A decades-long search for a one-of-a-kind 1938 Talbot-Lago T150C-SS Teardrop coupe worth an estimated $7.6 million has stalled in legal limbo even as the detective who made the case his obsession expands his hunt to another famed missing car.
The Teardrop, one of only two examples of the Art Deco masterpiece, disappeared in 2001 from a shuttered Milwaukee plastics factory. The car resurfaced years later in the possession of a wealthy collector, triggering litigations that reached the Wisconsin Supreme Court and an investigation by the FBI. Key developments — including the death of an heir who had retained a private investigator, and the FBI’s decision to drop charges against a dealer once accused of trafficking the vehicle — have left the coupe locked in storage and its future unresolved.
The Teardrop is widely regarded as a masterpiece in automotive design and, in the collector market, as effectively irreplaceable. On the night of the theft in March 2001, men wearing white overalls cut telephone lines at the home of owner Roy Leiske and then removed the car from a factory where it had been stored. According to accounts cited in a new book by Stayton Bonner, the thieves dismantled the vehicle, lifted pieces into a truck with a crane and took nearly all paperwork and receipts dating back decades. Nothing else at the site was disturbed.
Leiske spent years searching for the car before his death in 2005. Ownership of the missing vehicle passed to a distant cousin, Richard Mueller, who in 2006 hired private investigator Joe Ford. Ford agreed to take the case on his own dime in exchange for an 80% interest if the car was recovered. Ford’s motivation was partly personal: his daughter Julia has a degenerative eye disease, and Ford said he sought financial security for her.
Ford, a Florida-based detective in his 60s, specializes in tracking high-end, often internationally stolen vehicles that routinely fall outside the scope of regular police resources. His career grew from importing and selling European luxury cars in the 1980s, work that built contacts and an intimate knowledge of chassis numbers and paperwork often exploited in car theft schemes. Over the years Ford has assisted in investigations ranging from recovered engines hidden in race boats to organized theft rings moving multimillion-dollar classics overseas.
The long-awaited break in the Talbot-Lago case came in 2016 when investigators learned the car had been offered for sale and was now in Illinois. Rick Workman, founder of Heartland Dental, wired approximately $7.6 million for the vehicle in 2015 after purchasing it from Christopher Gardner, an importer and a figure with whom Ford had a prior relationship. When Workman attempted to register the car in Illinois, its status tripped the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) stolen vehicle database.
The discovery prompted a Milwaukee police probe handled by veteran detective Jeff Thiele and eventually a civil fight over title. Gardner has denied wrongdoing and told the author of the recent book that he purchased the vehicle lawfully and maintained a record of honest business dealings. A criminal case drew interest from federal authorities.
In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Workman’s possession of the car restarted the six-year statute of limitations clock, giving Ford and Mueller new legal footing to pursue recovery. The litigation and investigations continued, but the trajectory shifted in 2024 when Mueller, then 77, suffered a fatal stroke. Days later, the FBI announced it was dropping its case against Gardner, citing an inability to secure testimony it considered necessary to meet the burden of proof.
Those developments have left the Teardrop stored and inaccessible while civil ownership questions and the criminal past of the vehicle remain unresolved. Ford has criticized the decision to end the federal case, calling Mueller a pivotal witness and expressing frustration that authorities concluded they could not proceed without him. Gardner, for his part, has pushed back against allegations, telling the book’s author that the claims against him are baseless.
While the Teardrop sits in legal uncertainty, Ford has turned attention to another high-profile missing vehicle: the Aston Martin DB5 used in the 1964 James Bond film "Goldfinger," which vanished from a private hangar in Boca Raton in 1997. Testimony in the Talbot-Lago matter included assertions by a Florida mechanic that Gardner claimed to have helped remove the Talbot-Lago and had left the state in 1997 — the same year the Bond DB5 disappeared. Ford said those connections raised the possibility that Gardner or associates could have moved the DB5 internationally under false identification.
Gardner dismissed the suggestion, at one point quipping that he was "James Bond" and responding to the allegations with profanity. Ford continues to investigate the DB5 and other leads while maintaining a network of contacts in the niche world of rare-car collectors, restorers and brokers.
The Teardrop case highlights the unusual legal and practical challenges posed by the theft of ultra-rare collectibles. Law enforcement agencies and insurers often have limited incentives to pursue lengthy cross-border recovery efforts, and heirs or purchasers may find themselves entangled in protracted title disputes when a rare object resurfaces. In this instance, the car’s scarcity and high value have complicated efforts to resolve ownership and to move the vehicle beyond contested storage.
The story of the Talbot-Lago and of Ford’s pursuit is recounted in the new book by Stayton Bonner, which blends details of the theft, the court battles and Ford’s career hunting stolen classics. For now, the Teardrop remains physically secured but legally unclaimed, and Ford’s search continues — for the coupe and for other missing automotive icons that collectors and the public regard as cultural artifacts as much as vehicles.