Dinosaurs in the Attic (39 page)

With Clark driving their white Cadillac, the three men circled the Museum, scanning the structure's granite façade and looking for a route up. After parking and scouting around, they climbed onto a small roof along the 77th Street side of the Museum and edged out onto a ledge that ran along the second floor. On the corner of the building they encountered an area of rough-cut granite, which they were able to scale up as far as the fourth floor—the level of the Gem Hall—and a windowsill. To their surprise, Kuhn wrote, the window was unlocked.

Inside the Museum, the silence was deafening. It didn't take me long to discover that the window we had used wouldn't do because I was still outside the big iron gate across the entrance to the gem room. Next time, we'd have to use another window....

While I waited I flashed my small light around through the gate into the gem room. It caught a jewel. It shined. I flashed it over some of the other cases and pretty soon I could barely keep myself from saying the hell with it and smashing the lock on the gate, grabbing what I could and running out.

Kuhn waited, hidden behind a case, and timed two rounds of the guard. The guard came at 9:17 and then again at 9:45—thirty minutes between rounds. As soon as the guard left, Kuhn went back to the window, where Murphy was waiting. Ten minutes later they were back in the Cadillac, on the way to their apartment.

The next day they returned to the Museum (dressed in suits like young executives) to see if their visit had been discovered. Everything seemed normal. This time they noticed a ledge running along part of the fourth floor inside a Museum courtyard, and—incredibly enough—a steel ladder or fire escape running up to the ledge. They managed to find their way to the courtyard through an employees' exit. "The man in charge," Kuhn wrote, "asked what we were doing there and Jack replied, 'Looking for a way out.' I laughed to myself thinking the correct answer should have been 'Looking for a way in.'"

The setup couldn't have been better. The ladder was on the inside of the Museum, where they could ascend with little fear of discovery. It led to a wide, long ledge running under the fourth-floor windows. The entire area was concealed from the street.

Murphy had scraped and bruised his knees during the reconnaissance climb up the Museum, so they decided the jewels could wait for two weeks while he recovered. They piled into the Cadillac and left for Montreal that afternoon. "Gradually Jack's knees began to heal," Kuhn wrote, "and sure enough in no time we were out dancing and raising hell like our regular selves."

They returned to New York in late October, having worked out their plans and picked their tools. In various stores in the city they bought two small walkie-talkies with earphones, two glass-cutters, two flashlights, two pairs of sneakers (which they smeared with black shoe polish), two pairs of tight, dark pants, dark shirts, black socks, and black leather gloves, a screwdriver, two masks (in case they had to make a run for it past guards and out the building), two rolls of three-quarter-inch adhesive tape, and 125 feet of Manila rope. They also bought several sheets of glass to practice their glass-cutting, and were soon able to cut a hole in a vertical piece of glass nearly every time.

Finally they were ready. All that was necessary now was a rainy night, to cut down on the possibility of being seen (professional cat burglars know that people don't look up when it's raining.) When the morning of Thursday, October 29, came around and the weather report predicted possible showers, they chose that evening for the crime.

At 8:00
P.M.
, Clark dropped Murphy and Kuhn off near the Museum. The plan was for Clark to circle the Museum periodically while the other two stole the gems. Murphy and Kuhn ducked into some bushes on Museum grounds; when all seemed clear, they climbed an eight-foot fence that surrounded the Museum courtyard and ran, crouching, to the bottom of the ladder. Since the fourth-floor ledge didn't go around as far as the windows of the Gem Hall, they had to ascend to the fifth floor, where they tied a rope to a pillar and swung down to a fourth-floor ledge outside a Gem Hall window. "It was 8:30," wrote Kuhn, "in between the night guard's rounds. I heaved. The window opened six inches. I wanted to yell for joy."

They hid in the darkened hall, waiting for the guard to go by on his rounds. When he had passed, they began work on the cases.

The first cut was made on the comer of the case housing all the diamonds. The glass cutter made a "screeeeeee" noise similar to chalk on a blackboard. It sounded loud.... We stopped to listen. No one came running in, we heard no excited voices, so I began to scoop up everything through the hole. I passed everything to Jack and he wrapped each piece individually in tissue so it would not be damaged when they banged against each other in the bag.

