The FBI’s Art Crime Team and its law enforcement partners returned 15 artifacts that were stolen during the 1960s and 1970s to six museums in the Philadelphia area.
The rifle is rare, dating to 1775 and made by master gunsmith Christian Oerter. It’s known to be one of two rifles to have its original flint mechanism with the maker’s name, site and date of manufacture.
An elderly Montgomery County man was sentenced to one day in prison for selling a rare Revolutionary-era rifle that he stole from a Pennsylvania museum decades.
Thomas Gavin, 78, of Pottstown, was sentenced Tuesday for the theft of a rare antique rifle during a visit to the Valley Forge State Park Museum in 1971. Gavin kept the Christian Oerter flintlock rifle, a relic of the American Revolution, in his barn in Pottstown for decades before selling it to a dealer who recognized its significance. Gavin will spend one day in prison and has been ordered to pay nearly $50,000 in fines and restitution. The rifle was returned to its owners and is now displayed at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.