A detective mystery which started in Sussex has found its solution ten years later in the United States.

The riddle began when a gold ring, presented to the winner of an American Indy Car racing tournament in 1985, was recovered among stolen goods at a house in West Sussex in 1991.

Despite being engraved with the name and year of the race, there was no name on the trophy.

Detectives set themselves the task of re-uniting the ring with its rightful owner to test out the capabilities of a new internet-based research tool.

PC Tom Wills, co-ordinator of the Virtual Bumblebee web project in the force's Western Division said: "I contacted a museum in Indianapolis and they said there was a winner who raced for the Penske Racing Team in 1985.

"Penske advised me to go to Poole in Dorset where their chassis are made.

"They went through their records for 1985 and found the name of a family from Littlehampton.

"The family told me a friend of theirs, who was living in Walberton in 1991, had been a victim of burglary.

"I sent him an email with an image of the ring. To my relief I got a response saying, 'Yes, it looks like mine'."

The man had resigned himself to the loss of the ring and returned to the US.

But more than a decade later he is flying to the UK to reclaim his prize.

PC Wills says he is now hoping the hundreds of other items on the database will not be so hard to shift.

He said: "I'm urging people to click on the web site if they have an item they want to trace."

Visit www.virtualbumblebee.co.uk