October 31, 2023 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin is in a glass coffin...but so is an American man along the shores of Lake Michigan. Chris Siriano tells this curious story about the coffin, the man inside of it, and the harebrained scheme to steal his diamond necklace.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories and our Halloween special.
Up next a story about a man in a hermetically
sealed fee through coffin in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Here's our
own Monte Montgomery with the story of a glass coffin,
a robbery, and a local legend.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The year is nineteen twenty seven. The place Benton Harbor, Michigan,
home of the House of David, a religious colony led
by Benjamin Pernell, who preached that if you followed his
message and gave all your worldly possessions to him, you
would never die. Unfortunately for ben though, he contracted tuberculosis,
(00:49):
which he died from. Here's Chris Siriano with what happened next.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
He didn't teach ever that he was going to die,
so Harry died and it was pandemonium. It was mass
chaos at the House of David. So Benjamin they kept
wrapped in damp, warm towels for eight days, thinking that
he was going to rise again. Finally, the Barren County
corner said, listen, it's been eight days.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
You either bury the guy or we're going to bury him.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But luckily for the House of David, they had the
Soviets to look towards for inspiration.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, during that process of having him wrapped like that,
they found out the process that Linen and Russia had
been used to embalm and put his body body in
a hermetically sealed glass coffin.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's what they did and there Ben Purnell sat for
the next sixty some years in his hermetically sealed glass coffin.
Well his massive mansion de kate around him as the
House of David dwindled the numbers due to their belief
in celibacy.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
But in nineteen eighty eight, twice the House of Diamond
House got broke into. But the first time that they
ran quickly. The second time was not a good day.
These kids, these four kids had studied the movement of
(02:17):
the House of David people. They had sat out in
the woods. They were locals, they were in their backyard. Basically,
they figured out when the House of David people moved
back and forth around the Diamond House. They came back
on a particular day that they knew that there wasn't
much movement. Some one of the weekend days, they cut
(02:39):
a hole in the roof of the Diamond House mansion
where they dropped down and they spent the entire day
stealing things, so vases, earned statues, oil paintings from all
over the world. These things came from the richest of
rich people that joined those things.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
It disappeared.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
One of the worst things that happened was they weren't
satisfied with just items that were in the rest of
the mansion. They wanted to see Ben because that's a big, big,
big part of our local history is him and his body.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Being in there.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
And they found out that he was in his parlor.
There's a stone wall that separates the catwalk from the
Diamond House annex into his area, and it's got a
big steel bank vault door on it, so there's no
way you're getting to that door. And there's wire electric
wires like shock wires from the door, so even if
(03:40):
you touch the door, you're probably going to go to
Heaven real quick or somewhere, right. So they went back.
One of them was a contractor. They went back to
his house, got a big ramming bar and they rammed
a hole through the stone wall and they made it
big enough where they could pull the rest of the
rocks out and they could get their bodies through the hole,
(04:01):
and they got into his parlor where his tomb is at.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
And I interviewed those people.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
They told me, Chris, when we got in there, it
was like a pharaoh's tomb. So around Ben's glass sealed coffin,
which was up at an angle, were piles and piles
of rings and diamonds and rubies and necklaces and vases,
(04:28):
and it was like what happened to the stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
When people came there?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
The beautiful things that they came there with, They couldn't
have those anymore, right, they didn't know. They just had
to give them away. Well, they were saved, a majority
of them were saved in the Diamond House. So when
he was buried, he was buried like a farrow and
like an emperor. So they took some things off of that.
(04:58):
But the sad thing was as Ben had a twenty
two carrot diamond ring on his finger and a big,
huge diamond filled and ruby filled white gold custom made
necklace from House of David Jewelers. They wanted those things bad,
and they took the pride bar, the ramming bar, and
(05:19):
pried the glass dome off of his coffin, which is
hermetically sealed.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Can't be sealed again.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
But so they broke the ring off of his finger,
broke his finger in the meantime, and ripped the medallion
off his neck. And the twenty two carrot diamond on
his finger was one of the biggest in the world
at the time. So they got away. They got away
with that break in, and it was advertised all over everywhere,
(05:49):
all over the country.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
It was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Finally, I interviewed the state police officer at my museum
one day and he said, Chris, I'm the one that
made the arrest.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And I said, tell me about it, and he.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Said, we had we had pictures the House of David
had people had pictures of all these things that were.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
In the Diamond House.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
And he said, were me and my partner driving through
Benton Heights, which is a rough part of Dodge in
this area, and we look over and in front of
this trailer is this little nickel plated parlor stove with flowers.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Growing out of it.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
That was it, right, So they walked up to the door,
knocked on the door, and a lady answered and said, man,
we love that stove that you have out there. Can
you tell us where you or we can get something
like that, and she said, well, my ex gave it
to me for some gift, but he doesn't live here anymore,
but here's his name and phone number. Bam, he gets busted.
