Oregon woman’s 13-year stolen car odyssey uncovers deceit, purged records and state DMV gaps

Thirteen years after someone stole her sleek black Chevy Nova SS with red vinyl seats, Cristin Elliott got the car back.

With tears in her eyes, she sat behind the wheel for the first time since September 2010, when she’d parked it outside a friend’s house.

The motor wouldn’t start when she turned the key. Someone had painted the seats black. The interior chrome molding was missing. Layers of dust coated everything.

No matter. Elliott’s odyssey was over.

Just an hour earlier, she won her case in a Multnomah County courtroom. Her quest unraveled a chain of dishonesty, deception and perhaps even some deliberate ignorance in a state that ranks fifth in the U.S. for car thefts – with 471 thefts per 100,000 people.

It would expose a flaw in Oregon’s DMV system, which relies on state and federal law enforcement databases that purge records of stolen cars after a few years. It would catch a slipup by local cops in not renewing the stolen car report and a lax DMV documentation system.

The pandemic, the state’s lack of public defenders and a statute of limitations all complicated Elliott’s reunion with the classic muscle car her oldest daughter nicknamed “Sexy Sally” for its “SS” and “Super Sport” emblems.

“It’s like losing your child,” said Elliott, 47. “I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

‘I FOUND HER!’

The ‘71 Nova had represented emancipation to Elliott.

Her husband originally bought the car from a friend and when they divorced, she got sole ownership.

Later when she said she got into an abusive relationship with another man, the Nova “was my freedom to get away.”

“My dog and my car were my soul,” Elliott said.

She had left the Nova parked in front of her friend’s home off Southeast Orient Drive in Gresham when she checked herself into residential drug and alcohol treatment center. Two months later, her friend told her it was gone.

But the Nova never left her mind, she said.

She would turn whenever she heard a motor “that sounded like her.’’ She would scroll most days through car sales ads on a slew of social media sites: Facebook, Offer-Up, Craigslist, eBay, Northwest Muscle Cars.

On the afternoon of July 17, 2019, Elliott was stunned to find her car staring back at her from a Craigslist ad.

The chrome rally wheels, the blacktop’s sparkle, the emblems — all matched.

“1971 Nova,” the ad read. “It runs enough to get in a trailer but it needs a tune up from sitting so long.”

Elliott instantly clicked through the photos attached and knew the pictured car was her baby when she saw its license plate. It was the same one she had on the car when it was stolen.

She remembers yelling: “Look, I found her! I found her!”

Elliott said she was tempted to call the car dealer in Canby who listed it for sale, arrange to test drive it and then just “take the car and run.”

But she followed a friend’s advice and called police.

It would take nearly four more years before the Nova was Elliott’s again.

‘COULD GET 20 GRAND’

Canby resident Jeremy Conroy, a classic car enthusiast who runs Conroy Classics, buys and sells 30 to 40 cars a year, usually at auctions held around the country. He has a penchant for Chevrolets.

In February 2019, he had spotted the Nova for sale on Facebook Marketplace for “$10,000 firm.”

“1971 nova black on black cowl hood 307 air conditioning car rally wheels paint is really nice just needs washed,” said the ad, accompanied by multiple photos.

Conroy said the price was attractive. “If I clean it up and buff it, I thought I could get 20 grand for it,” he remembered thinking.

He called the number listed and reached Portland resident Andy Maes, though the ad was placed under a different name, according to a screenshot of the ad Conroy kept.

Conroy said he met Maes at his makeshift Andy’s Auto Shop on a lot behind a small brown house off Southeast Powell Boulevard, just west of Southeast 136th Avenue.

Maes told him he had lost the title to the car but said he could get one, Conroy recalled. He told Conroy that he had painted the car and stored it in his shed for about 10 years.

Conroy put down a $1,000 deposit and told Maes he would pay the balance after he was assured the title transaction was legitimate.

Several days later, Conroy accompanied Maes to a DMV office in Southeast Portland.

Maes presented a mechanic’s lien to the DMV, claiming Andy’s Auto Body had done work on the car but wasn’t paid, according to the document obtained by police.

The document noted that Maes had sold the car to Conroy at auction on Feb. 20, 2019.

Conroy told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he knew he didn’t buy the car at auction but didn’t get a good look at the forms Maes submitted to the DMV.

“I didn’t see a lot of the paperwork,” he said, adding that the transaction at the DMV was done quickly.

