Two bass guitars reported missing Friday following a burglary in Vicksburg have been returned.

Vicksburg police Capt. Sandra Williams said this is not a regular occurrence.

“Out of all of my years in investigations, I have never seen this before,” Williams said. “I guess some people still have a conscience.”

The bass guitars valued at $1,000 were reported stolen at 1:40 p.m. Friday from a 2006 Ford Explorer on the 600 block of Rigby St., Williams said. There was no forced entry or damage done to the vehicle belonging to both Brenda Eastman and Robert Jackson, a friend of the Eastman family. The instruments belong to Brenda’s husband William Eastman. All three live at the residence on Rigby Street.

The Eastmans told all their neighbors and everyone they know that they reported the crime to police and also alerted the pawn shops to make it hard for the burglar to try to pawn the instruments.

Both instruments were returned on the back porch of the Eastmans’ home, where the vehicle was parked when the items were stolen at 4 p.m. Tuesday with a note addressed to Eastman’s daughter Angela expressing guilt, Williams said.

The note reads, “To: Angela I Just Couldn’t Do you like that so Im Returning These Back To you….,”

Brenda said the note was written to make it look like the guitars were stolen by a friend of her daughter Angela, but her daughter just moved to the area and doesn’t know many people here. Brenda believed the only possible person to take the instruments was her neighbor’s friend who is always hanging around her house.

After she accused him of taking the guitars, they were returned to her back porch.

“I’m just so glad to get them back,” Brenda said. “But the note is the part that got me. They wanted to take the blame off them and try to put it on my daughter.”

She thinks he either felt guilty or he got scared when she told him the crime was reported to the police. Later he confessed to her. Brenda said she is not going to press charges, but she told him to never come on her property again. “The main thing is you took from me, we trusted you to come into our house, sit in our yard and treated you with respect, and you disrespected us and violated our property,” Brenda said.