Stolen Stradivarius violin found in locked case three decades after it was snatched

A Stradivarius violin that disappeared without a trace in 1980 has been recovered after more than three decades and will be returned to the family of late violinist Roman Totenberg, according to his daughters.

The violin, one of the finest stringed instruments created by its namesake luthier, is due to be returned to Totenberg’s daughters – including Nina Totenberg, the legal affairs correspondent for NPR News – during a formal ceremony yesterday.

Totenberg first reported the discovery of her father’s stolen violin on NPR’s Morning Edition on Thursday. She recounted how the instrument had been snatched from her father’s office as he thanked well-wishers after a concert in May 1980.

“It was a crushing loss for my father,” Totenberg wrote. “As he put it, he had lost his ’musical partner of 38 years’.”

Totenberg said her father had always suspected it was stolen by an aspiring violinist whom he did not know, but whom he had spotted outside his office, located at Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, around the time the instrument disappeared.

The man’s ex-girlfriend came to the Totenberg house soon after the instrument disappeared and said she believed he had stolen it, Totenberg said. But law enforcement officials said the woman’s speculation was not enough to seek a search warrant.