‘IT’S A PROBLEM’

Before granting a new title on the car, the DMV ran a check on the car’s vehicle identification number.

It didn’t come back as stolen in either the state or national law enforcement databases, according to court records.

Elliott’s stolen car report had been wiped out of the system in 2015, the records show.

That’s because the FBI’s National Crime Information Center purges from its system all unrecovered stolen vehicle records four years after the year a car was reported stolen. https://irp.fas.org/agency/doj/fbi/is/ncic.htm

Oregon’s state police Law Enforcement Data System adheres to the federal policy and does the same. The DMV relies on the state system.

“The records are purged, and it’s a problem and it’s not being addressed,” allowing thieves to easily rip off cars and remain undetected for years, said Dana MacDonald, Northwest regional director of the National Insurance Crime Bureau, which tracks car thefts and other crime.

The Oregon DMV, he said, should keep records of a stolen car until getting notice that it’s been recovered.

Other state motor vehicle departments keep a stolen car flagged until a car is found, including Washington, where stolen car reports remain in the Department of Licensing database “indefinitely until we hear of a resolution,” said spokesperson Christine Anthony.

In Oregon, the state law enforcement data system sends automated messages to respective police agencies when it purges stolen car information and police are supposed to resubmit it to the state database if a car hasn’t been recovered.

Gresham police, which took Elliott’s initial stolen car report in 2010, did not, according to the police and prosecutors’ case file obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive in a public records request.

After Elliott told police she found her car advertised on Craigslist, Gresham Detective Brandon Crate sought the DMV’s records on the Nova. All that showed was the mechanic’s lien certificate that Maes had filled out, the case file indicated.

A DMV worker later noted to Crate that the lien paperwork wasn’t in order.

“If the transaction had come to me for review, I would have required a new possessory lien form because it was not dated at the bottom,” DMV vehicle policy employee Dave Adams said in an email to the detective.

Under state law, Maes was supposed to have records with the name of the previous car owner or customer who brought the car to him, when he got the car and how he obtained it. He also was supposed to have records showing he notified the car owner of the lien and that an auction was advertised and held.

He was required to maintain those records for five years. The DMV scanned none of those documents, DMV investigations chief Larry Purdy wrote in an email to the detective.

DMV processed a new title on March 5, 2019, for Conroy and sent it to him by mail.

‘GHOSTED ME’

Conroy said he was surprised to see the car listed as “Totaled, Reconstructed” when he got the title.

“I really don’t like dealing with that type of stuff because I don’t know the background of it and the safety,” he said. “There’s a lot of liability.”

So Conroy tried to get Maes to buy the car back but he said Maes stopped taking his calls or responding to him.

“He just kind of ghosted me,” Conroy said.

Conroy instead chose to sell the car. And that’s what led to his post on Craigslist that caught Elliott’s eye.

Once Elliott saw the ad and reported her discovery to police, police came knocking on Conroy’s door in Canby.

Eventually the Gresham detective arranged for a flatbed truck to transfer the Nova from a self-storage place near Conroy’s home to a Gresham tow lot, where it was kept inside a container.

It sat there for years while Crate, working with Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Kevin Demer, pursued criminal charges against Maes.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the case, but a grand jury on July 12, 2021, returned an indictment charging Maes with first-degree theft, possession of a stolen vehicle, unauthorized use of a vehicle and trafficking in stolen vehicles. Maes has no dealer’s license to sell cars, according to the district attorney’s office.

Police wrote in court records that they believed Maes had stored the car since the time of the theft.

Maes was arrested Feb. 11, 2022, just within the three-year statute of limitations from the time he had presented the mechanic’s lien paperwork to the DMV.

A month later, a judge dismissed the charges because no public defense attorney was available to represent Maes.

Once dismissed, the charges couldn’t be refiled because the statute of limitations had passed by then.

Demer, the prosecutor, expressed his frustration in an email to a supervisor in his office.

He noted that at the time of the dismissal, Maes was in the process of hiring his own lawyer and that he “doubted” Maes would have qualified for a public defender, according to the case file.

Maes, contacted by phone recently, said he got the Nova from a friend. He told Gresham police he paid $2,500 for it and claimed the title was stolen during an unreported burglary at his place.

Asked why he gave the DMV paperwork claiming he had a lien on the car, Maes blamed the DMV: “Why don’t you ask the DMV? If it was stolen, why didn’t the DMV have a record? How did the DMV allow this?”

