Post by Mr Hood on Nov 23, 2016 22:49:48 GMT
The Trail of the Vanished Gems
If you should happen to spot a short, muscular man with a long stride walking down the street with a screwdriver in his hand, wearing cheap rubber rain shoes and surgical gloves and possibly even a handsome piece of jewelry or two, Walter Fannin would like to hear from you. Fannin has been looking for him, unsuccessfully, for almost twenty years. The man in the rain shoes is not Fannin’s long-lost rich uncle (though he is rich); indeed, Fannin doesn’t even know his name. But he would like to. For Fannin is chief of detectives for the Dallas police force and the short, stocky man is the King of Diamonds, the most daring—and most successful—jewel thief ever to operate in Dallas.
From 1956 to 1966 a cat burglar heisted more than $1 million in jewels from palatial homes in north Dallas and the Park Cities. He made “impossible, Topkapi-like'' entrances through seemingly inaccessible windows and slipped away unobserved on all but one occasion. The list of his victims read like the Dallas social register: James Ling, Clint Murchison, Sr., P. E. Haggerty (then president of Texas Instruments), and at least a dozen others. Each time the thief knew exactly what he was doing. He never cracked a safe but simply lifted the goods from a bathroom dressing table. He took only women’s jewelry—and only the best pieces at that, never costume jewelry and never ordinary items like pearls. On one venture, which netted him $215,000 in stones, the King apparently leaped fifteen feet from a wall to a narrow second-story bathroom window ledge. Even Rudolf Nureyev would have difficulty performing such a feat.
The King reaped so much publicity he became an inspiration for lesser thieves, who attempted to emulate him without success. Arrests were made, some jewels recovered, but the King himself was never caught. All police have is a single description, plus the certain clue that the King must have had close contacts in Dallas society. The search centered for a while on a young gigolo, but the police could prove nothing. The King’s last performance came more than a decade ago, in February 1966, and Fannin now says resignedly “They’ll never be solved.”
If you should happen to spot a short, muscular man with a long stride walking down the street with a screwdriver in his hand, wearing cheap rubber rain shoes and surgical gloves and possibly even a handsome piece of jewelry or two, Walter Fannin would like to hear from you. Fannin has been looking for him, unsuccessfully, for almost twenty years. The man in the rain shoes is not Fannin’s long-lost rich uncle (though he is rich); indeed, Fannin doesn’t even know his name. But he would like to. For Fannin is chief of detectives for the Dallas police force and the short, stocky man is the King of Diamonds, the most daring—and most successful—jewel thief ever to operate in Dallas.
From 1956 to 1966 a cat burglar heisted more than $1 million in jewels from palatial homes in north Dallas and the Park Cities. He made “impossible, Topkapi-like'' entrances through seemingly inaccessible windows and slipped away unobserved on all but one occasion. The list of his victims read like the Dallas social register: James Ling, Clint Murchison, Sr., P. E. Haggerty (then president of Texas Instruments), and at least a dozen others. Each time the thief knew exactly what he was doing. He never cracked a safe but simply lifted the goods from a bathroom dressing table. He took only women’s jewelry—and only the best pieces at that, never costume jewelry and never ordinary items like pearls. On one venture, which netted him $215,000 in stones, the King apparently leaped fifteen feet from a wall to a narrow second-story bathroom window ledge. Even Rudolf Nureyev would have difficulty performing such a feat.
The King reaped so much publicity he became an inspiration for lesser thieves, who attempted to emulate him without success. Arrests were made, some jewels recovered, but the King himself was never caught. All police have is a single description, plus the certain clue that the King must have had close contacts in Dallas society. The search centered for a while on a young gigolo, but the police could prove nothing. The King’s last performance came more than a decade ago, in February 1966, and Fannin now says resignedly “They’ll never be solved.”
