The Accidental Car Thief

I was talking with a friend this evening about someone who “lost” their car in a parking lot and was reminded of a true story that I thought I’d write about. This happened while I was in college in the late 60s and concerns a few of my fellow students.

There were two students who were rooming together. They were in Shaw Hall, which at the time was an all-male dorm. Then, as now, it was the only dorm that was located in the main part of campus and was surrounded by academic buildings – the rest being on the fringes of the campus. There is a large parking garage directly across the street (appropriately called Shaw Lane).

It was the fall semester and one of the students had bought a new car that summer – as I recall it was a red Mustang, but it’s been 50 years since this incident so my memory might not be totally accurate. The student who did not have a car had some sort of appointment in Lansing, a few miles away, and asked his roommate if he could borrow the car to drive to that appointment. His roommate said, “sure,” and gave him the keys. He said that it was parked across the street in the parking garage.

The student went across the street and walked into the parking garage, almost immediately spotted the car, unlocked it, got in and drove to his appointment.

Perhaps an hour later, he was returning back to campus and taking the rather circuitous route through campus back to the dorm and parking garage when he was pulled over by the campus police. They came up to the car to arrest him and charged him with car theft.

The student was a bit confused as he told the police that they must be mistaken, he had asked his roommate for permission and his roommate had given him the keys. Why was his roommate suddenly declaring that the car was stolen!

The police had him drive back to Shaw Hall, with the police car following him, where the individual who had filed the stolen car report was located so the owner could identify the car and clear up the difference between the two stories.

But the individual who was waiting there was not his roommate. But he did identify the car by the license plate and the things in the trunk. So, either the student was lying or his roommate was the thief and he was an unwitting accomplice. The student who had been accused told the police his room number and the name of his roommate and the police went into the dorm to find the roommate and bring him out to face possible charges. The roommate complied and confirmed that he had loaned the student the keys to his car. He also told the police where his car had been parked and the student who had initially been accused exclaimed that he must be mistaken because he had found the car elsewhere in the parking garage. The whole group then entered the parking garage and sure enough, there was the roommate’s car parked where he said it had been.

They then tried the keys in the car and they fit! It turned out to be a one-in-a-million chance. Two students, from different states, had both bought identical red Mustangs that summer. And not only were they identical in color, options, etc., but they also had identical keys. Thus, when the hapless student borrowed his roommate’s car, he went into the parking garage, but ran into the look-alike car first, did not verify the license plate, but just unlocked it with the key he had been given – which worked – and drove away. So when the owner of the look-alike car later went to where he had parked his car he found it missing and called the campus police.

In the end, no charges were filed and everyone had a good laugh. I believe that one of the students contacted the local Ford dealer who verified that there were only so many variations of keys to be had and that they generally relied on the cars being somewhat randomly distributed throughout the country so this kind of thing would not happen. But it did, and the dealer agreed to rekey one of the two cars to avoid this somewhat unusual situation.

This was reported in the next edition of the Spartan News which is where I read it.