Famous Sleuth Attributes Recent Large Jewel Robberies in United States to Influx of Foreign Thieves Who Seek Positions as Servants

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 593, 4 January 1916, Page 3

Famous Sleuth Attributes Recent Large Jewel Robberies in United States to Influx of Foreign Thieves Who Seek Positions as Servants

3y William J. Burns.

rejg2SoaarSj[l KK deftest and .smartest, thieves <>!' the Old World iire now in the * lm *ed Slates. Apparently they fe/)i /"TO iOn which in a measure accounts 2»/fl 'lw ,or " u ' ° n hlemlo of " ,M " thefts f/M !|vfl thai has proved of such absorbing Within (lie lust year more big jewel robberies have been reported to the police of New York city, its suburbs to ii (lie summer resorts than in a like period within my memory. The reasons are twofold —the presence of foreign thieves here, which influx started with tli" outbreak of the war, and the criminal carelessness of women who possess rare gems. Shortly after the starl of the war I sent a warning nolo to all of my regular patrons to exercise the greatest care in the selection of servants. I knew that many thieves who had been operating in Europe would conic here, and I knew (hey would be unknown to the average policeman. When a likely looking servant applies for service in Hie household of the average person of wealth, , armed with splendid letters of reference from a late employer in Europe, it is a great temptation to hire him at once. It must be borne in mind that a thief who is clever enough to outline and execute a his jewel robbery is possessed of sufficient brains to acquire letters of reference, either forged or real, by Ihe ream. Probably the new servant is all that the letters assert, an exquisitely trained butler or a deft, attractive lady's maid, as the case may be. Well versed in tlit- ways of the wealthy, the servant goes about his or her duties with such efficient precision thai the new employer begins to-marvel why any one possessing such a jewel in his household could ever permit him to leave his service. A really smart thief lia.s adaptability if nothing else, lie can rise to any emergency, and it is not long" before lie acquires the run of the house, and not a thing in it escapes notice. His attention, of course, is concentrated on the jewels the mistress wears or hoards, the occasions on which she displays them, and, above all, ou the care she bestows upon their safeguarding. .Sometimes a butler and maid, representing- themselves as man and wife, and adding- thai one will net a wept service without tho other, apply for positions. Such a combination is the most dangerous in the world to the woman of the house, unless, (if course, site is absolutely sure of their honesty. It is no* long before this new servant or these ser* % ants ascertain all they want to know about the family jewels; if the woman of the house exercises the proper ••arc in guarding her gems after taking thein off, or ■\ hether she, like the average woman, tosses them in Icr bureau drawer upon retiring, waiting until morni ig before having them safely stowed and locked in lie family safe. Oftener it is a strong box, oon- :■■. tiled in sonic nook or cranny, which is locked and unlocked with a key, and that key carelessly kept 1:1 ntiladi's boudoir, where it constantly .reposes y.ithin sight of her maid. Very often jewel caskets stand unguarded on the mistress' dressing table, and gems worth a king's ransom are within the very grasp of any person having avess to that room. 1 am sure no banker or business man would leave his place of business at night knowing that lie or some clerk had nonchalantly tossed a packet of bills representing $75,000 or SIOO,OOO in a desk drawer, turned the key and gone to his club or to his home. I am confident that that man would spend a sleepless night. Hut not so with the woman. She returns from dinner, ball or reception, unlinks a rope of pearls worth a fortune, drops them into the hands of a tired and sleepy maid, lelliug her to put them a way, and then sleeps as soundly as a baby. If that maid is dishonest she has the opportunity she wants. A butler hasn't quite the same advantages that: a maid has. His duties confine him below stairs, but if lie is there through dishonest motives it is a llining matter to gain access to bedroom or boudoir and lil'l the jewels at his pleasure. Sometimes he has si confederate in the house who keeps him posted. 1 have been called in on many cases of late, and thai reminds me that one question, or theory, is invariably ask.'d by the victim. "How can the thieves dispose of their loot V" That little detail is so easy that it makes me laugh to think that rwvy one is not cognizant of a thief's methods. Ju the first place the thief may have a l'uii'-e. By fence i mean a person who receives and disposes of stolen properly. The receiver of the gems naturally has an outlet for such loot, and it is tin easy matter to reset a ring, or brooch, or to dismantle a rope of pearls, or other gems and sell them without (he least fear of detection. Hut in such cases the fence demands his pound of flesh and the actual thief's profits are materially lessened. Hut those European thieves employ original methods in disposing of their loot. For instance, we will suppose that a roj"' of pearls worth, say, SIOO,OOO has been stolen. Thclhicf knows Dial to take these, pearls to any jeweller, retail or wholesale, would bo fatal, for such collections, are too well known to remain long unidentified once they < <o under the y.iy.v "( a connoisseur. So some other avenue of disposal must be sought Selecting some man of wealth who he knows moves in a different circle of society from that his late victim graces, he approaches Mr. NonvcaU Riche with iu's plausible {ale. He iias been commissioned l.y Mrs. Vanasterbilt to pledge her gems. Mrs. Vauttstcrbilt finds herself temporarily embarrassed, due to the war, you know, and in pressing need of ready funds. She wouldn't think of negotiating a loan through a common pawnbroker. Indeed no. Neither does she care to go to her jeweller, who would be only 100 glad to advance her the face value of the gems. And such a thing as letting her husband know thai she had so far exceeded her allowance or income as b> make such a slop necessary is totally <eil of the question. Therefore she faces the inevlt-

