Update:  The recently erected cross at the Mojave site has been removed, according to local sites.

Just a week after it was stolen, and a few days after a huge reward was offered, the World War I memorial in the Mojave National Preserve in southern California may have been returned…maybe.

The caretakers for the site had already built a replacement, but had said they wouldn’t erect it without permission from the government, because to do so would have made them as bad as those who stole it: 

“We feel like if we did that, then we’d be no better than the people that took it,” [caretaker Wanda Sandoz] said. “We have to abide the law, like it or not.”

Yesterday, a white cross suddenly appeared on the site.  The National Park Service said it would be removed because it was an illegal replacement; then someone started wondering if the original cross had not been replaced but returned.  Now the NPS says it will figure out if it is the original cross, and, if so, it can stay.  Otherwise, it comes down.

Because a replica of the cross would somehow be illegal while the thing of which it was a physical duplicate would not be…