The case of the missing Mustang has taken yet another turn.

In late January, charges were dropped against Timothy Scott Turner, a Quarryville man accused of receiving stolen property after the owner of a 1966 Ford Mustang GT Convertible reported it missing.

The owner said the car had disappeared from a Conestoga storage shed where it had been kept since the 1970s. In 2005, it was sold on eBay to a buyer in Holliston, Mass., who bought it for his wife and spent $60,000 restoring it.

Then police informed him the car might be stolen and the owner in Lancaster wanted it back. The classic car has been in limbo ever since.

Now it's likely to remain there, which annoys the attorney representing its Massachusetts owner.

"This case continues to be bizarre," said attorney Bradley Phipps, who represents David Bushee, of Holliston, who purchased the vehicle for $8,000 on eBay. The Lancaster County detective who filed charges in December "said he felt he had a strong case, but apparently that wasn't the case," Phipps said.

And still, he said, Lancaster County officials won't disclose the name of the woman who claimed the car was stolen.

"We've been trying to do the right thing, but still, no one will talk to us," Phipps said.

Car sold on eBay
On Dec. 16, Detective Stephen Owens, of the Lancaster County Auto Theft Task Force, filed a single charge of receiving stolen property against Turner, owner of Turner's Towing and Salvage in Christiana. In the affidavit, filed at the office of Magisterial District Judge Isaac H. Stoltzfus in Intercourse, Owens alleged that Turner sold the car to a Willow Street man, who then sold it to Bushee on eBay.

Interviewed in late December, Owens said he wasn't exactly sure how Turner had gotten the car. "If you can answer that, you've cracked the case," Owens said at the time.

A voice-mail message left for Owens last week seeking comment for this story was not returned.

All along, Turner protested his innocence.

The original owner had driven the car for several years before putting it into storage at Customs Classics, an automotive body repair shop, in Conestoga sometime in the early 1970s, Owens said in December. Then, at some point in the early 2000s, it was removed and sold.

Turner said he'd been approached by then-Customs Classics co-owner Thomas Hertzog Sr. and was told the owner hadn't paid storage fees for some time, and that Hertzog wanted to "get rid" of the vehicle.

Turner said he asked around and found a buyer in Willow Street, who paid $1,500 for the car. Turner, according to the affidavit filed by Owens, had provided a handwritten receipt dated Feb. 18, 2004.

But Turner disputed the authenticity of the receipt, saying his receipts always included "a bill head. I can't imagine I would have written a receipt like that."

Contacted last week, Turner said Judge Stoltzfus agreed with him.

"The receipt was no good, and there was no real proof that the car had been stolen," Turner said.

"That's the end of it, as far as I know," he said.

But not as far as Phipps' client is concerned.

Local police have declined to identify the original owner, an elderly woman who has said she doesn't want to speak publicly about the case.

But Phipps said authorities won't even tell him who she is. That makes it impossible to work out some resolution with her — leaving his client with a car he can't drive.

"Why we have this logjam, why we have this owner who won't identify herself, I don't know," Phipps said. But law enforcement in Massachusetts, he said, is not about to go seize the car; "barring a court order, local officials are very reluctant to do anything," Phipps said.

"My client has done the right thing, but nobody will talk to us," he said.

"There needs to be some resolution."