A Picasso etching stolen from a Milwaukee art gallery in 2018 sat in a vacant apartment for years, collecting dust, while law enforcement apparently couldn't find it — until a landlord doing his job stumbled across it last week.

Bill DeLind, owner of DeLind Fine Art Appraisals, had written off the signed "Torero" print as gone for good. One of only 30 known to exist with Picasso's signature, the piece was appraised at $35,000 to $50,000 when it was taken. His late business partner called police every single year on the anniversary of the theft, begging them to publicize the case again. Nobody recovered it. Then Tim Dertz, a Milwaukee landlord, was cleaning out an apartment after an eviction and found the print hanging on a wall, coated in dust.

"It was kind of in a weird spot hanging on a wall," Dertz told WISN-TV. "It looked like it had been there for a long, long time because it had tons of dust across the top of it."

Dertz showed it to an antique dealer friend who recognized it as the stolen Picasso. He handed it over to police, who finally called DeLind.

"I was overwhelmed," DeLind said Friday. "I was at a loss for words. It was an overwhelming moment for me."

DeLind's own gallery sticker was still on the back of the framed print — exactly where he'd placed it in 2018. "It was indeed mine," he said. "It came back full circle."

So where were the professionals? The Milwaukee Police Department noted in an email Friday that the statute of limitations for theft and property crimes is generally six years — meaning the clock on prosecuting whoever stole it may have already run out, even as the department says the case "remains under investigation." The FBI's Milwaukee office, through spokesperson Caroline Clancy, declined to comment at all.

Eight years. A $50,000 piece of stolen art hanging on a wall in an apartment in the same city where it was taken, and no detective managed to track it down. It took a landlord clearing out a unit after an eviction to do what law enforcement couldn't — or wouldn't.

DeLind's former business partner died in February, still distraught over the loss. "He would have been over the moon about this," DeLind said. "It was special to him."

The print now sits in police custody while the client who had commissioned it for sale works things out with an insurance company. No arrests have been announced. The evicted tenant who had the Picasso hanging on their wall hasn't been publicly identified, and it's unclear whether they were the thief or simply someone who ended up with stolen property.

Both the New York Post and The Guardian ran essentially identical copy on this story — neither pressed law enforcement on how a stolen, signed Picasso could sit in a Milwaukee apartment for the better part of a decade without a single detective turning it up. The question answers itself: property crime doesn't rank high on the priority list.

A working man cleans out an apartment and solves what the system couldn't be bothered to. The art world got lucky. The rest of us shouldn't have to.