This "commissioner" —the thief—here displays the rope of pearls. They are worth $1.00,000, in fact cost that much years ago and to-day their value is greatly enhanced, since pearls are all the more lustrous for age and constant: wearing. The owner needs $50,000 at once. She is willing to pledge her gems to Mr. Nouveau Riche, for she knows him to be a man of large heart and discretion. She will gladly pay eight per cent for the accommodation, and should she fail to redeem the gems in ninety days the incident, may be regarded as closed and Mr. Nouveau Riche is permitted to retain them. The transaction, Madame says, can be. in fact must be. gone through without the stroke of a pen, so Mr. Nouveau Riche runs no risk of disagreeable consequences. Now, here is where the adroit thief's ingenuity comes into play. lie knows the man he seeks to do business with wouldn't lend a plugged nickel on any gem unless he had an expert appraise its value. '•Should you take this rope of pearls to a Fifth avenue jeweller." he says, "they will be instantly recognized. That their owner cannot countenance. In fact, that is why I have approached you. Yon are at liberty to pick out any one, or a dozen for that matter, of the pearls while the rest arc locked in your safe, and we will have any gem expert you suggest appraise them. As there are about one hundred pearls in the rope you can readily compute the total value." Mr. Nouveau Uiciie Is sufficiently ambitious for his wife's success socially to see her adorned with such a priceless collection of pearls. Then, again, he may be sufficiently keen on business to advance $50,000 ou collateral his jeweller has just told him is easily worth SIOO,OOO. And then, again, that little detail of eight per cent lias its lure and, after all, business is business, so here goes. The deal is made. The sua\ e commissioner bows himself out and with fifty thousand crisp American dollars reposing in his pocket it is an easy matter to lose himself. Then comes the big scream in the newspapers. SIOO,OOO OEM THEFT IN THE MANSION OF MRS. VANASTERBILT. No Clews to Big Jewelry Robbery in Fifth Avenue Homo of Society Woman. Rope of Pearls Worth Kiug's Ransom Mysteriously Vanishes. We are called in to solve the mystery. We suspect the butler or main, despite the protestations of the victim, who is willing to stake her life that such a gem of a servant could do no dishonest act. Our gallery of thieves contains no likeness of the person we suspect, and till members of the household are totally at a loss to aid us in the least as to the habits of the vanished servant while off duty. Their haunts

