After a preliminary hearing Frank Frazetta Jr. was bound over for trial in Monroe County Court on charges of burglary, criminal trespass and theft, reports the Pocono Record, though the date must still be set.

Frank Jr. was arrested by police in December after he allegedly broke into the family museum using a backhoe and removed about 90 paintings worth an estimated $20 million.

Frank Frazetta Sr., making his first public comments since his son was arrested, told the Record on March 26 that he never gave Frank Frazetta Jr. permission to take his paintings.

…Frank Sr. talked Tuesday from his home in Boca Grande, an island off the southwest coast of Florida. Despite claims to the contrary, he was lucid and feisty — just what you’d expect from an 82-year-old Italian grandfather from Brooklyn.

And Frank Sr. got personal.

“My son is an alien,” he said. “There’s no telling what he’ll do. He’s been like that for, I don’t know, how many years. We played baseball in the old days. He always chose the opposite side from me.”

Coincidentally, March 26 was the day Frank Jr.’s supporters held a candlelight vigil “to save Frank Frazetta Sr. and his artwork.”

The defense has been justifying Frank Jr.’s attempt to take the paintings with a letter supposedly dictated by Frank Sr. asking for help. It was witnessed by notary Adeline Bianco, who testified in a preliminary hearing that a little more than a week before the alleged burglary, the elder Frazetta, 82, told her he wanted Frank Jr. to protect his paintings by any means necessary. 

The letter, in somewhat fractured language, said in part, “I Frank Frazetta … of sound mind and body of this date hereby order nothing and not the 2 daughters or 2 sons who can sign take or assume none of my possessions either tangible or monetary. I will have a will and list what each is to have. Until then, I hereby put a end to them using me.”

[Via Andrew Porter and Joe Siclari.]