This statue was stolen from a bed and breakfast in Cranston. It weighs at least 500 pounds.

Courtesy of Edgewood Manor Bed & Breakfast

CRANSTON — Behind the tony Edgewood Manor Bed & Breakfast, on a well-kept strip of lawn, is a large, round patch of dirt.

That barren spot is the only sign of one of the most brazen crimes to strike this city in months.

Andrew J. Lombardi, the owner of Edgewood Manor, said thieves made off Tuesday evening with a roughly 500- to 800-pound bronze statue of a mythic half-man, half-goat figure seducing a nymph.

“I came here the next morning and I was like, ‘Where the heck is the statue?’ ” he said, sitting in a living room at the manor yesterday. “I was pretty shocked.”

Maj. Ronald T. Blackmar of the Cranston police said detectives are investigating.

But the heist, however dramatic, is not the only metals theft to hit Cranston of late.

Blackmar said thieves have made off with copper gutters and downspouts stripped from older houses.

And the city is not alone.

With metals prices surging, in large part because of demand from emerging economies such as those in China and India, a rash of thefts has swept the state, the nation and the world in recent years.

Police across Rhode Island say thieves are yanking catalytic converters off vehicles to harvest precious metals.

In January, crooks swiped a bronze statue of Sacagawea and her baby from the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park near Astoria, Ore.

And last summer, thieves pulled 34 brass panels bearing the names of World War II dead from the walls of a memorial park.

Lawmakers have responded. The National Conference of State Legislatures lists 20 states, including Rhode Island, with laws meant to curb the theft of metals.

But Chuck Carr, vice president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in Washington, D.C., said laws alone will not do the trick.

He said law enforcement should make the crime a priority and develop better relationships with scrap metal dealers who receive stolen goods. Dealers should improve record-keeping and take a closer look at suspicious material and potential victims should do a better job of securing copper wire and other items that might not seem like obvious targets for theft, he said.

Lombardi, who is a chiropractor, said he bought the turn-of-the-century sculpture for $12,500 from an antiques dealer in Providence about 12 years ago.

Douglas Borkman, a technician in the sculpture department at the Rhode Island School of Design who looked at photographs of the piece yesterday, said it appeared to emulate ancient sculptures depicting Pan, a Greek god known for his sexual prowess, with a female figure.

Lombardi said he placed the statue behind the bed and breakfast, a converted Greek Revival mansion at 232 Norwood Ave., right after he bought it.

The sculpture quickly became a favorite: guests would often dress up the figures in the winter, Lombardi said.

But there were no guests at the bed and breakfast the day of the theft. Lombardi said he left the property late that afternoon.

Tracy Griffith, a Johnson & Wales University student who lives in the house and helps out as an innkeeper from time to time, said she arrived home from classes at about 10:30 p.m.

Griffith said she did not notice that the statue was missing that night. But she did see some tire tracks in the snowy parking lot.

The next day, Lombardi found just a few footsteps at the site — suggesting a small number of thieves with a lift or other machinery capable of handling the weighty statue.

Lombardi said he is filing a claim with his property insurance company. But he is also placing calls to scrap metal dealers and searching for listings on eBay in the hope that he will find the piece.

“Hopefully we’ll get it back,” he said. “It would be a sin for it to get melted down.”

dscharfe@projo.com