Watefront Park mystery: Police using security camera footage in search for Lincoln's hat

Louisville police are investigating the disappearance of the bronze hat that sat next to a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln in Waterfront Park. If the hat of the 16th president is never found, a new one could be made.

Park officials provided LMPD with security camera recordings taken throughout the park, including the area where the Lincoln Memorial sculpture resides, Deborah Bilitski said. Bilitski is the president of the Waterfront Development Corporation, which manages the park.

More: Waterfront Park mystery: Abe Lincoln’s top hat has gone missing. Sculptor suspects theft

"We will work with LMPD to see what the cameras were able to view, but we just haven't gotten that far into (the investigation) yet," Bilitski said in an interview with the Courier Journal. "The biggest thing we've been trying to do is figure out when it actually occurred, so we can start asking them to review the footage of that particular time."

Bilitski said park staffers found out about the hat's disappearance Saturday when pictures of the sculpture without the hat were posted on social media.

After learning of the hat's disappearance, park officials filed a police report and detectives from the First Division began an investigation Monday, LMPD spokesperson Aaron Ellis said.

The sculpture, placed in Waterfront Park in 2009 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, had never been previously vandalized, Bilitski said. The sculptor of the memorial is Louisville resident Ed Hamilton, who also sculpted the Belvedere statue of York, a slave who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their North American expeditions.

"We are going to do everything in our power to try to figure out who took it and prosecute to the fullest extent," Bilitski said. "We are in communication with Ed Hamilton about replacing the hat and what that would take, but I think it's too soon to give a final answer on that."

Hamilton said Monday that he would look to see if he has the original mold of the hat in his studio. The mold is the hollow shape molten bronze is poured into.

"If I don't have the mold, then we'll just have to create a new one, a facsimile," Hamilton said.

Reach reporter Leo Bertucci at lbertucci@courierjournal.com or @leober2chee on X, formerly known as Twitter

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Police investigating missing sculpture case at Waterfront Park