First off, I had sent DeltaStrykeForce several figures and some buildings during his earlier scam, but somewhere along the line a page was lost in Richmond, and my buildings did not make it from my fax onto the list that was sent to the evidence room when it was time to pack up people's items to be returned, so I didn't get them back. By the time I found about this, it was too late nad he had them back. So no 1:18 buildings for me. No one's fault I'm sure; just a clerical error.
While that was a disappointment, getting the paratroopers back was not. Read on:
First off, a big thank you to everyone who made this possible, including Lt. Taylor, everyone on the board who helped bust Jerry/Delta/Bob, and of course the board members who volunteered their time to help sort out the items and make sure everyone got their items. Of course, it wasn't their fault the buildings were not on the list.
I knew the figures had been altered and glued, and based on what we know of the defendant, I visualized some kind of haphazardly-glued Franken-troopers with the wrong arms glued to the wrong figures, etc. I was wrong. Several are usable.
Remember how he used to mock us for our hobby? How he used to make fun of our interest in "playing with toys", as if he wouldn't touch an action figure?
I thought of those messages as I looked at the items sent back to me. It was a silly idea to glue pieces together, but I could not help but notice how many hours he must have spent on this. And how careful he was, mostly. It was gratifying to see that the person who mocked me and the rest of you for our interest in these figures has spent hours and hours getting them, as I presume he believed his goals to be, just right.
There were a couple of unfortunate head swaps, e.g. a tanker head on a paratrooper body, but overall all the right weapons and gear were glued to the right figures in the right places.
He had carefully cut the necks from 21C heads to glue Dragon heads in their places so they'd fit in the neck holes correctly.
Arms and legs were fixed in realistic action poses.
Some heads had had camo applied, and in one case it hadn't been screwed up too badly. He'd ruined two other heads experimenting with this.
He clearly had more of these figures that he'd bought himself. I recognized parts from several other US para figures, another von Schnitzel, Dragons, and some Marines.
Most notably in terms of indication of time spent, there was no extra glue stuck where it shouldn't be. I've used super glue, and when i manage not to glue myself to something I always end up with a drop here and there. He spent the time necessary to glue canteens, med kits, magazine pouches, weapons in hands, etc with no glue overrun.
So Jerry Napier/Bob Hughes/DeltaStrikeForce/Audie Murphy
, who claimed to look with derision on our hobby, and who mocked interest in "toys", was at the same time spending untold hours getting his toys and the ones he stole from us set up exactly the way he wanted them. Ha!Not that any of this was a good idea. Even if he had acquired these items legally and was not a despicable, worthless excuse for a human being, I would question the wisdom of his plan. For one reason, it's not a good idea to make it impossible to correct an error. For another, at least 5 figures had broken weapons glued into their hands. I was only able to get one out. The others are there for good, and since most of the hands are glued to the arms, and some of the arms are glued to the bodies, I'll have trouble swapping a couple of them out. I may post a message later looking for a couple of replacement arms.
Does anyone know of a product that will loosen super glue but not ruin the plastic? That would be a big help.
For those of you who weren't here for all this, here are some links:
viewtopic.php?t=527&highlight=audie
viewtopic.php?t=6745&highlight=audie
viewtopic.php?t=7640&highlight=hughes
viewtopic.php?t=5420&highlight=hughes
viewtopic.php?t=5578&highlight=hughes
viewtopic.php?t=5106&highlight=hughes