Then our first problem. I realized I could reach only so far through the hole in the glass. While Jack continued wrapping I scouted around and in a janitor's cabinet I found a squeegee. It was perfect. With it, I reached into the case to scoop the pieces I could not reach before. Some were old cut diamonds, new cuts, uncut, and a small collection of color diamonds that were fairly rare and lovely.

Checking my watch, it showed 9:07 so we waited until the watchman came again.... We started for the case of emeralds. Again there was a wide assortment.... [After cutting] I reached into the case and came out with a round, shallow emerald weighing thirty carats, full of flaws, but sellable. I brought out engraved emeralds that must have been hundreds of years old. Not too valuable. As fast as I handed them to Jack he was wrapping them in tissue paper. Now I had all the emeralds. Two huge aquamarine stones, one weighing over 800 carats [actually 400 carats] and the other weighing over 1,000 carats [737 carats], were all that remained. I took those, too. It had taken only ten minutes for all this so we went to the next case which held the Star of India, the Midnight Star Sapphire, and the Delong Star Ruby....

First I tied a piece of short string to the glass-cutter, then by holding the other end to the pane of glass I made the string taut and started to cut. It made a nearly perfect circle.

While Jack taped the area around the hole with the adhesive, I cut in the same way on the glass in front of the Midnight Star. Both holes were about eight inches in diameter. Jack began taping the glass almost as fast as I cut the holes and in time they were all cut, taped and ready to tap, but it was again nearing time for the watchman again. We sat in silence, trying to hold our breathing....

The click of the punch clock and the rattling of the gate echoed through the gem room, then the guard hurried away to punch another clock beyond the door. We gave him a full five minutes to get away, then we went to the cases again. I whispered to Jack, "It's going to make a hell of a noise, but here goes."

I whacked the glass with the steel-handled screwdriver. It sounded like a drum, trembled, but didn't even crack. I hadn't hit it hard enough. We listened a second. No noise. Then I took careful aim and clobbered it this time. That was the most noise yet. It literally rang through the halls of the Museum. Still, no one apparently heard it. Jack and I went to the window, looked out to see if it was still clear. It looked all right....

Jack's small flashlight was steady on the Star of India, and it appeared more brilliant and full of fire than it ever had in the daytime. The star was dead in the center of the stone and the legs of the star were long and extended to the bottom of it. Around the base was a gum substance that the stone sat on. Probably to keep it steady in case someone jarred the case.

I hadn't picked the stone up, yet all of a sudden I experienced a wave of panic. Where was the alarm? I hesitated, then grabbed the Star and pulled it up away from the gum. Then I saw it. A needle. When I [had] lifted the stone the needle came up. There's the alarm. We didn't hear anything so we figured it was a silent alarm. But we both knew we had to get the hell out of there.

What they didn't know was that the alarm battery had gone dead—no alarm went off at all. But Murphy and Kuhn figured they had about five minutes to get clear of the building. While Murphy smashed the cases holding the Midnight Star and the DeLong Ruby, Kuhn grabbed the rope and swung out of the window. Murphy followed immediately after. Kuhn untied the rope and let it drop into the courtyard, and they clambered down a fire escape with their tools, then down the steel ladder. In five minutes they were out on Columbus Avenue, where they split up and took separate cabs.

Back in the apartment on 86th Street, they quickly stripped off their clothes and stuffed them, with their tools, into a pillowcase. Meanwhile, Clark, who had been circling the Museum block in the white Caddy, wondering where they were, arrived back at the apartment. "Where the hell have you two been," Kuhn reported him as saying, "and what are you doing running around naked?" But when he saw the three large stones, unwrapped, on the coffee table, "he let out a howl and we all laughed and began jumping around. Jack yelled, 'You said we could do it, Allan, and here it is!' He jumped on the couch like he was surfing," holding the Star of India to his forehead. They waited several hours, listening to the radio for a news bulletin about the robbery, but when nothing was reported they went to sleep. At seven-thirty the next morning they awoke and eagerly switched on the radio, but still there was no news of the robbery.

