Riddle me this, Batman: When a custom car shop in Indiana does not deliver a Batmobile replica to a customer, why would a California sheriff send four deputies cross-country to arrest the shop's owner, jail him and freeze his assets?
The answer: The guy who ordered the Batmobile is apparently a friend of the sheriff.
The district attorney and board of supervisors in San Mateo County had to solve this riddle recently when it was revealed that Sheriff Carlos Bolanos had sent deputies to a shop called Fiberglass Freaks in Logansport, Indiana, which is licensed by DC Comics to build replicas of the George Barris Batmobile from the 1960s Adam West TV show. As reported by San Francisco's KGO ABC7 and spotted by The Drive, San Mateo real-estate agent Sam Anagnostou ordered himself up one of these $210,000 crime-fighting machines. (Considering the sweet 23-window VW bus Anagnostou is using in a real estate promotional video, he has an eye for the finer things.) But he managed to forfeit his place in the line for Batmobiles. And yes, there's a line for Batmobiles.
Mark Racop, who owns Fiberglass Freaks, said he has nine Batmobiles in production. He said Anagnostou was actually first in line, but he missed a $20,000 payment. "And he disappeared on me for over eight months, almost nine months," Racop said.
When Anagnostou didn't get his Batmobile on time, the account goes, Bolanos sent four deputies to Indiana, more than 2,000 miles beyond his Gotham City on the Bay. They were traveling on the taxpayers' dime — "four round-trip plane tickets, three nights of hotels, meals, rental cars, and a lot of overtime," ABC7 said. There, they arrested Racop on California felony charges and briefly threw him in an Indiana jail.
Did Anagnostou flake? Did Racop fail to deliver? Who knows, who cares. The real question is why would the sheriff get involved, and that's the riddle that ABC7 solved. The station says Anagnostou first filed a lawsuit, which was dismissed, then tried to interest police in Indiana to no avail, which is no surprise as it sounds like a civil matter. That's when Anagnostou turned his Bat-Signal in the direction of Bolanos, whom the station says was his friend. Or as the lede on the ABC7 story says, "Holy political favors, Batman!"
The sheriff obtained search warrants in San Mateo, yet the district attorney says he didn't realize the raid would happen in Indiana and said he didn't approve it. Now it sounds like the D.A. is going to dismiss the charges.
So Anagnostou is without wheels. And Racop could be off the hook, just as Batman and Robin wriggled off so many hooks over so many pots of boiling oil.
And where does that leave Sheriff Bolanos? Out of a job. Even before all this, he had lost a June primary election to a captain in his department. He was a lame duck when the Batmobile quest happened in July.
Some of ABC7's coverage of the story appears below.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the Fiberglass Freaks Batmobile, it rocks a GM LS3 (sorry, no atomic-battery-powered turbine engine), and it has a host of other nifty Bat-features. From the website: "Our top of the line replica comes with gadgets galore: the 'rocket exhaust' propane flamethrower works, the five highly-polished aluminum roll top dashboard doors glide open, the red beacon light flashes, the Batbeam antenna grid raises between the front windshields, and the detect-a-scope radar screen glows green. Features that were science fiction and were done with special effects on the TV show are reality on our cars now: a DVD player or a rear view camera display on the LCD screen in the dash, and the hood and trunk raise and lower with electric actuators. The high-end stereo provides excellent sound, even at highway speeds."
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