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HOW THE THEFT INVESTIGATION WORKED
The LAPD’s Art Theft Detail is, according to contemporaneous and more recent reporting, a genuinely unusual unit in American law enforcement. The Artnet News profile of Detective Donald Hrycyk notes that it is the only unit of its kind in the country, and that Hrycyk operated, for much of his career, as its sole full-time detective. Over approximately twenty years in the role, he recovered more than $107 million in stolen goods—a range of items that included fine art, cultural artifacts, and, in the case of the Cage theft, a comic book.
Hrycyk’s methods involved maintaining contact with dealers, experts, and the broader community of people who might encounter stolen works at auction, through private sale, or through professional authentication channels. When stolen property appears for sale, it often passes through expert hands—someone is asked to assess it, appraise it, sell it, or insure it—and those expert hands are the points in the chain where a theft can be detected, if the expert knows what to look for and is willing to report it.
This is exactly what happened in the Cage case. When the unidentified buyer of the storage locker contents brought the comic to Mark Balelo in Simi Valley, and Balelo contacted Stephen Fishler, the point of contact between the stolen property and the expert network occurred. Fishler had sold this specific copy to Cage. He recognized it, or had reason to believe it was the same copy, and he knew it had been reported stolen. He contacted the authorities rather than proceeding with the sale. This decision was the mechanism of recovery.