(06:51):
He's got loose lips. They all go down right. So,
come to find out in both the people that did
the job did the stealing, and the police officer told
me that what happened was because there was such a
massive amount of things, because it was so written about
in the media, they were afraid to sell up everything,
(07:12):
so they took everything and divided it equally amongst them,
and then they would take it and hide it. One
hit it like in the upstairs of his barn, the
other guy hit it in a storage area in his basement,
the lady hit it cloths, and lady hid it underneath
her wrap around her mobile home. None of them sold anything,
(07:33):
so they got all that stuff back except the twenty
two carrot diamond ring, which McCoy brothers appraised at like
two and a half million dollars, and the giant medallion,
which was appraised at over half a million dollars. They
found out that those kids took those to the South
(07:53):
side of Chicago and sold them to a jewelry dealer there,
like a swap guy, for twelve thousand cash. And then
he back then you didn't have to have anybody's driver's license,
you didn't have to ask questions.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
You just bought stuff and sold stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So he had taken the diamond out and sold it
to a diamond buying place in London for like sixty thousand.
Supposedly they chopped it up and sold it off differently
so it wouldn't be detected. But that's all gone now.
(08:34):
The scariest thing was the girl that told me the story.
She came in my museum twice, two days in a row,
spent hours without saying one word, and finally I went.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Up to her.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
My mom and I were there, and I said, you
seem really fascinated by this story.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Can you tell me why? And she said do you
want to know? And I said, yeah, I do want
to know.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And she said, I'm the one that broke into diamond House, like,
oh my gosh, I mean, this is all my stuff
is right here in front of her and she was
capable of getting into this place. So she went on
to tell me the whole story, the whole all the details.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
It was so good. I should have filmed her, but
she was a mammoth girl. She kind of killed me.
But in the end she.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Said, Chris, you know what, I would do it again.
Right now, she says, the best high I ever had
in my life. I'm thinking I can't buy a good
enough secury system at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And it's a big country. My mom used to always
tell me as a kid, explaining the unexplainable to me
and the fun and the weird, and my goodness, this
is both fun and weird and as hard as these guys,
and this one sort of cult leader tried to talk
about his eternal life and everyone else as well. A
little something happened. He died, and everybody else was going
(09:58):
to die too. The story the strange, almost little cult
in Benton Harbor, Michigan. The House of David Here on
our American story
And we returned to our American stories and our Halloween special.
Up next a story about a man in a hermetically
sealed fee through coffin in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Here's our
own Monte Montgomery with the story of a glass coffin,
a robbery, and a local legend.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The year is nineteen twenty seven. The place Benton Harbor, Michigan,
home of the House of David, a religious colony led
by Benjamin Pernell, who preached that if you followed his
message and gave all your worldly possessions to him, you
would never die. Unfortunately for ben though, he contracted tuberculosis,
(00:49):
which he died from. Here's Chris Siriano with what happened next.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
He didn't teach ever that he was going to die,
so Harry died and it was pandemonium. It was mass
chaos at the House of David. So Benjamin they kept
wrapped in damp, warm towels for eight days, thinking that
he was going to rise again. Finally, the Barren County
corner said, listen, it's been eight days.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
You either bury the guy or we're going to bury him.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But luckily for the House of David, they had the
Soviets to look towards for inspiration.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, during that process of having him wrapped like that,
they found out the process that Linen and Russia had
been used to embalm and put his body body in
a hermetically sealed glass coffin.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's what they did and there Ben Purnell sat for
the next sixty some years in his hermetically sealed glass coffin.
Well his massive mansion de kate around him as the
House of David dwindled the numbers due to their belief
in celibacy.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
But in nineteen eighty eight, twice the House of Diamond
House got broke into. But the first time that they
ran quickly. The second time was not a good day.
These kids, these four kids had studied the movement of
(02:17):
the House of David people. They had sat out in
the woods. They were locals, they were in their backyard. Basically,
they figured out when the House of David people moved
back and forth around the Diamond House. They came back
on a particular day that they knew that there wasn't
much movement. Some one of the weekend days, they cut
(02:39):
a hole in the roof of the Diamond House mansion
where they dropped down and they spent the entire day
stealing things, so vases, earned statues, oil paintings from all
over the world. These things came from the richest of
rich people that joined those things.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
It disappeared.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
One of the worst things that happened was they weren't
satisfied with just items that were in the rest of
the mansion. They wanted to see Ben because that's a big, big,
big part of our local history is him and his body.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Being in there.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
And they found out that he was in his parlor.
