Brother of man rewarded for finding stolen Oscars arrested

LOS ANGELES - The brother of the man rewarded for finding 52 of 55 Oscar statuettes stolen just before this year's Academy Awards was arrested Friday in connection with the theft.

John Harris, 54, of Los Angeles, was jailed and bail set at $20,000 for investigation of receiving stolen property and being an accessory to grand theft, both felonies, said Officer Jason Lee, a Police Department spokesman.

Harris lives near Willie Fulgear, 61, who received a $50,000 reward and two tickets to the Academy Awards ceremony after finding the Oscars in a Koreatown trash bin one week before the March 26 awards show.

During the show, Fulgear, sitting in the audience in a top hat and tuxedo, was singled out for praise by Oscar host Billy Crystal, who also joked at one point that the salvage man's real dream was to someday direct.

Detectives from LAPD's burglary auto theft division are investigating the case.

''Not only did the investigation reveal that the stolen Oscars were in Harris' residence at some point after they were stolen, but the investigation also revealed that Harris is the brother of Fulgear, the person who was rewarded for locating the Oscars,'' police Lt. Horace Frank said.

Asked if Fulgear was a suspect in the theft, all Lee would say was, ''He has not been arrested. This investigation is ongoing and has not concluded.''

Fulgear, whose phone number is unlisted, could not be reached for comment.

Two months after the Oscars, Fulgear reported to police that $40,000 of his reward money was stolen from a safe in his apartment while he was out of town.

He said at the time that he kept the cash at home rather than in a bank so his son would have no trouble getting to it if anything happened to him.

The 55 gold-plated Oscar statuettes were manufactured in Chicago and shipped by Ohio-based Roadway Express to a warehouse in Bell, where they disappeared from a loading dock. Three of them have never been found.

Lawrence Ledent, 38, a former Roadway truck driver, pleaded no contest in June to grand theft. He is to begin serving a six-month jail term in December.

Anthony Hart, a Roadway dock worker at the warehouse, was charged with one count of grand theft. Hart, 38, pleaded innocent during an August arraignment and was released on his own recognizance pending trial.