Virgin Mary found in woman’s closet

PALMER — The Virgin Mary has been returned and is now safe and sound in her grotto behind St. Michaels Church.

Rita Montella, head sacristan with the church, said she’d been away for a few hours Tuesday afternoon and when she came back she noticed the grotto was empty.

She reported the theft, but had woefully little information to offer police. For instance, she wasn’t sure when Mary was taken.

The statue was something that had just always been there and nobody took much notice of it, which is why church officials weren’t sure exactly when it was stolen or how long it had been gone.

Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney with the Palmer Police Department said Thursday afternoon the church had received a call from a woman he described as a parent. The woman said she’d been out of town for awhile and received a bit of a shock when she arrived home and opened her closet.

“She opened her closet and the Virgin Mary was staring at her,” Turney said.

The parent had read about the missing statue online and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. So she called St. Michaels, and St. Michaels called Turney. And in short order Mary was in a truck headed back home.

The recovery of the statue actually solved a mystery or two in the case — most notably what the statue was made of and if it would have taken multiple people to abscond with it.

“It’s actually made of fiberglass,” Turney said.

Which, Montella said, means securing her against future thefts might take some forethought.

“We can’t bolt it down. I think it would fall apart,” she said. “We may talk about doing something a little bit more stable with it. It isn’t as well made as I thought it was.”

Turney said that while this type of thing might seem somewhat common — there are, after all, no shortage of bored teenagers in the Valley — it actually isn’t. He pointed out that the statue had been there for something like 40 years and had never been touched.

The theft caused a bit of a stir among parishioners, with many scratching their heads, wondering why somebody would do something like that. And how does the church feel having gotten Mary back?

“We’re delighted. We’re very happy that it’s back and no damage was done,” she said. “It was just a prank, obviously a teenage prank.”

Turney backed up Montella’s assessment of Mary’s conditions.

“It still had the rosaries around its neck,” he said.

As for the repercussions for stealing Mary, the church is standing by it’s word to not seek prosecution if the statue came back unharmed.

The Palmer Police Department has decided to honor that.

“We’re not going to charge anyone,” Turney said. The case of the missing Virgin Mary is now closed.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.