are unknown to us, ami we go forth seeking a cold trail and a slick thief. There you are. You have the picture just, as it so often appears, and experience teaches these employers of highly trained servants nothing. They want a butler or maid who knows how to serve and they want them with Kuropean experience, They get it, all right, for the European thief is about the smoothest piece of work we have to deal with. Not so very long ago I was in a Far Western city where we maintain an office. My presence in the city was generally known, due to a big case I was engaged in unravelling. One afternoon an immaculately groomed elderly gentleman called and asked to see me privately. His wife's jewel casket had been looted of gems worth $85,000. Their household consisted of himself and wife, their son and the wife's brother. A retinue of servants had long been in their employ. All were tried and true, their honesty un-

questioned and none had absented himself from his post for a minute. He was willing to pay handsomely for the recovery of the jewels, inasmuch as they were heirlooms. Little by little I drew from my reluctant caller that liis son had been a spendthrift; that he led a more or less profligate existence, and, as much as he hated

to admit it, both he and hi I wife had gravely feared the young man might have been hard pressed for money and yielded to temptation. This theory was strengthened because of the never failing care his wife had taken to safeguard her jewels. Ingeniously concealed in a massive piece >f furniture there was a safe. A locked compartment in the safe was especially designed to care for the jewel casket. The wife never took off her jewels without placing them in the safe, the key to which she never permitted to be out of her possession. None but tho immediate members of the family knew the existence of the safe, and they alone knew that the wife kept the keyto it about her. Terhaps the son, the father sorrowfully admitted, might have yielded and taken the key while his mother slept and then abstracted the jewels, returning the key to its accustomed place without awakening her. The brother-in-law was a man of large means, so of course lie was eliminated from the husband's reckoning. (Not altogether satisfied with the story related to me by the husband, I suggested that he and his wife come to my office later in the day, so that I could question her before starting my investigation at the house. After quizzing her closely about the servants in the house, and any changes she might have made in this retinue in the immediate past, she recalled that she' had had a strange maid in her employ for a few weeks during the illness of her old maid. But this girl, she said, had left her employ three months before, and the jewels had disappeared only the previous night. I sent operatives to the house and they went over the ground very thoroughly. They quizzed every member of the household except the son. 1 had had a shadow placed on the young man, determined to run down this clew at the outset. In the meantime I began a citywide search for the temporary maid, for in reality I believed at the first she had a guilty knowledge of the theft. Four days of shadowing convinced me that the son knee' no more about the robbery than I did. He was worthless, it is true, but his dissipations were not of a sort that required a large expenditure of money. He was not tied up with any adventuress, nor did he frequent places where light fingered gentry were wont to congregate. I eliminated him from all my calculations from that moment. A week's quc.t resulted in finding the whereabouts of the maid. She had a good position wilh a family of means. One of my operatives immediately entered the service of that family as a footman. He became Instantly smitten with the charms of the comely maid and paid her devoted attention. In less than a week he learned that she had been married to a man who had since deserted her. In fact the desertion oc-

