You might have stumbled across an ultra rare unit, and I expect the statute of limitations is up by now ... ;-}
A tad more complex than that.
The Statute of Limitations, varying state by state, only applies to
prosecution for the act of theft itself,
not for the
return of the stolen property which is generally unlimited in the United States. The right to ownership after a given period of time is a common misconception about how Limitations applies. Just because a stolen item is retained past the expiration of prosecution does not allow one to keep it,or criminals would simply hang onto collectibles, such as art or classic cars, past that date. This would only reward crime. So when you find that pile of cash which DB Cooper dropped, you technically can't keep it. (You've been warned.)
Stolen material
always remains the property of its owner and must, as a matter of law, be returned upon demand. A cloudy chain of title between thief and buyer does not eliminate the requirement. If an insurance company paid a claim it owns the stolen item, and is entitled to its return upon recovery. (If you think it the issue is complex on land, go look up maritime salvage law.) The controlling law, again, varies not merely by country, but even from state by state.
New York, for example, has very strict laws about recovery of stolen property, and it matters not that a good-faith purchaser did not knowingly purchase a stolen item. Once the item surfaces, the original owner, or its successor or assign, has three years to make a claim against the possessor. Since many items come up for sale in NYC auction houses, the law proves problematic for the putative owner of stolen art, no matter its purported provenance, which is usually fictitious. Very famous art dealers in Europe and NYC have been accused of, but not convicted for, knowingly selling artwork looted by the Nazis, for example. Some of the artwork had to be returned when the descendants were able to establish a claim. Art often vanishes for years, often decades, and the original owner still has a claim. Works that way for any property.
Some countries, like Switzerland, are the opposite: a good-faith purchaser has title superior to that of the victimized owner, and the original owner must prove that a peculiarity of the sale to the good-faith purchaser, even if not from the thief, should have tipped off the buyer as to irregularities in the purportedly clear title.
Anyway, the short version is that the successor to Dynaco
or its insurer technically owns those pieces, but that once the sale comes to its attention it has a time certain by which it must assert a claim. So one could ask the successor and/or insurer for a release, and that's the appropriate way to proceed.
So if gear is stolen and that gear shows up on eBay or Craigslist, the original owner can have it returned upon supplying proof of ownership. This is why it pays to record serials numbers or mark items, and have photos, to simplify recovery.