At eight o'clock an unnamed "friend" arrived to pick up the gems, according to Kuhn's account. "We shook hands," Kuhn wrote, "and I gave him the package and that was the last I saw of the Star of India. The entire lot would be looked over thoroughly, I knew, and a price would be offered."

As planned, Murphy and Kuhn boarded a flight to Miami that morning. Kuhn took along a girl he had met in New York, Janet Florkiewicz. (While waiting for the plane, they disposed of all their clothes and equipment in various wastebaskets around Kennedy Airport.) In Miami they went to Kuhn's plush apartment. By that time the news wires were humming with reports of the spectacular heist. They turned on the TV and listened to the news. To their great consternation, they learned that the alarm had been dead. "It was all a shock to Jack and me," Kuhn wrote, "for only now we realized that all the jewels we left behind could have been scooped up too."

They spent the evening watching TV. The next day, Kuhn went out for a walk at 10:00
A.M.
When he returned, he found the door to his apartment ajar. As he entered, FBI agents grabbed him and he was handcuffed alongside Murphy, while the agents tore apart the apartment looking for the gems. At the same time, Clark had been arrested in New York City. Janet Florkiewicz was also detained as a material witness, because the police thought she might have carried the gems in her handbag on the Miami flight. Apparently someone in their apartment building in New York had overheard an indiscreet comment by one of the two on the elevator, and had tipped off the police.

Of the three, the press latched on to Murphy. His offhand comments and allegedly glamorous beachboy life-style made for great newspaper copy, and his suave, handsome demeanor and impeccably tailored suits brought a lot of attention from the five-o'clock news.
^*58

Various hearings and legal maneuverings followed their arrest. Finally, on January 7, Kuhn decided to cooperate with the police in hopes of a reduced sentence, and the two others followed suit. He led them to a locker in a Greyhound bus terminal in Miami. In two waterproof bags they found the Star of India and the Midnight Star, as well as some of the larger emeralds. Still missing were the Delong Star Ruby and all of the diamonds. On April 6, Murphy, Clark, and Kuhn were sentenced to three years at the Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York.

The recovery of the ruby proved to be difficult, and much of the details remain secret to this day. Apparently members of the underworld had possession of the ruby, and informed the Museum that it would be returned for ransom. After ten months of involved negotiations between the shadowy people who possessed the gem, a jeweler, and a Florida judge, a ransom price of $25,000 was agreed upon. The billionaire insurance executive John D. MacArthur donated the money to pay the ransom. MacArthur and a photographer and a reporter from the New York
Daily News
were present when the gem was retrieved. Following directions, they arrived at a Miami telephone booth, where, over the phone, they were told to rip a hole in the ceiling of the booth. The voice on the phone directed them to reach into a cavity in the ceiling. There they found the Delong Ruby. The diamonds, being less unique and able to be fenced and recut, were never recovered, and today they probably decorate many wealthy women's rings and necklaces.

Several years later, the three were released from Rikers Island. Immediately following his release, Murphy was hauled back to Florida to face charges that he pistol-whipped the actress Eva Gabor and made off with her $25,000 diamond ring. (The charges were dropped when Gabor failed to show up for the trial.) Murphy and Kuhn were arrested shortly thereafter for other jewel thefts, but this time the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. In 1968, however, Murphy was caught in a spectacular shootout with police while robbing a Miami Beach mansion; he tried unsuccessfully to elude capture by catapulting himself through a plate-glass window. The judge in this trial declared him insane. But then, less than a year later, Murphy was arrested on another charge—double murder. In December 1967, the bludgeoned and mutilated bodies of two Los Angeles secretaries had been discovered in Florida. The two women had stolen nearly half a million dollars in negotiable securities from a brokerage firm, and had turned them over to Murphy to sell. In a dispute over their payment while aboard Murphy's boat, Murphy and an accomplice had murdered them, tied their bodies to cement blocks, and dumped them in a creek. When the tide went out, a boater spotted the foot of one of the women bobbing on the surface.