Man charged with stealing 170 garden gnomes

A 53-year-old Frenchman has been charged with stealing 170 garden gnomes from backyards in the Bretagne area.

Police discovered the gnomes carefully arranged in the man’s 200-square-foot garden. Many had been repainted, making it difficult for authorities to reunite them with the dozens of owners who had filed missing-gnome reports.

A rash of gnome theft in France has been blamed on a shadowy organization called the Garden Gnome Liberation Front, which opposes the use of gnomes for merely decorative purposes and came to prominence after a major theft at a Paris garden show in 2000. But police say they believe the Bretagne man was not connected to the GGLF, and was simply a lone serial gnomenapper who was not pursuing a larger political agenda.

Source: Spiegel Online

del.ico.us  |  Reddit  |  furl  |  StumbleUpon  |  Facebook  |  digg

> Next Story