The Corvette Caper

I believe in greatness. I believe in inspired acts of human ingenuity. And, I believe these acts can extend to the criminal world. Amidst the drum beat of rote murder, assault, and theft, occasionally an act of delinquent brilliance – a flash so brief, you might miss it if you don’t peg the story to a new browser tab – really stands out. In this case, the act brings together the high and the low.

The high: an Ocean’s 11 type scheme to “liberate” Corvettes from the Bowling Green assembly plant.

The low: a decision leading to arrest so baffling as to challenge our understanding of the depths of human stupidity.

This whole drama started in March of this year. Thieves cut through the perimeter fencing of the Bowling Green Corvette assembly plant and drove eight brand-new Corvettes valued at $1.2 million right off the property. 

The heist obviously made the news, and shortly after, people in Bowling Green began to notice a surplus of surreptitiously parked, brand-new Corvettes with price stickers still affixed to the windows and missing plates.  Someone called this in, and all eight vehicles were reclaimed the same day.

Not long after, 21-year-old Deantae Cortez Walker of Westland, Michigan and 22-year-old Amarion Jordan were both indicted on charges related to the caper. Police believe that at least eight others were involved in the daring theft, none of whom have been identified or arrested at this point.

A lull set over the town.

History became legend.

Legend became myth.

And for nearly six months, the Corvette Caper passed out of all knowledge, lost in the shuffle of the daily crime blotter...

Until this past Friday.

Late in the night, as the stars twinkled unknowingly in an otherwise indescript, inky black Kentucky sky, two men took up the crown and resurrected the ghost of the Corvette Caper, leaving the facility with two brand-new Corvette ZR1s, still wrapped in paper.

ZR1s have an incredible amount of power. They feature a mid-mounted, twin-turbocharged 5.5L V8 that puts out 1,064 horsepower and 828 pound-feet of torque. Valued at $200,000 apiece, these things are fast. Faster than the run-of-the-mill Corvettes the March group had liberated.

After the two cars were discovered in a parking garage on Western Kentucky’s campus, both of the drivers fled, with one leading a 180-mile-per-hour high-speed chase three hours north to Martin County, Indiana, before abandoning the car and successfully fleeing on foot.

The other suspect, however, didn’t have as much luck. 20-year-old Daedrin Cook, also from Michigan, led officers on a high-speed chase and successfully evaded after his car was spike-stripped.

But in a twist befitting an Alfred Hitchcock or an M. Night Shyamalan movie, Cook’s phone died as he wandered around Bowling Green, undoubtedly concocting his next brilliant maneuver.

In what can only be described as a lapse of judgment so poor as to bring the high ambitions of his entire endeavour to naught, he flagged down a passing Bowling Green police officer and asked if they could help him charge his phone.

It didn’t take long for the officers to figure out he was the guy that they’d just spike stripped and slap the cuffs on him. 

But while Cook sits on his hands in a cell, the Indiana Icarus – waxen wings wilted from flying too high – hides out, the adrenaline probably still pumping in his veins.

Back in Bowling Green, the community is baffled, visited by the mark of a higher intelligence, catching a glimpse of the grand design entirely indiscernible to us through the moxy of the Corvette Criminals, but immediately disabused of it soon after through an act of stupidity so colossal that it becomes the story.

There’s probably a lesson somewhere in there. Maybe GM should make it harder to steal cars.