Find it and give it back.

That was Attorney General Liz Murrill’s message Tuesday for former House Speaker Clay Schexnayder regarding an ancient cypress board that was displayed at the State Capitol for decades but disappeared last year after being in Schexnayder’s district legislative office in Gonzales.

“I will confer with the Lieutenant Governor’s Office and will take any action that may be appropriate under the circumstances,” Murrill said in reply to a request for help from Julius Mullins, a retired Baton Rouge doctor whose grandfather Walter Stebbins donated the board to the state in the 1950s.

“Schexnayder knew he had it, he knew that it was in his office and he was responsible as the custodian of state property,” Murrill added. “I think he’s responsible for it regardless of how it came to be present in his district office. He needs to return it.”

As was reported last week, the board was last seen 18 months ago in Schexnayder’s district office. Schexnayder said he doesn’t know of its current whereabouts.

The leasing manager for his office says his team never removed it.

The board’s disappearance has frustrated Stebbins’ grandchildren, with Mullins acting as the family’s lead sleuth to find it.

“Would it be possible for you to help my family find this valuable piece of history which has gone missing and return it to the Capitol?” Mullins asked in separate emails to Murrill and the current House speaker, Phillip DeVillier, R-Eunice.

Devillier didn’t respond to either Mullins or a request for comment Tuesday.

The board — which measures about six feet by 20 feet and has words engraved of its origin into it — came from a tree that was estimated to be 1,264 years old when it was cut down in 1936. Wording on the board indicates that it was given to the state in 1955 and hung on the wall in the breezeway on the ground floor of the Capitol until about 10 years ago.

Where did the board go?

Schexnayder said then-Speaker Chuck Kleckley, R-Lake Charles, asked him in 2013 to put the board in his district office because it came from a tree in Ascension Parish. Kleckley, however, doesn’t recall giving it to Schexnayder, saying such a request by him involving a historic state artifact would have been inappropriate.

Both last week and on Tuesday, Schexnayder said he didn’t take the board from his district office when his legislative term ended at the beginning of last year.

His office was located in Suite 205 in a strip mall next to the Pelican Point subdivision on Highway 44 in Gonzales.

“When I turned in the keys, that’s the last I seen it, that’s the last I know,” Schexnayder said Tuesday. “The last I know is the board was in the office when I left.”

Thanks to term limits, his 12-year legislative career ended in January 2024. But he said he kept using the office as late as Feb. 20 that year, according to a text exchange at the time with Rep. Dixon McMakin, R-Baton Rouge, who contacted Schexnayder on behalf of Mullins, a family friend.

In a text to the newspaper on Tuesday, Schexnayder confirmed he still used the office as of February 2024.

Douglas Diez, a developer in Gonzales who owns the strip mall, said when tenants depart and are up to date in their payments, “We usually don’t change the key in the office. Even though Clay moved out, he or any one of his people could have come back.”

Todd Pevey, who works for St. John Properties and manages leasing at the strip mall for Diez, said in an email that “tenants are responsible for removing all materials and belongings from the premises upon vacating. Neither I, nor any other St. John Properties employee or representative, have removed any of the client’s items from the space nor are we in possession of any items that were ever in the premises.”

When Schexnayder left office last year, the speaker’s office collected a couple of pieces of state equipment, but Schexnayder exercised his right to buy the laptop, printer and fax he had been using, at a depreciated price, according to state records. The government inventory did not include the board since it hadn’t been officially given to him.

Schexnayder said someone at his request notified someone from the state that he had the board as he was leaving office. He wouldn’t identify either person.

“I’m not going to go and start blurting out names,” Schexnayder said. “That’s not who I am.”

Complicating the effort to locate the board is this: No entity within state government is claiming ownership of it.

Officials at the Secretary of State’s Office, the Department of Agriculture and the Culture, Recreation and Tourism branch of the Lieutenant Governor’s Office all said last week the board doesn’t belong to their agencies.

Taylor Barras, the commissioner of administration, said his agency, which oversees construction of state buildings, also has no record of it.

“I am as confused as most where that trail leads us,” said Barras, who incidentally was speaker in between Kleckley and Schexnayder. “It’s kind of gray where that ownership originally resided.”

A frustrated Mullins has an explanation for that.

“Nobody kept records when it was donated,” he surmised.