Star of India gem heist - October 29, 1940

On this day in 1940, thieves in broke into the American Museum of Natural History in New York and stole valuable gems, including the Star of India and the DeLong Star Ruby. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi everyone, I'm Eves and welcome to This
Day and History Class, a podcast where we dust off
a little piece of history and place it, ever so
gently on your brainshelf every day. Today is October. The

(00:23):
day was October four. The Star of India, a five
hundred and sixty three point thirty five carrots sapphire, was
stolen from the American Museum of Natural History in New
York City, along with twenty three other valuable gems. The
JP Morgan Hall of Gyms and Minerals at the museum
was home to a collection of many notable gyms. At

(00:46):
the time, jules were the object of many heists. After
seeing a heist movie called Top Cope, Jack Rolin Murphy
decided he could break into Morgan Hall at the American
Museum of Natural History and commit his own heist. Murphy,
also known as a Murf the Surf, teamed up with
Roger Clark and Allen Dale Coon to steal the gyms.

(01:08):
On the night of October twenty nine, nineteen sixty four.
Clark drove up to the back of the museum with
Coon and Murphy and a Cadillac. Coon and Murphy climbed defense,
ascended a fire escape, and used a rope to swing
into a fourth floor window at the museum. The windows
were not connected to an alarm system, and the museum
had stopped putting a guard in the gym room. The

(01:31):
thieves used a glass cutter, a squeegee they got from
an employee's locker, and duct tape to break into three
display cases and collect the gyms. They skipped over one
display case that contained sapphires, but they took plenty of
expensive gems, including the Star of India, the DeLong Star Ruby,
the Shettler Emerald, and the Midnight Star, a one hundred

(01:53):
and sixteen Carrott black stapphire. The case the sapphire was
in was protected by an alarm, but the batteries were
in the Next day, Coon and Murphy left New York
on a flight to Miami was a nineteen year old
named Janet floor Kovich. As the thieves were on their
way to Miami, a museum guard discovered that the gym's
had been stolen and called the police. The stolen gyms

(02:16):
were valued at four and ten thousand dollars, but none
of them were insured since premiums were high. In a
press conference, the museum director pinned the bad security on
budget cuts. It only took two days for detectives to
check the thieves down. Detectives got tips that led them
to Cambridge House Hotel, where the thieves were staying in

(02:37):
hosting parties. In their hotel suite, detectives found sneakers with
glass in them, photos of museums, books about precious stones,
and burglary tools. One of the detectives stayed in the
hotel suite overnight, and when Clark returned the next morning,
he was arrested. Murphy and Coon were soon arrested in Miami,
but the police did not find the hidden gems. The

(03:00):
pair were extradited to New York facing charges of first
degree burglary and possession of burglary tools. The public impress
largely treated them like celebrities, but law enforcement still needed
to find the gem's assistant district at her name, Maurice
net Jarry agreed to take Coon to Miami to lead
him to the gyms, accompanied by three detectives. After run

(03:23):
ins with the press and Coon going back and forth
on calls with contacts, detectives found two wet bags filled
with some of the gems in a bus station locker.
The bags contained the Star of India, the Midnight Star,
a sapphire, five emeralds, and two aquamarines, but the DeLong
Star Ruby wasn't recovered until September of nineteen sixty five.

(03:45):
In nineteen sixty five, con Murphy and Clark pled guilty
to burglary and grand larceny, and we're all sentenced to
three years at Riker's Island, New York's American Museum of
Natural History is still home to thousand of minerals and gyms,
including the Star of India and the DeLong Star Ruby.

(04:06):
I'm Eve Jeff cot and hopefully you know a little
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