Gold bars stashed in cat box before hurricane disappear

PANAMA CITY — With Hurricane Irma approaching Florida in September, Cynthia Copley, 70, and her 69-year-husband frantically made plans to evacuate.

But they needed help moving $26,000 in gold bars they’d bought for their retirement. They asked their neighbor to help them move the bars, which were hidden in a cat-litter box, to a boat on their property for safekeeping.

The storm didn’t hit Panama City, the Panhandle city where the couple lives. And they thought all was fine until they discovered their gold was missing about a week later. They called their neighbor, Corey Lofton, who had helped them move the gold bars, but he told them he had moved to Jacksonville.

So, they called the Bay County Sheriff’s Office on Sept. 15. And three months later, Lofton is back in Bay County to face grand theft charges. He was arrested this week in Jacksonville on DUI and violation of probation charges.

Cynthia Copley said sheriff’s investigators haven’t told her whether they recovered any of the gold.

“We kind of figured it was long gone. We were hopeful, but since that happened in September, it’s pretty much a lost cause,” she said. “I just want to see him in jail.”

Why did the Copleys stash between 15 and 20 gold bars in a cat-litter box?

“We were frantic,” Cynthia Copley told the News Herald. “We were so worried about the storm. Unfortunately, we didn’t think about anyone taking advantage of us.”

She said they put the litter box on their boat and moved it to an inland property to weather the storm.

In an incident report filed in September, a deputy sheriff wrote that he contacted Lofton’s mother who lives next door to the Copleys. She told investigators she didn’t know where her son was, but that “he had spontaneously left town over the weekend to work in Jacksonville.”

Lofton had been arrested on a drug charge in May and violated his probation by moving to Jacksonville.