Photos of the Bike | Epic Version of the Story | How it was Recovered | Updates
The guy who sold my bike on Craigslist emailed me Wednesday night through my Craigslist posting in Portland, threatening to file charges of defamation of character, slander (yes, slander not libel...), and harassment unless I took his name off the Craigslist ad. I took down any commentary I had about him, but left his name up. All I had up was facts, so he couldn't get me on that, so I emailed him back with a bunch of questions and said if he answered them, I'd take his name down too.
Thursday morning he emailed me back with a bunch of answers and sent me an email that he had sent to the buyer that included the buyer's email address. So I sent an email to the address, expecting it to go to some email account the seller had just set up. I explained a little bit of the story and sent a link to this website which I said had pictures. I got an email back a few hours later, where a woman explained how she bought the bike from a guy who sounded legit and didn't want to lose out on the money she paid for it, and she gave me her number so we could work things out. I googled her and her number, and everything I could find on her seemed to jive with her being a real, legit person. So I sent the info to Detective Andrew, the detective in Portland I'd been working with all week, and we decided he'd call her.
Detective Andrew later called me back and said that I had myself a bike!! The buyer confirmed the serial number and said the bike looked just like all the pictures we had of it.
So what happens next? Summer and I are probably going to drive down to Portland to pick it up next weekend. The seller seems to have exhausted himself in the massive web of lies he's been telling Detective Andrew over the past day or two and has offered the $600 he got for it back, hoping I won't press charges. So by Monday, my bike should be sitting at the Police Station in SE Portland. And not long after that it'll be back home with me in Seattle.
I have my bike back now! Summer and I drove down to Portland today to pick it up. We stopped to have lunch with Summer's relatives who we stayed with last time we were in Portland. After, we took the OHSU tram down and enjoyed a scenic birds-eye view of the city.
Then, on our way out of town we stopped to pick up my bike from Detective Andrew, and we got the story of what'd been going on back at the station.
The guy who sold my bike on Craigslist has so far given $200 to the police. He's going to be charged with theft for selling a bike he knew was stolen property, and he will have to pay the remaining $400 he got for the bike in restitution once he's convicted. So the woman who bought the bike will get her money back, just not as quickly as we all would have liked. His story, which the detective and I are inclined to believe, is that he stole it from his friend, which explains why he emailed me trying to get me to remove his name from Craigslist--he was afraid he'd get beaten up if his friend found out. His friend got it from his cousin who bought it for $100 from some crackhead who stole it from UW. They were planning to split the profits from selling it.
So, I guess, thus ends my saga. I'm glad I could pull out a happy ending for all of you!