A local musician who had two electric guitars stolen last week was sure he would never see his beloved instruments again, but in a strange twist, he got them back a day later.

The guitars were stolen sometime April 5 when he left his truck overnight at The Boro Bar and Grill, after his band, Cuttlefish, performed there.

When he returned the next day the, guitars were gone.

“My logic told me they were gone for good,” Casey Strength said.

Strength and Jim Elrod, a guitar player in the band, work at Chambers Guitars on Memorial Boulevard. Elrod was at work Monday morning when a man came into the store to sell some guitars.

When Elrod asked what type of guitars, the man first told him he had a Fender Stratocaster.

“No flags were going off in my head,” Elrod said. “It’s a pretty common guitar.”

The man then asked the value of a Wilson Brothers Ventures Model guitar, which Elrod said is very rare.

“The whole time I had to bite my tongue,” Elrod said, adding that he knew he was talking to the man who had stolen his friend’s guitars.

Elrod called Strength and said he should come down to the store.

“I knew what was going on,” Strength said.

When he arrived at the store, Strength said the man was walking down the road away from the store. Strength trailed the man in his car and called Murfreesboro Police Detective Kerry Thorpe to inform him of the situation.

After Thorpe conducted an investigation, Timothy R. McDonald, 32, of 7406 Appomattox Drive was charged with the theft of the guitars, valued at more than $1,000.

The guitars were then recovered and returned to Strength, who said he was relieved to have them back.

“Those are instruments I had the chance to figure out and really bond with,” Strength said. “It was a big sigh of relief, more than I can describe.”