FBI seizes rare gun believed stolen from Springfield Armory
SPRINGFIELD — A rare antique rifle, one of only four of its kind manufactured at the Springfield Armory, is back in the hands of the U.S. government, according to court documents unsealed this week.
The carbine that the Springfield Armory made as a possible gun for the U.S. Calvary in the years following the Civil War went missing from the armory's collection in Springfield years after the National Park Service began to manage the historical site, the FBI wrote in an affidavit filed in federal court.
In October, an FBI agent told U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts that investigators believed they identified the gun and requested permission to seize it, which had been sold to a collector in 2021 for $5,000.
The collector had allowed the FBI to study the firearm.
In a motion filed this week, Carol E. Head, the assistant U.S. attorney who leads an asset recovery unit, wrote that the rifle — a model 1868 trapdoor saddle ring carbine — was in the government's possession.
Head filed a forfeiture action in federal court Tuesday, which gives parties an opportunity to contest the government's seizure of the carbine.
Started by George Washington during the Revolutionary War, the Springfield Armory manufactured firearms for the federal government until 1968.
The gun was found to be missing from the Springfield Armory's collection during an inventory in 1985. It was known to be part of the collection in 1979.
Throughout the years, federal officials received information about the rifle's whereabouts, the FBI affidavit said. For instance, in the 1990s, several collectors told the National Park Service that the gun was stolen and ended up in the hands of a collector by the name of Gerald Denning, who has since died.
Along the way, parts of the rifle had been replaced and its serial number defaced.
'This information continued to be reported to NPS staff through 2002, and included information that to conceal (the rifle's) true identity and association to the Springfield Armory, the serial number had been obliterated, and the stock changed,' FBI Special Agent Pasquale Morra wrote in the affidavit. 'The reporting also claimed Denning did not wish to cooperate with law enforcement.'
The rifle surfaced briefly in 2015 when a curator at the Springfield Armory learned that Denning's family was trying to sell it at a gun show in Baltimore. The FBI did not seek its recovery then, Morra wrote.
After the collector purchased the gun in 2021, the FBI brought the rifle to its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, but it was unable to fully read the number stamped on the gun's butt, which had been marked over so the full number was illegible, the affidavit said.
Next, the FBI brought the gun to a private university where it examined the serial number on the barrel with an electron scanning microscope, but the serial number was covered in metal solder.
A curator with the Springfield Armory also examined the firearm and said the gun's trigger guard, lock plate, receiver and stock may have been switched out.
While the Springfield Armory National Historic Site was closed to the public Tuesday, a National Park Service employee who answered the door said he did not know about the government's efforts to recover the rifle. He directed questions to Springfield Armory Historic Site Superintendent Kelly Fellner, who did not answer an emailed request for an interview.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment while the legal proceedings are still pending.
This is not the only historical object federal officials say was taken from the Springfield Armory. In March 2023, federal officials announced they recovered a percussion cap pistol that was taken from the museum in 1971. Months later, officials said they recovered 24 marksmanship medals that went missing in the 1990s.
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