BIG JEWEL THEFT STAGED IN MIAMI HOTEL

Taranaki Daily News, 13 March 1935, Page 12

BIG JEWEL THEFT STAGED IN MIAMI HOTEL

Woman Loses Gems She Had Worn That Day At Races

'A GAINST a friend’s counsel, Mrs Margaret,Bell, of New York, wore jewels she valued at probably a quarter of a million” to the Hialeah Park horse races, Miami, Florida, and was robbed of them that night by two masked men who entered her suite in the Miami Biltmore Hotel with pistols drawn. Mrs Bell, wife of J. E. Bell, former New York stockbroker, was tied hand and foot, as was Harry Content, a prominent New York broker. Neither was hurt. Mrs Bell listed her losses as four pearl necklaces and two rings, a bracelet and wrist watch, all platinum and set with diamonds. They were insured, she told the police, for $350,000. A member of Mrs Bell’s party described the diamond in one ring as “one of the largest square stones in the. world.” Despite Mrs Bell’s scream and telephone alarm to the hotel lobby four floors down, the bandits escaped. Mrs Bell, with Mr Content and Dr Howard W. Blake, New York dental surgeon, and Mrs Blake, had returned from Hialeah to the hotel in suburban Coral Gables only 20 minutes earlier. “I was in my sitting room reading when the two men walked in, handkerchiefs up to their eyes and holding pistols. I thought it was a joke,” she related afterward. “‘No fooling,’ one said, ‘give us that jewellery.’ I was removing it when Mr Content walked in from the next room.” Mr Content took up the narrative, after remarking that the entire party were going that evening “to a night club—as if nothing had happened.” “I heard talking in the room and entered to see Mrs Bell stripping off her jewellery,” he related. “ ‘Here, you—,’ I yelled at the men, but Mrs Bell pleaded with me to let them have what they wanted.” “They forced her to lie face down on the settee and tied her hands and feet with rope like sash cord they .had brought with them. . “I offered to be tied in a chair, but one of them prodded me with his pistol and forced me to lie face down - » on the floor and tied me.” Mrs Bell’s maid was in the adjoining bedroom and. heard what was going on. She locked * herself in the bathroom and pounded on a wall between Mrs Bell’s suite and the suite Of Dr and Mrs Blake. “There’s a robbery going on in here,” she shouted.

Here Dr Blake took up the story.

“I heard a scream and a moment later the maid’s yell and I started for the corridor,” he said, “but my wife stopped me and urged me to telephone the lobby instead. It seemed minutes before I could get the clerk and make him understand. Then, apparently, it was too late.

“I had advised Mrs Bell against wearing her jewels to the track.”

Mr Content described the bandits as “well dressed, youngish, not the sort to attract attention here.”

“I had just sent my man downstairs on an errand,” he said, “when I heard them talking to Mrs Bell.”

Mrs Bell said her valuation of the jewellery was “probably what it could have been sold for—not what it could be bought for,” hence the higher insurance figure. Music frorq a tea dance in the hotel patio, Which the Bell suite overlooks, muffled somewhat the sound of the bandits’ commands. “If you speak,” they told Mrs Bell, “we’ll return next week and shoot you.”