20100911 The Diamond That Disappeared (1)

The Diamond That Disappeared

The mysterious story of the Marlborough diamond

For workers at one of London's Graff jewelry shops, today's date is not easily forgotten. Exactly thirty years ago, a well-dressed man entered the store looking like an ordinary customer. Once inside, he pulled out a gun, and another man followed with a grenade. The two thieves quickly took the finest jewels from the displays. They also took the store's most famous piece: the 45-carat Marlborough diamond. This pigeon-egg-sized diamond was worth 400,000 pounds at the time.

The robbers got out of the store with over 1.4 million pounds in jewels. They were clever, but not quite clever enough. As they got off the plane in Chicago 11 hours later, the police were waiting. They quickly indentified and arrested Joseph Scalise and Arthur Rachel for the crime. To the policement's surprise, however, the stolen jewels were not in the men's luggage. To this day, the location of those jewels - including the Marlborough diamond - remains a mystery.