Three people have been charged with felonies after a months-long investigation into the theft of six vehicles from a car lot in Belmont.

Heather Blessing, 32, of Unionville, and Jason Magnus, 39 of Bedford, were both charged with theft and aiding, inducing or causing theft, both Level 5 felonies, on May 9.

Ricky Harden, 35, of Nashville, was charged with theft, a Level 5 felony, also on May 9.

An investigation began on March 1 after four trucks and two cars were stolen from Bruce’s Auto Sales in Belmont the night before. The owner told police the insurance claim on the loss of the vehicles was for $68,000.

Blessing had sent text messages and photos to potential buyers of the stolen vehicles, according to police reports. Magnus also received those messages and also helped to steal vehicles, police said. Harden was a former employee of the car lot.

“From day one, I always knew it was an inside job. I felt it was with the way they got in, the way they drove cars away instead of towing them or breaking the (steering) column and stealing them, like with a hot wire, like other car thieves do,” owner Bruce Gazvoda said.

Harden worked for Gazvoda from January to July in 2018. Gazvoda said Harden left “on good terms.”

He was out of state when the theft happened, but cameras were watching.

Surveillance footage showed two people with similar body types and builds to Blessing and Harden enter the car lot building on Feb. 28 just before 9:30 p.m., according to a probable cause affidavit by Det. Brian Shrader with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department.

The suspects attempted to cut the lines to the audio and video cameras, but they did not realize the memory card and videos were still working, his report said.

A man whom police believe to be Harden is seen entering the building and going straight to the place where Gazvoda had kept spare keys for the vehicles. The man and woman in the video then go to another place in the building to get keys that are hanging up.

Shrader noted that the woman in the video was wearing a jacket with a furry hood. It’s similar to the jacket Blessing was wearing in a photo of herself in one of the stolen cars, which police later found on a phone.

In April, one of the trucks was found burned in Terre Haute. Gazvoda was not able to put any of the vehicles back into his inventory.

He estimates that at the time of theft, he had around 20 cars in his lot. “It was about a third for sure, creeping up to a half of my stock. It hurt me bad,” he said.

Gazvoda filed an insurance claim for more than $60,000, but only received about half of that, he said.

“I’m slowly recovering. There were times when I thought about shutting down. It hit me pretty hard. I still haven’t been able to fill my lot back up with cars from that,” he said.

On April 6, Officer Sean Finley with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department reported recovering one of the stolen trucks. It was impounded. Inside the truck were receipts which led investigators to a Wal-Mart, where they saw security video of Harden and another woman. The two left the store in a white truck similar to the one that was stolen.

On April 24, Harden crashed a stolen Impala on Beech Tree Road in Brown County. He and two other women were charged with felonies in that case. One of the women ended up providing police with additional information on the stolen vehicle involved in that crash, along with the vehicles that were stolen from the car lot. She told police that Harden told her about stealing six vehicles from the lot.

Harden initially denied knowing anything about the stolen cars. He then said that three vehicles that had been stolen from the lot, including an Audi, had been given to him, the affidavit states. He told police that someone stole one of the trucks from him and that another person in Bloomington had bought the Audi.

Harden told police he tried to take one of the trucks back to someone, but they wouldn’t come to Brown County to get it, so he kept it at a friend’s cabin on Possum Trot Road. That cabin was later identified as where Blessing was living before she was arrested in Lawrence County on separate charges.

On May 1, police received a search warrant for a phone which Harden’s sister-in-law had. Shrader reported the phone belonged to Blessing at the time of the theft. On the phone, police reported finding messages between her and three other men, including Magnus.

Blessing had messaged him about doing a “job” that required driving a vehicle. Messages showed the two talking about the theft the afternoon of Feb. 28 and that Magnus would get a “few hundo” for his help.

Over the next few days, the two discussed the specs of the vehicles and trying to sell them. Messages stopped on March 6 when Blessing was arrested.

She tells one of the men in a text message that some of the vehicles are at her cabin on Possum Trot Road. After sending pictures to one of the men, Blessing wrote, “Dude, we got 5 trucks and 2 cars in 1 night,” the police report said.

Harden was booked into the Brown County jail on April 25 on an auto theft charge after the Beech Tree Road crash. Blessing remains in the Lawrence County jail.

Magnus had not been arrested as of May 16.