owns It?

Back in 1967, David Margetts lost a violin that he had borrowed from UCLA.

He either left it in the back seat of his car and somebody swiped it, or he left it on the roof of his car and drove off--he’s not sure which.

In any event, the violin disappeared. Which would not have been such a big deal if it had not been the Duke of Alcantara Stradivarius, an $800,000 instrument that is one of the most treasured violins in the world.

Monday night, after a mysterious odyssey of more than 27 years, UCLA got its Stradivarius back, at least for the time being. Teresa Salvato turned the violin over to school officials until legal ownership can be determined in the courts.

How Salvato came into possession of the precious instrument--crafted from pine and maple by an aging Antonio Stradivari in 1732 for a Spanish nobleman in the service of King Don Carlos--is part of a story that includes some careful detective work by a couple who own a violin repair shop in Petaluma.

According to Carla Shapreau, an attorney for the university, Margetts, then a second violinist with UCLA’s resident Feri Roth Quartet, had been using the Stradivarius during a rehearsal in Hollywood on the night of Aug. 2, 1967.

Margetts said he returned to his parked car about 10 p.m. At that point, he said, he either forgot that he had set the violin on the car roof before he drove off, or he left it in the back seat of the unlocked car while shopping for groceries at a convenience store in Pasadena a few minutes later.

“After that, I stopped off at a restaurant,” said Margetts, now a member of the music faculty at Cal State Fresno. “When I got back to the car, I noticed that the fiddle was gone. . . . It was like somebody had given me the Mona Lisa and I’d betrayed their trust.”

Margetts said he drove frantically back to where the rehearsal had taken place in the hope he had left the violin there. No luck.

About 12:45 a.m., he notified Los Angeles police of the loss, telling them that the Stradivarius had been in a double case that also contained a 1950s-vintage violin worth about $30,000 that was made by Ansaldo Poggi.

Notice of the missing instruments was dispatched to more than 100 pawn shops in the Los Angeles area and more than 50 major violin shops in the United States and overseas.

Salvato says that according to her former husband’s family lore, it was about that same time that the husband’s aunt, Nadia Tupica, spotted a bundle beside a freeway on-ramp that she thought might be a small child. When Tupica took a closer look, she found that the bundle was a case containing the two violins.

“That sort of matches the violins-left-on-the-top-of-the-car version,” Shapreau said. “One of the (Tupica) family stories is that the violins ended up in a closet. I don’t know why. Maybe she just didn’t play the violin.”

In any event, years passed, and in 1979, Tupica--who has since died--gave the violins to her nephew, Jefferson Demarco, and his then-wife, Salvato. More time passed and the couple divorced, with Salvato receiving the violins as part of the divorce settlement.

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Salvato, a violinist, eventually lent the Stradivarius to her music teacher, Michael Sand. Last January, seeing that the instrument needed some minor repairs, Sand brought it to the Petaluma shop of Joseph Grubaugh and his wife, Sigrun Seifert.

“That violin is very distinctive, and they are experts in the field of authentication of fine Italian violins,” Shapreau said. “They found a photo of the violin, which established which one it was, and they consulted a missing property registry that listed it as missing since 1967.”

The couple called Shapreau--who plays and makes violins when she is not pursuing her legal career--and on her advice, they notified UCLA. In the meantime, she said, the couple gave the violin back to Sand.

Shapreau says the university tried for 10 months to talk Salvato into returning the instrument, but she had refused.

According to legal documents filed in the case, a university police sergeant asked her where the violin was, and “she stated that she was not stupid enough to keep the violin at (her) residence. . . . She then requested in a hostile manner that we leave her property.”

In an effort to get Salvato to part with the Stradivarius, UCLA went to court, winning on Friday her agreement to surrender the instrument Monday for safekeeping until the court decides who can keep it.

As for the still-missing Poggi violin, Shapreau said it may be some time before efforts to recover it are pursued.

“We’re not even sure who owned it,” she said.

On Monday, after the violin was authenticated by expert Michael Weishaar, Salvato surrendered it to officials at UCLA’s Fowler Museum and left without talking to a reporter.

“It’s beautiful,” said Eric K. Behrens, another attorney representing UCLA. “Even from the pictures, I didn’t expect it to be that beautiful.”

Margetts expressed his relief after 27 long years of worry.

“I’m very happy,” he said. “It’s congratulations to the world.”