A man charged with stealing a Confederate monument during a bizarre ransom scheme that threatened to turn the relic into a toilet said he had shown how “police do not always get the right man” after authorities recently abandoned the national headline-making prosecution against him.

A group calling itself White Lies Matter issued written threats to urinate and defecate on the chair if its owners – the United Daughters of the Confederacy – did not hang a particular banner outside their headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, by 9 April 2021, the 156th anniversary of the Confederate surrender ending the US civil war.