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The Honda was parked near the corner of Joe Sayers Avenue and Houston Street in the Brentwood neighborhood in North Austin. Ledford said he knocked on his neighbors' doors trying to find the owner, but no one knew anything about the car.

He figured it had been stolen and left there, so he called the police. According to police records, two officers arrived at 5:27 p.m. but were gone within seven minutes.

"I told them, 'Isn't it strange that someone parked their car there with the windows down and the keys in it?' " Ledford said. "Their answer was, 'It's parked legally. What's the problem?' It seemed suspicious to me, but the police were telling me they don't care."

However, the officers held back a crucial detail: The police had actually left the car there themselves.

The Honda was a so-called bait vehicle, stocked with an alarm, surveillance equipment and a tracking system. Austin police began their bait vehicle program in 1997 and say they have up to nine cars deployed at any one time on city streets. They simply wait for thieves to take the bait, and the GPS tracking units make them easy to find. Because the whole thing is captured on videotape, the evidence can help secure a conviction.

The undercover program produced 70 warrants or arrests in 2008 and 13 this year, according to Sgt. Oliver Tate with the Police Department's auto theft interdiction unit. In the past, Detective John Spillers has been quoted as saying the program has caught suspects as young as 13.

The police did not specify what the arrests were for, how many resulted in convictions or why the number of arrests has declined in 2009. Nor did they provide figures on how much the program costs. However, in 2007 the City Council received an $85,287 one-year grant from the state for bait car equipment.

As the parked Honda remained in front of Ledford's house, he said he and Ward began to imagine various crime scenarios.

"It looked like it was a woman's car," Ward said. "There was a bikini top or something in the back. The key chain had tacky things hanging off it. There was broken glass in the back seat, as if the window had been broken. And, strangely, there was also a pair of men's work boots and some rope. Maybe I've read too many serial killer books, but I thought it was a stripper's car and that maybe she had been murdered and the car had been dumped — maybe with her body in the trunk."

On a Saturday night — three days after the car had been left at the house — Ledford and Ward came home after going out for ice cream and a movie, and decided it was up to them to try to figure out whose car it was.

First, Ledford put on gloves. "I'm thinking, 'This is a crime scene,' and didn't want to leave fingerprints," he said. "I'm thinking, 'I've reported the car to the police, and they did nothing. It's time to get to the bottom of this.' "

They opened the car door and began a search, all of which was captured on the vehicle's video camera mounted in the dashboard. In the video, a copy of which was obtained by the American-Statesman, Ledford uses his cell phone as a flashlight to inspect the car's interior, reporting what he finds to Ward. He takes the keys out of the ignition and tries to open the trunk, which, unknown to him, is full of surveillance equipment.

The lock is jammed, which Ledford said made him even more suspicious, so he gets a screwdriver and tries to open the trunk again, without success. Minutes later, the couple are standing outside the car talking when a flashing light appears and a police officer says, "Get on the ground!"

Ledford and Ward were handcuffed; they waived their right to a lawyer. They told their story to the police investigator at the scene, Spillers. The police eventually let them go. The couple went inside, ate their ice cream and watched a movie. They thought that was the end of it, they said.

Except it wasn't. Sixteen days later, on Ward's birthday, the police came to the house with an affidavit and arrested them on a charge of burglary of a vehicle, a Class A misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and up to a $4,000 fine. The affidavit, written by Spillers, notes that Ledford was wearing gloves to avoid leaving prints, and both he and his girlfriend "admitted to Mark getting a screwdriver and trying to get in the trunk."

The affidavit does not mention Ledford's previous call to police or that the car was parked near his house. It concludes that Spillers "believes this action constitutes more than mere curiosity or trying to locate the owner's information."

Neither Spillers nor the prosecutor, Assistant County Attorney Vicki Ashley, would comment on the case.

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meatcakeman said:
Texas is full of fucked up shit.

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MFDoom666 said:
don't bring that west coast bullshit over here.

oh yea, y'all already did.

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Thebooedocksaint said:
Moral of the story, tell the cops you have concern about there possibly being a bomb in the car.

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