Would-Be Art Thieves Screwed By Lack of Clever Warning Signal

A prominent official at the Austin Museum of Art (AMOA) and his wife were arrested this weekend, after the two were caught trying to make off with paintings from the Fine Arts Festival.

Austin Police Commander Michael Jung was on patrol near Republic Square Park early Sunday morning when he found a suspicious-looking Alexandra Sheppard, wife of former AMOA finance and operations director Nathan Sheppard, wandering around the Fine Arts Festival tents.

In the process of being detained and questioned by the APD officer, Mrs. Sheppard abruptly blurted out "something in a foreign language."

Unfortunately for the aspiring robbers, the policeman quickly realized that her Tourettic bleating was, in fact, a poorly coded warning to her husband, when he overheard the word "policia."

Cut to the chase (literally): Mr. Sheppard emerged from one of the tents, brandishing two priceless paintings, which he promptly dropped upon seeing the police officer. And then ran like hell.

Without his wife.

Of course, Sheppard didn't get very far, seeing as how it was 1 a.m. on a Saturday night and the park is adjacent to the Warehouse District, where cops roam freely (lest the striped shirts get frisky). He was nabbed by other APD officers "a short distance away."

Sheppard has since been removed from AMOA's staff page, but a Google cache indicated that he had been with the organization since 2001, and managed the "accounting, operations, information technology, facilities rental, and museum store functions."