There's a stone wall that separates the catwalk from the
Diamond House annex into his area, and it's got a
big steel bank vault door on it, so there's no
way you're getting to that door. And there's wire electric
wires like shock wires from the door, so even if
(03:40):
you touch the door, you're probably going to go to
Heaven real quick or somewhere, right. So they went back.
One of them was a contractor. They went back to
his house, got a big ramming bar and they rammed
a hole through the stone wall and they made it
big enough where they could pull the rest of the
rocks out and they could get their bodies through the hole,
(04:01):
and they got into his parlor where his tomb is at.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
And I interviewed those people.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
They told me, Chris, when we got in there, it
was like a pharaoh's tomb. So around Ben's glass sealed coffin,
which was up at an angle, were piles and piles
of rings and diamonds and rubies and necklaces and vases,
(04:28):
and it was like what happened to the stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
When people came there?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
The beautiful things that they came there with, They couldn't
have those anymore, right, they didn't know. They just had
to give them away. Well, they were saved, a majority
of them were saved in the Diamond House. So when
he was buried, he was buried like a farrow and
like an emperor. So they took some things off of that.
(04:58):
But the sad thing was as Ben had a twenty
two carrot diamond ring on his finger and a big,
huge diamond filled and ruby filled white gold custom made
necklace from House of David Jewelers. They wanted those things bad,
and they took the pride bar, the ramming bar, and
(05:19):
pried the glass dome off of his coffin, which is
hermetically sealed.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Can't be sealed again.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
But so they broke the ring off of his finger,
broke his finger in the meantime, and ripped the medallion
off his neck. And the twenty two carrot diamond on
his finger was one of the biggest in the world
at the time. So they got away. They got away
with that break in, and it was advertised all over everywhere,
(05:49):
all over the country.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
It was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Finally, I interviewed the state police officer at my museum
one day and he said, Chris, I'm the one that
made the arrest.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And I said, tell me about it, and he.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Said, we had we had pictures the House of David
had people had pictures of all these things that were.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
In the Diamond House.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
And he said, were me and my partner driving through
Benton Heights, which is a rough part of Dodge in
this area, and we look over and in front of
this trailer is this little nickel plated parlor stove with flowers.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Growing out of it.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
That was it, right, So they walked up to the door,
knocked on the door, and a lady answered and said, man,
we love that stove that you have out there. Can
you tell us where you or we can get something
like that, and she said, well, my ex gave it
to me for some gift, but he doesn't live here anymore,
but here's his name and phone number. Bam, he gets busted.
(06:51):
He's got loose lips. They all go down right. So,
come to find out in both the people that did
the job did the stealing, and the police officer told
me that what happened was because there was such a
massive amount of things, because it was so written about
in the media, they were afraid to sell up everything,
(07:12):
so they took everything and divided it equally amongst them,
and then they would take it and hide it. One
hit it like in the upstairs of his barn, the
other guy hit it in a storage area in his basement,
the lady hit it cloths, and lady hid it underneath
her wrap around her mobile home. None of them sold anything,
(07:33):
so they got all that stuff back except the twenty
two carrot diamond ring, which McCoy brothers appraised at like
two and a half million dollars, and the giant medallion,
which was appraised at over half a million dollars. They
found out that those kids took those to the South
(07:53):
side of Chicago and sold them to a jewelry dealer there,
like a swap guy, for twelve thousand cash. And then
he back then you didn't have to have anybody's driver's license,
you didn't have to ask questions.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
You just bought stuff and sold stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So he had taken the diamond out and sold it
to a diamond buying place in London for like sixty thousand.
Supposedly they chopped it up and sold it off differently
so it wouldn't be detected. But that's all gone now.
(08:34):
The scariest thing was the girl that told me the story.
She came in my museum twice, two days in a row,
spent hours without saying one word, and finally I went.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Up to her.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
My mom and I were there, and I said, you
seem really fascinated by this story.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Can you tell me why? And she said do you
want to know? And I said, yeah, I do want
to know.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And she said, I'm the one that broke into diamond House, like,
oh my gosh, I mean, this is all my stuff
is right here in front of her and she was
capable of getting into this place. So she went on
to tell me the whole story, the whole all the details.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
It was so good. I should have filmed her, but
she was a mammoth girl. She kind of killed me.
But in the end she.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Said, Chris, you know what, I would do it again.
Right now, she says, the best high I ever had
in my life. I'm thinking I can't buy a good
enough secury system at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And it's a big country. My mom used to always
tell me as a kid, explaining the unexplainable to me
and the fun and the weird, and my goodness, this
is both fun and weird and as hard as these guys,
and this one sort of cult leader tried to talk
about his eternal life and everyone else as well. A
little something happened. He died, and everybody else was going
(09:58):
to die too. The story the strange, almost little cult
in Benton Harbor, Michigan. The House of David Here on
our American story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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