This story made front page news when it was first reported in Western Speedway’s Saturday May 10, 1958 program, with fans who shelled out a dime for the track publication reading of a crime that had been perpetrated on local Stockcar owner (and 2001 Inductee) Ted Mackenzie. Ted’s #4 1932 Ford coupe which Gerry Sylvester had driven the previous season had suddenly disappeared from it’s off-season storage location at VITRA President Frank Addison’s backyard during the recent Easter holiday weekend. In the investigation that followed the theft, no clues came to light and despite the best efforts of local law enforcement, it quickly became a “cold case”, one which has, in fact, remained unsolved to the present day. And unless sometime in the future some steel manufacturing equivalent of human DNA can be discovered that can somehow be traced by a metallurgist form of “genetic detective”, this now 63 year old crime will probably forever remain a mystery!
- Cover of May 10, 1958 program containing story of Stockcar theft.
- 1957 – The now long-vanished #4 Stockcar (Ted Mackenzie photo).
- 1957 – #4 car with (left to right) Frank Morris, car owner Ted Mackenzie, Bill Sim and driver Gerry Sylvester (Bud Glover photo).