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The World’s Laura Lynch reports on a bold heist at an upscale London jeweler. Last week thieves snatched an estimated 65 million dollars worth of diamonds from a prominent London diamond merchant in a daytime robbery.
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MARCO WERMAN: Diamonds are big news in Britain this week. The country’s biggest jewelry heist has netted thieves about $65 million worth of glittering broaches, earrings, and necklaces. The theft took place in broad daylight on a busy London street. New images of the brazen robbery have just been released. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.
LAURA LYNCH: A passerby with a cell phone recorded the chaotic sound and images of the crime on one of London’s swankiest shopping streets. Two men emerged from Graff’s jewelers clutching guns and a female employee.
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A shot fired into the ground stirred more panic as the bandits made their getaway leaving their hostage behind unharmed. The robbery appears to have been well planned – the target carefully chosen.
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Graff’s website is all about celebrating glitz and glamour. Lush orchestral music is laid over images of what it says are the most fabulous jewels in the world and they adorn some of the world’s most famous women – TV’s Opera Winfrey, heiress Paris Hilton, and British actress Emma Thompson to name a few. So Graff’s wouldn’t just welcome anyone into its shop off the street would it? Former Scotland Yard Detective Peter Bleksley says yes it just might.
PETER BLEKSLEY: Unlike some other shops that are at the high end of the retail market this shop does not exclusively do its viewings by appointment. That’s what some other shops do. If you want to go in there you’ve got to make an appointment. Your identity will be checked and they use that as additional security measures.
LYNCH: The two robbers strolled into Graff’s last Thursday afternoon their faces clearly captured on security cameras. Once inside they pulled out their guns and threatened the staff. They then began plucking jewels out of display cases. Within minutes they were out the door and into what police say were a series of getaway cars. While one man has been arrested there’s no suggestion police have recovered the loot. Bleksley senses many people are quietly admiring the robbers and their ability to pull it off.
BLEKSLEY: It serves only to aggravate me really. I mean the media and films such as Ocean’s 11 and the Italian Job and the list – all those sort of jobs you know that glamorize the honest blaggard if you will. Well really that’s just frankly ridiculous and if any of us want to ask the poor female employee who was taken hostage in effect, dragged out onto the street, and a gunshot was let off in very close proximity to her… If anybody would like to ask her this morning just how glamorous she feels it was. I would be very interested.
LYNCH: Neither or anyone else at Graff’s is saying much of anything today. Police call this the biggest jewelry heist in British history. The second biggest? At the same store just six years ago. The company won’t reveal whether it’s learned a lesson and is changing its security procedures in order to ensure it hangs on to what remains of it precious gems. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in London.
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