Asked why he wrote that he sold it at a nonexistent auction, he referred further questions to his lawyer, Dave Peters.

Peters wrote to the district attorney’s office that Maes relinquished all interest in the Nova and waived his appearance at any future hearing concerning who gets the car.

Peters did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Michelle Godfrey, a DMV spokesperson, said checking the Nova’s VIN in 2019 wouldn’t have shown that it had been stolen in 2010 because the record would have been purged in the state law enforcement database.

Also, she said, a law wasn’t in effect yet that now requires mechanics to have a surety bond or $20,000 letter of credit on file with the DMV before applying for a mechanic’s lien. The process is designed to protect car owners in the case of an invalid lien. It became law on Jan. 1, 2022.

In 2019, the state couldn’t have verified “even the existence of a particular mechanic when processing the lien foreclosure,” Godfrey said.

‘THE RIGHTFUL OWNER’

On April 25, Elliott and Convoy appeared before a Multnomah County judge. Both claimed interest in the ‘71 Nova, now worth about $20,000.

“It’s up to you to decide who gets the vehicle,” the prosecutor told Circuit Judge Benjamin Souede.

Conroy, holding a manila folder, approached the bench first to address the judge.

He recounted how he spotted the car on Facebook Messenger, went to the DMV with Maes to ensure the title transfer was legitimate.

“I thought I was going the right avenue to get a legal title for the vehicle,” he said.

When police came to his door, Conroy said he realized he had been duped.

“I didn’t know that you could purge records of something that’s stolen,” he said. “It makes no sense to me.’’

Once he learned the Nova had been stolen, Conroy told the judge that he offered to sell it for Elliott and split the proceeds with her. He said he had found some insurance papers in Elliott’s name in the car’s glove box.

“I thought the fair thing to do was … just let me sell the thing…. I might lose a couple thousand, but you’ll probably gain a couple thousand,” he said.

But they couldn’t come to any agreement.

Then it was Elliott’s turn.

She explained the impact the car had on her life as she faced enormous personal struggles.

“You get connected,” she said. “I know it’s a material thing but through a divorce and some really bad times, that was my freedom.”

Overcome with emotion, she paused at times to collect herself before continuing.

Then she raised her right hand. “And here’s the original title,” Elliott said.

Both Elliott and Conroy were victims, the judge said.

What landed them in court was Maes’ fraud and the purging of the record of Elliot’s stolen car, Souede said.

The judge sounded perplexed that her stolen report completely vanished from DMV records, describing her stolen car records as “truly purged — not purged with an asterisk, not purged with a flag, not purged with a ‘well, it’s not being reported as stolen, but you should know something happened in the past.’’’

Regardless, he said, “The car has to go somewhere.”

Based on case law and Oregon’s Uniform Commercial Code that governs the sale of goods, Souede said, “Someone who doesn’t have a valid title to a car cannot pass title.”

Maes never had title to the Nova and therefore couldn’t transfer it — notwithstanding that the DMV allowed it, Souede said.

Conroy can sue Maes to recover his money, but restitution isn’t available because Maes wasn’t convicted of a crime in the case, he said.

“Ms. Elliott is the rightful owner,” the judge said.

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‘KNEW SHE WOULD COME BACK’

Hours after the judge’s ruling, Elliott and her oldest daughter Shelby Elliott, 27, arrived at the Loop Hi-Way Towing lot in Gresham and watched as her Nova was removed from a storage container on a flatbed truck.

Elliott’s key no longer worked; the key Conroy gave her did. She opened the driver’s door, sat in the driver’s seat, touched the dust-covered steering wheel and smiled.

“She was so perfect,” Elliott said, as she examined the interior and then walked around the outside of her car.

Now, the stereo, windshield wipers and chrome tires were gone.

“She needs an amazing cleaning,” Elliott said.

The next day, she returned to the tow lot with her pickup, hooked up her Nova and drove it to a friend’s home in Portland where she’s staying.

“They say when you get clean, everything comes back, and that’s what happened,” Elliott said. “In my heart, I always knew she would come back.’’

Some mechanic friends have promised to help her get the car running again.

One day, she plans to leave her truck to her oldest daughter and “Sexy Sally” to her youngest daughter, now 23.

Both the Nova and truck will have a GPS tracker on them.

— Maxine Bernstein

Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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