This and many other stories read in P.Net are the reason why I simply never leave gear in my car, no matter where it's parked. My wife understands it, and if it's to keep it from being stolen she'll tolerate that I lug about a camera into the Chicago Lyric Opera.
I read a long time ago that during a garbage collector's strike in NY, in the sixties or seventies, some city officer devised a way to get rid of his garbage and pull a fast one on thieves: he put some of his home garbage in bags, gift-wrapped the bags in fancy paper and bows, and left them in the passenger seat of his car, with the window rolled down (why risk a broken glass).
Packages never lasted more than a few minutes. I think he said he would have liked to be there when the thieves opened the package. I imagine chicken bones, orange peel, assorted discarded items of the smelly persuasion... 🙂