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T.J. Myers Michael Glasser Nick Annunziata Renata Dziak Mark Swetland Kelleigh Miller Charles Paden Melissa Brasselle

HEIST #2: New York Rare Gem Heist
LOCATION: American Museum of Natural History,
New York
HAUL: World’s Largest Sapphire and Other Rare Gems


About the heist

See the gems and read more on this heist

On the evening of October 29, 1964, Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy and his gang set out to rob one of the world’s most precious and valuable gem collections. Famous among the Miami crowd for his surfing, diving and extravagant partying, Murph was the personification of beachboy-burglar cool. But even by the extraordinary standards of Murph the Surf, described by one FBI agent as the world’s most charismatic thief, this was the ultimate heist.

Murphy and his accomplices Alan Kuhn and Roger Clark parked their Cadillac near the museum. Clark stayed in the car with a pair of binoculars and a walkie-talkie to alert the other two if the police arrived. Murphy and Kuhn walked a couple of blocks to the museum parking lot and easily climbed the outer fence. They then scaled a 10-foot-high fence that had iron spikes on the top by looping a length of rope over a crossbar, creating a foothold on either side of the wall. After carefully negotiating their way over the spikes, they descended into one of the inner courtyards of the museum.

Murphy and Kuhn made their way through the canyon-like alleyways of the museum wings until they came to the one that housed the J P Morgan Hall of Gems. Forcing open a courtyard door, they scrambled up a fire escape to the fifth floor and crept out onto a thin stone ledge. They inched around the corner of the building, hugging the wall, until they were above the room containing the gems.

Securing ropes to a fifth-floor window, Murphy and Kuhn silently lowered themselves into the Morgan room. The thieves noticed that this window was left slightly open and unlocked by the museum to allow air to circulate. Going in through the window, they waited for the alarm to go off, but nothing happened: astonishingly, the alarm system had been switched off to save electricity.

Murphy and Kuhn went to work on the glass cases protecting the gems. They taped the glass to stop it from shattering when they cut large circles into it with their glass cutters, then dislodged the circles with a sharp knock from the butt of a squeegee. The pair only realized that the case surrounding the Star of India was alarmed when they began to cut through it, but luckily for them (again), the battery was dead.

Murphy and Kuhn had only opened three of the display cases when they were spooked by a sound out in the corridor. Figuring they’d had their fair share of luck already, they decided to call it a day and escape – after all, they’d pocketed 24 of the most valuable gems in the room. They slipped back out the window and clambered up the ropes, retracing their steps to the getaway car. They had stolen $410,000 worth of gems, including the Star of India sapphire (563 carats), the DeLong ruby (100 carats), the Eagle Diamond (14 carats), and the Midnight Sapphire, the largest black sapphire in the world.

Twelve hours after the raid, Murphy and Kuhn were on a plane to Miami with the gems in a briefcase unwittingly carried by Kuhn’s girlfriend. Within 24 hours, however, Murphy, Kuhn and Clark were in police custody, thanks to a tip from a bellhop who was suspicious of the crew’s sudden extravagant lifestyle. The DeLong ruby was recovered after being offered for ransom, and many of the gems have never been recovered, including the Eagle Diamond, which was probably cut into smaller stones.

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