With few answers and no thieves arrested yet, the mystery of the stolen cars from a Chamblee dealership just festers like a wound that won't heal.
Someone stole more than two dozen vehicles from the Landmark Dodge dealership sometime after it closed Monday night and before it opened Tuesday morning.
Now, the questions remain: Who did it, how did they do it, how many car thieves did it take to pull this off - and how did it happen so quickly?
Chamblee police are working around the clock, literally, to crack the case. They've arrested a couple of people accused of having some of the stolen vehicles in their possession and they've recovered some of those vehicles.
But they're still sorting out how many of those cars belong to the dealership and how many were left overnight by customers for service. Police told 11Alive that the dealership "didn't have a very accurate inventory."
The dealership's general manager, Mike Orcutt said, at first, that 33 cars were stolen. But police now say the reason three of those cars were gone is that they had been sold. A fourth was actually still on the lot.
That leaves us at 29 stolen cars - 29 too many. Police have since recovered at least 11 of the stolen cars. But still, they have questions.
Why was the dealership unsecured with cameras not working and how many thieves were there? Were any of them ever connected to the dealership? How did they know where to look? And when they found the keys, were they even locked up?
Police and owners want to know the same thing - how this crew moved over two dozen cars out so quickly - and undetected.
At least one person told 11Alive her car was at the dealership in the shop overnight and it was one of those stolen. Atlanta Attorney Darryl Cohen said that, under the law, the dealership will be liable for her loss.
And that would mean that there were more victims than the dealership. The dealership's general manager wasn't available to speak on Thursday. But, he told 11Alive on Wednesday that he feels violated by the theft.
"I'm feeling very angry, very frustrated, violated -- and I feel disappointed," Orcutt said. "I feel disappointed for our hard-working team that comes in here every day."
Police said the case is high-priority with an estimated $2 million worth of vehicles completely vanishing from one dealership in the night.
Detectives are hoping anyone who has a tip that can help will contact Crime Stoppers Atlanta for the reward.
