Candy Maker’s Copper Pot Gone

Family On Alert For Stolen Kettle

Owners of Kopper Kettle Candies near Van Buren are trying to recover a huge copper kettle that has stood outside the business since 1957 or 1958. The kettle turned up missing Tuesday morning.
Owners of Kopper Kettle Candies near Van Buren are trying to recover a huge copper kettle that has stood outside the business since 1957 or 1958. The kettle turned up missing Tuesday morning.

The owners of the Kopper Kettle Candies company are working frantically to recover a huge copper kettle that has stood outside the Crawford County business for decades as a symbol of their pride in the company.

“I’m desperate to find it in hopes of finding it whole,” co-owner Thomas Greer said Wednesday.

The 350- to 400-pound 5-foot-circumference kettle has sat on a brick base in front of the small candy-making business on Alma Highway east of Van Buren since 1957 or 1958. Someone stole it some time between Saturday and Monday, he said. Greer’s grandmother, Betty Greer, bought the kettle while on an antique buying excursion in Oklahoma, he said.

Greer’s wife, Jodi, noticed the kettle missing Tuesday morning and called him to ask him about it. The reality that it had been stolen quickly sunk in, he said.

Since then, Greer, his niece and her husband have called as many as 70 metal recyclers in a 100-mile radius of the shop to alert them in case someone tries to sell it. They have called recyclers and scrap yards from Tulsa to Little Rock to Hot Springs to Joplin, he said.

“We called and called and called and kept calling to let them know what’s going on,” he said.

The Crawford County sheriff’s office has alerted all the scrap yards in the area, investigator Ken Howard said.

The thieves “almost would have to ship it out of the United States to find a scrap-metal place that doesn’t know about it,” he said.

Howard said some evidence, which he would not identify, has been collected at the business and sent to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock for processing.

Greer fears that the kettle was stolen for the value of its metal and that it may be cut up to be sold.

He appealed to the person or persons who took it to return it whole.

“Just like the kettle represented what is best about our approach to making the best candy with pride, we think the kettle also represented the pride of our local community,” he said.

The company uses copper kettles because they are the highest quality and allow workers to produce the best candy.

Greer also has gone to other businesses in the area to ask them to check their surveillance cameras for any footage that could help determine who took the kettle. Howard said sheriff ’s deputies also have canvassed the neighbors.

The building was not equipped with surveillance cameras, Greer said, but now they are installing cameras.

The thieves who took the kettle may have a hard time if they are trying to sell it for scrap, said Sean Yaffe, president of Yaffe Iron and Metal Corp. in Fort Smith.

“These people probably have no clue it’s not going to be easy,” he said.

Most states have laws that require persons selling any metal scrap except aluminum cans to provide detailed information about themselves and the metal they are trying to sell, he said.

They have to provide a valid driver’s license; the seller and the scrap are photographed; their fingerprints are taken; and they must provide information on what they purchased, when, where and from whom, he said. Dealers are required to record the tag number of the vehicle the scrap seller is driving.

“It has cut down considerably on copper thefts,” Yaffe said. “There has been a significant reduction because of the legislation.”

If a stolen piece of metal is put into the Institute of Scrap and Recycling Industries system, he said, the description of the metal and photographs of it will be circulated to more than 1,600 members in the United States and 30 countries. The information also can be downloaded to law enforcement agencies, he said.

Yaffe also said the size of the kettle will make scrap dealers suspicious. And even if the kettle is cut up, the pieces will still suggest that it once was a kettle.

Howard said there are several markings on the kettle that would make even pieces of it identifiable.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/25/2013

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