A woman from Meta pleaded guilty to stealing a vehicle from a state parking lot in Jefferson City and driving it back to Mexico, Missouri, in September 2018.
During a hearing before Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem, Deana Oliver, 46, pleaded guilty to one county of first-degree tampering. She was placed on five years supervised probation.
Oliver went to the parking lot of the Missouri Department of Mental Health on East Elm Street in September 2018, according to a Capitol Police Department probable cause statement. She checked several vehicles on the lot, many of them unlocked, and drove away with one that had keys on the floorboard.
Authorities said Oliver went to her daughter's home on Del Cerro Drive in Jefferson City and later traveled to her mother's home in Meta before eventually driving to Mexico.
In a written statement to authorities, a relative of Oliver's claimed Oliver's boyfriend had told them she had stolen the vehicle. Oliver's boyfriend also told the relative he had wiped fingerprints off areas of the vehicle and drove it to a public park in Mexico, where authorities eventually recovered it.
Authorities obtained a search warrant for Oliver's phone records, which included GPS locations, and the GPS records indicated Oliver had been in the Jefferson City area at the time the vehicle was reported to have been taken. The records also showed Oliver had traveled to Meta and Mexico.