Insult to Injury

On August 6^th 2012, the jewelry store that I work at was robbed by three of the dumbest individuals that it has been my displeasure to encounter. I alluded to this event in my January 25th post and have recently been asked about it on several occasions. The robbers made off with over $50,000.00 in cash and inventory. Included in the inventory was a selection of vintage watches, as well as several modern watches. Among the stolen were many Bulova’s, Elgin’s, Gruen’s and Hamilton’s, mostly somewhat common watches but in good condition. Then there were a few Rolex including a 1917 ladies sterling silver one. Then there were a few not as common watches like a Girard-Perregaux Gyrodate, although, not a high end watch it was a somewhat unique piece.

 

I have to give credit where credit is due; the Cicero Police Department did an exceptional job. Within days of the crime, they had identified and captured the first of the thieves and several days later they captured a second one. Now for the sickening part of this little tale, when they caught the second criminal mastermind, he, of course, became very cooperative. The police started showing him photographs, the first of which was yours truly who he identified as “the gentleman we robbed”.   Again, credit to the police, I couldn’t identify the robbers, so they did a reverse lineup. They showed photos of some of the watches that were stolen, which the thief readily identified. When the police asked him what they had done with the watches, he responded, “Oh that junk.  We threw in a garbage truck with all of those jars of glass”. It seemed all they wanted was gold and cash but, as you can guess, the jars of “glass” were about 30 carats of diamonds ranging from about half pointers to half carats, plus a few larger stones and among the watches was a Rolex Day Date (and I thought they wanted gold). From what I understand, these guys robbed several other places.  It kind of makes me wonder what other “junk” they sent off to the dump. Of course, the cherry on the cake here is the third robber stiffed his accomplices on most of the cash and fled to New York where he was caught robbing a bank.

 

Included in this post is a small sampling of the pieces lost to a level of stupidity that can only be called criminal.