A rare Ronald McDonald statue acquired by Mary Ryan and husband Thomas Friedman from an antique store for $1200 went missing when their daughter secretly held a party in their summer home.
The statue of Ronald the clown in a kneeling position and which is thought to date back to 1972 was eventually found next to a garbage bin outside a health club in Northampton.
Reported in the The Daily Hampshire Gazette, 'crouching Ronald' as the couple affectionately nicknamed the statue was spotted in a tree near the health club after its theft. They later learned that a staff from the health club took the statue to the club's dumpster whereupon it once again disappeared. By then, Mary and Thomas thought they had lost the 3-foot tall statue for good.
Northampton's Detective Sgt. Victor Caputo told the couple that it was brought to the police by a McDonald's employee and his family after the employee learned of Mary and Thomas' appeal for help in the Gazette.
The employee had not initially known about the theft and so thought to take the statue home when he overheard a colleague conversing with a health club staff that the binned statue had not actually come from their McDonald's branch and that it was going to be thrown away. The employee and his family, who were not named by Detective Sgt. Caputo, promptly took the statue to the police upon seeing Mary's flyer published in the Gazette.
Much earlier, Mary and Thomas received a tip of a gold spray-painted Ronald statue that was spotted in an Arlington Street backyard, but this turned out to be different from the real one.
Crouching Ronald was taken from Mary and Thomas' summer home by two young men who confessed to have left the statue in a tree in front of the Northampton Athletic Club.
