The central question in a dispute involving two Oklahoma sheriff's offices is whether a Stillwater man's stolen four-wheeler should have been returned to him after it was recovered — or could lawfully become county property years later. Stacey McCurry says thieves broke into his property in 2020 and stole a 2016 Yamaha ATV and several firearms. Although Grady County deputies recovered the four-wheeler in 2021, it remained in the department's possession for years before a court order awarded it to the sheriff's office, prompting McCurry to sue.
McCurry had paid about $6,000 for the ATV and had barely used it before thieves breached multiple padlocks on two shipping containers on his Stillwater property to steal it in 2020, according to a report on the Oklahoma Shooters forum. Grady County Sheriff's Office deputies recovered the stolen four-wheeler and firearms in 2021, but rather than quickly reuniting the property with its owner, the vehicle sat in the department's possession for years. As reported by KOCO, McCurry is now fighting to recover the four-wheeler after learning a judge had granted it to Grady County instead of returning it to him.
How the Sheriff's Office Got Legal Title
On June 9, 2025, Grady County Sheriff Gary Boggess signed a sworn application asserting ownership of the recovered ATV, and a district judge issued an order that day awarding title to the sheriff's office, according to a video posted by the Law Office of Roland Mumford. The filing was one of seven similar applications submitted by the department that day. The application relied on Title 22, Section 1325 of the Oklahoma Statutes, which addresses personal property held for at least six months when the owner is unknown or has not claimed it. The statute also requires that the property no longer be needed as evidence or for litigation before an agency seeks to dispose of it, according to the Oklahoma Legal Information System.
Grady County has said the department put new tires on the ATV before seeking court authorization to keep it for official use, the sheriff's office reported. Grady County also published its own account disputing the initial KOCO investigation, saying the four-wheeler had only been registered for one day before that registration was purged from state systems. The Payne County Sheriff's Office pushed back hard on that version of events.
What Oklahoma's unclaimed-property law establishes
According to Oklahoma Statutes Title 22, Section 1325, a sheriff's office may seek disposition of personal property it has held for at least six months when the owner is unknown or has not claimed it, so long as the property is no longer needed as evidence or for litigation. The provision can authorize an agency to retain, sell or destroy qualifying property, rather than automatically returning it to the person who later identifies it. The statute sets out notice, publication and hearing requirements, while whether those steps occurred in this case remains disputed. Whether Grady County satisfied the statute's requirements — and what effect McCurry's identification of the ATV and subsequent lawsuit have on the court-ordered title — remain disputed issues.
The Two Departments Tell Very Different Stories
Rockford Brown, an investigator with the Payne County Sheriff's Office, called Grady County's account completely inaccurate. Brown said records in the National Crime Information Center, the FBI-maintained database used to track stolen property, remain available and accurate, and that the ATV would have shown up in the system back in 2021 when Grady County recovered it. Instead, Payne County acknowledged it never re-entered the four-wheeler into NCIC after an earlier oversight, which Brown described simply as a mistake — not evidence the property had been abandoned.
Property entries in NCIC automatically purge after four years unless a reporting agency manually re-enters them, which is what allowed McCurry's 2020 stolen ATV report to lapse in 2024, according to a post from Courtney Shelton Wyrick on Facebook. Brown said a correct VIN search would have generated a hit notification back to Payne County regardless of the database purge, and Grady County's original search warrant listed the four-wheeler's VIN as N/A. Oklahoma does not require ATVs or other off-road vehicles to be registered with the state's motor vehicle agency, which is why VIN checks can return no record even for a legitimately owned vehicle, Grady County's own Facebook post on the matter acknowledged.
A Prosecutor Calls the Justification Nonsense
Payne and Logan Counties District Attorney Jeremiah Gregory appeared in an interview published by Guerrilla Publishing. Gregory took office in Payne and Logan Counties in August 2026 following public controversy over previous office cases, pledging greater transparency and victim advocacy in local law enforcement disputes.
The dispute echoes a broader pattern in Oklahoma law enforcement's use of unclaimed property statutes. In a case involving the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office, Title 22, Section 1325 was used to claim cash and firearms from nearly 1,000 citizens; the property had been seized since 2005, The Frontier reported.
Sheriff Says He Will Give Back the Four-Wheeler
Following KOCO's September 16 investigative report and the public pressure that followed, Sheriff Boggess said his office was pursuing the legal process to return the four-wheeler to McCurry. Boggess has said he has no intention of keeping the four-wheeler and is going through the legal process to hand it back, per the same KOCO report. Still, McCurry told the station he had not heard directly from the sheriff since KOCO's initial story aired, and his attorney said they look forward to seeing the sheriff follow through on that stated position.
McCurry has since filed a lawsuit against the Grady County Sheriff's Office over the four-wheeler, and open questions remain about whether he might be reimbursed for the roughly $1,060 the department spent on repairs, and about what, if anything, changes in how Oklahoma agencies use Title 22 filings going forward.
