Heartbreak in Culver City: How Tom Petty Got His Guitars Back in Four Days

In April 2012, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were deep in rehearsals at The Culver Studios in Culver City, California, preparing for a major North America–Europe tour set to open on April 18 in Broomfield, Colorado. Then, on a Thursday, disaster struck: five guitars vanished from the soundstage. The haul was a collector's dream and a musician's nightmare—Petty's blond 1967 12-string Rickenbacker 360 and his 1965 Gibson SG TV Junior, bassist Ron Blair's Fender Broadcaster, Scott Thurston's 1967 Epiphone Sheridan, and a blue Duesenberg built specially for guitarist Mike Campbell to mark the band's 30th anniversary.

For Petty, these were not interchangeable tools but pieces of his history. The blond '67 Rickenbacker in particular was an irreplaceable signature instrument. Police put the collective value of the stolen guitars at around $100,000, though dealers who knew them well suspected the true figure was higher—one Fender Broadcaster alone was among the very first electric guitars Fender ever made.

Rather than suffer in silence, the band went public and fast. On its website, Petty's team posted detailed photographs, descriptions, and serial numbers of every stolen guitar, along with a "no questions asked" reward of $7,500 for information leading to their return, and set up a dedicated tip line at StolenGuitars@TomPetty.com. Warner Bros. and Petty amplified the appeal on social media, and the tight-knit vintage-guitar community began watching for the instruments to appear. Meanwhile, the tour had to go on: Norman Harris of Norman's Rare Guitars got a call just 45 minutes after the theft and rushed replacement guitars to the rehearsal space so the band could keep preparing.

The thief, it turned out, had no idea what he was holding. A private security guard assigned to the Culver Studios lot took one of the guitars to a Hollywood pawn shop and sold it for a mere $250. That was the break investigators needed. As Culver City Police Chief Don Pedersen explained, the world of collectible guitars is small: when the pawn shop took in the instrument, word rippled through a network of enthusiasts—"he called a friend, who called a friend"—until someone recognized it as one of Petty's stolen guitars. Pedersen also credited Petty's management for using social media to spread the alarm.

Police traced the pawned guitar back to its seller, obtained a search warrant, and recovered the remaining four instruments. On Tuesday, April 17—just four days after the theft—authorities announced that all five guitars had been recovered and that a suspect was under arrest: Daryl Emmette Washington, 51, of Los Angeles, the private security contractor who had been working the very lot where the band rehearsed. Petty couldn't attend the police announcement—he was in Denver preparing for the tour opener.

The timing could not have been better. With all five instruments back in the band's hands, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers launched their tour on schedule in Broomfield, Colorado. Petty's security team publicly thanked the Culver City Police for "a job well done" and confirmed they had cooperated fully throughout the investigation. Norman Harris summed up the collective relief: the guitars, he said, were "part of his history," and getting them back to their rightful owner meant everything. It was a rare art-and-music theft with a clean, swift, and happy ending—the guitars recovered in the nick of time, ready to sing on stage once more.