cm-red two months hefr.ro. Tlie operative learned that this man had been In the habit of calling on his wife while she was In the service of the family that had been robbed. By clever work he got possession of a photograph of the errant husband. By means of the photograph I readily identified the deserter as a thief with an international reputation, and I was convinced he had only married this girl in order to use her as a tool. We made a countrywide search for the thief, but could get no trace of him. Other means had to be reported to; so we decided on a bold stroke. One nighl the detective-footman tcok the maid to n dance. Another operative was there and approached the maid, declaring that he had been introduced to her by her husband shortly after their marriage. He at once launched a tirade against the missing husband, saying that the deserter had doublecrossed him on a deal. "I lifted the jewels of your late mistress," the new found friend said, 'and your husband bunked me cut of my share of the sale. He gave me the key te the safe, saying you had given it to him. and after getting the stuff he planted it and beat it out of the city." The poor maid immediately saw visions of her arrest as an accomplice. She was in a panic of fear and swore that she knew nothing of the theft. Gradually the detectives drew from her the admission that on one occasion only had her late mistress left the lwuse without taking the key to the safe with her. She had gone to a nearby town to visit a relative suddenly seized with illness nud had left so hurriedly that she had forgotten to adjust about her neck the little chain on which she kept the carefully guarded key. The maid, discovering the key. had raken charge of it and had it In her purse when her husband came to take her out that evening. She further recalled that she had given her husband her purse to keep for her while they were in a restaurant and that he had excused himself from their table for a few minutes. The key and chain were safely bac: in her possession wheu she left the restamaut, and >he was positive her husband could not possibly have made a duplicate of the key in the brief time lie was away from their table. Of course It was all as plain to me as the nose on my face. The next day I located a locksmith, a reformed thief. He, too, knew the missing husband and after due thought recalled that he had made several keys for him two months before. One of these keys was modelled from an imprint taken In a cake of soap. He was afraid at the time that a crooked deal was in contemplation, but the customer swore it was a key to a trunk which he had broken. Two months of hard work resulted in turning up the husband. Confronted by the iudisputable mazs of evidence we had woven about him, he came through and confessed. He had been unable to dispose of the gem", fearing to "withdraw them from their hiding place until the hue and cry for the thief had subsided. We recovered the gems all right and restored them intact to their owner. I don't know which overjoyed her the most, the recovery of her treasured jewels or the exoneration of her wayward ton from suspicion. Many women who possess rare jewels have queer ways of safeguarding them. Very often they mislay them and immediately leap to the conclusion that they have been robbed. A case in point A few weeks ago I was aroused from a sound sleep at my borne in Bronxville by an insistent ring of the telephone. Mrs. Jones, we will call her, hysterical and weeping sobbingly, gasped that her jewels had been stolen that very night. I was to come to her house —it was then three o'clock in the morning—without delay to take charge of the case. She was alone, it seemed, except for the servants, her husband having gone West. She was getting ready to move iuto another dwelling the next day and she bad been so busy packing that she hadn't left the house for a minute the day before. She had the gems shortly before lying down for a nap the afternoon before and she knew none of her servants—all of whom had been in her employ many years— had seen them. I drew from her the information that her sister had spent an hour witii her in the afternoon, but in no circumstances would she permit her sister, who was an invalid, to be annoyed by news of the robbery. I quieted my client as best I could, promising her 1 would come to her house just as soon as I couid motor down from Bronxville. in the meantime, disregarding strict orders, I got the sister on the telephone. Tclliug her that there was no cause for worry or alarm, I asked if she, while assisting her sister to pack her effects the afternoon before, had seen where she placed her j< wel casket "Why, of course.- she thrilled. 'ln the big black trunk with her initials on it. You don't mean to tell me they are gone? They are under the second tray, wrapped in her lingerie." Reassuring her and adding that her sister had been so harried over her packing that the whereabouts "f the jewels had escaped her memory and she had become a little nervous about it and had appealed to me, a friend, 1 then got Mrs. Jones on the telephone. Of course she berated me for so long delaying my start to her home. "1 have a theory," 1 said. 'I want you to go to the big black trunk hearing your initials that stunds in your bedroom, and after opening it remove two trays. Then look in the lower right comer, where some of your newest lingerie i- packed, and see if you don't find your jewel casket." She retorted at once that such a course would be foolish, but grumblingly consented. She was absent from the telephone about five minutes. Before she could pick up the re-eivcr she almost screamed over the wire:— "Why, Mr. Burns, yon are a perfect wizard. How in the world did yon guess my jewels were in the irunic? More marvellous still, low in heaven's name did you know I had a trunk such a-* you described?" 'Very simp!", madam." I replied. "Just a questio» >f deduction. Now return to bed, after locking up your jewels carefully, and I'll go to sleep, 100. 1 hope your dreams will not be unpleasantly disturbed." Can you heat if: