- It's 1964, and three beach boys
turned cat burglars attempt one of
the biggest heists ever
by going after the biggest jewels ever.
[dramatic electronic music]
- These gems are so expensive
that they're actually priceless.
- The thieves' bold plan calls for some
death-defying acrobatics,
and that's just to break in.
- They're young. They're athletic.
They can't help themselves.
- They want the bragging rights.
- It's all about getting away
with the most precious gems in the world.
- The thrill, the glory, the money.
This is the caper of the century.
♪ ♪
- The masterminds behind every great heist
see what most people don't...
♪ ♪
Risking everything to pull off the score of a lifetime.
It takes a bold plan,
the right team,
and the skill to stay one step ahead of the law.
♪ ♪
The American Museum of Natural History.
It houses more treasure than any bank vault in the world
without world-class security.
If these thieves can get away with the diamonds, rubies,
and sapphires in this hall,
it'll be the biggest jewel heist of the century
at a time when competition for that distinction is fierce.
♪ ♪
- The 1960s is considered the golden age of jewel heists
in American history because jewel heists
were happening, on an average, every 32 seconds.
- High-profile thefts make headlines everywhere,
but one location has a massive collection of priceless jewels
all under one roof,
and they're not hidden away in any impenetrable vault.
♪ ♪
They're on display for all the world to see.
♪ ♪
- The American Museum of Natural History
is one of the most famous museums in the world.
It is one of the biggest in New York City.
- It's about a 2-million square-foot museum
just opposite Central Park.
- About five million people on average a year
go and visit the museum.
It houses everything from meteorites to dinosaur bones.
♪ ♪
- What makes it the most incredible
is the JP Morgan Gem Collection,
which houses some of the most precious
and oldest gemstones in the world.
- The JP Morgan Collection is stored
in the Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems.
That's what it was called back in 1964.
- The Hall of Gems was located on the fourth floor.
It was about 100 feet long and 60 feet wide,
and it had 20-foot ceilings.
Along the perimeter wall, there was a row of 20 windows.
On the opposite wall were two doors
covered by a decorative grate.
They were locked at night to secure the space.
- Dozens of freestanding glass cases
filled the hall, luring visitors in
for a closer look at the giant gems.
The alarms protecting the cases
seemed state of the art to a casual observer,
but what's state of the art in 1964?
- Does it have the security that it has today?
Absolutely not, but there was security.
There was alarms on the glass.
It was double-paned glass,
meaning it's very thick.
It's very hard to break.
- Museum security guards moved through the building
locking doors, turning off lights.
And then, throughout the night,
they would do periodic patrols starting on the hour
and patrolling an assigned area.
- It's a tantalizing target with just enough security
to discourage most thieves.
♪ ♪
But down in Miami, there's a talented trio
of young jewel thieves who've just started working together,
and they're already on the hunt for bigger game.
♪ ♪
These guys are bold, and bright,
and brimming with confidence...
♪ ♪
none more so than their charismatic leader,
Jack Murphy, aka "Murf the Surf."
- Jack Roland Murphy was born in 1937
in Oceanside, California.
He comes from a middle-class family.
He's charming, he's intelligent,
and, befitting his place of birth,
he's a total beach boy.
He actually rises to prominence
as a nationally renowned surfer
in the late '50s and 1960s.
- Oh, Murf the Surf.
He's trim. He's fit.
He's clean cut.
He's got hair that bleaches blond in the summer.
He's not afraid of things,
and he picks up that vibe
and brings it with him to Miami.
♪ ♪
- One of Jack Murphy's first forays
into a life of crime is that he joins a bunch of friends
to rob $15,000 from this mansion,
and the gears go in motion for him to start thinking,
"I want to go into business for myself again,
but not a legitimate business."
- While Murphy is working in upscale Miami hotels,
so he can more easily pick
the pockets of unwary tourists,
he meets a young man from the Bible Belt
with a sharp mind for crime,
Allan Kuhn, the mastermind.
- Allan Kuhn was born in West Grove, Missouri.
He grows up really poor.
When he's 15 years old, he gets arrested
for breaking into the neighbor's homes.
He joins the Navy.
And then after that, he goes down to Miami,
and he becomes a swim teacher at one
of the beachside hotels.
- When Allan Kuhn and Jack Murphy meet,
they have a lot in common.
They're both working the entire hotel circuit.
You know, scrubbing pools
and handing towels is not cutting it.
- Honing their skills as a team,
the two begin robbing mansions all over South Beach.
When the job calls for a getaway driver or a lookout,
they have the perfect go-to guy for that as well,
Roger Clark, the Jack of all Trades.
- Roger Clark is from Meriden, Connecticut,
and he's a high-school lifeguard.
He serves a stint in the Navy,
and then he goes down to Miami
where he paints houses and works
a bunch of other odd jobs.
- Roger's role, he's the getaway driver.
He's also the lookout,
and, if need be, he's their muscle,
if push really comes to shove.
- The team gets bolder and better,
and Kuhn starts to think about stepping up
to the big leagues.
- Allan Kuhn is, without a doubt,
the mastermind of the American Museum
of Natural History heist.
This is really a dream of his.
- Murphy, who always dreams big,
loves the idea, too,
so the three partners in crime decide to take
their show on the road.
♪ ♪
- So Murphy, Kuhn, and Clark traveled to New York
in October 1964 for the express purpose
of casing the museum and looking
for other places to burglarize--
any place where they think that they can score
and not be caught.
- But soon, Murphy and Kuhn begin casing
their real target...
the Museum of Natural History.
- They went in acting as tourists.
They went in on a different schedule
so that they would not be all seen together.
- They're kind of surveying
what's at the museum, what's in this collection
that they might want to take.
- The highlight of the collection
is the Star of India sapphire.
It displays the six pointed star,
and that star pattern is very, very rare.
It's a huge stone,
really the size of a golf ball,
over 500 carats.
- Then you have the Eagle Diamond,
which is the largest diamond ever found in America.
It's more than 15 carats, and it was found
in Eagle, Wisconsin back in 1876.
- Another highlight of the collection
is the DeLong Star Ruby.
It looks like a piece of candy.
It's over 100 carats
and also has the asterism star pattern.
- And then there's a Midnight Star,
which is often described as a black sapphire.
And it's about 116 carats, and it was found in Sri Lanka.
- A huge potential payday from a handful of small rocks
is all the motivation they need.
The three men begin planning
their most ambitious heist ever.
♪ ♪
- While they're eating, sleeping, and breathing,
they're researching and casing this heist,
they're also having fun.
You've got to remember, they're in their twenties.
You're in New York in your twenties.
They're going out. They're drinking.
They're having parties in their hotel room.
- The men are not just living it up.
They're also bragging to anyone
who might be impressed.
- They are not covering up their tracks,
and they make themselves vulnerable to being revealed.
- It's at one of these parties that Kuhn finds himself
a different kind of partner.
♪ ♪
- Janet Florkiewicz is a 19-year-old stenographer,
and she's in New York staying at the same hotel
as the thieves.
And while she's there, she and Allan Kuhn
strike up a bit of a romance,
and they kind of become an item.
♪ ♪
- The second time they case the museum,
Kuhn is laser focused on the mission.
- Allan Kuhn, in particular, is especially fascinated
by the Hall of Gems,
and he spends hours in there at a time.
In fact, there's one instance
where he takes Janet Florkiewicz with him
on a date to the Hall of Gems.
- Kuhn notices that the battery packs
that are connected to the security system
are corroded, and there may not be an alarm.
- It's kind of an unknown still.
- For weeks, the men have been partying
and flashing cash all over town.
One night at a bar, someone recognizes Jack
as the nationally renowned pro surfer
Murf the Surf,
and it rattles him.
- Right before the heist, Murphy gets cold feet.
♪ ♪
He finally realized, "Oh, wait a minute.
"Maybe we talk too much. Maybe we did too much.
Maybe we shouldn't be doing this."
♪ ♪
- But Allan Kuhn, he really has his heart set on this,
and he is not going to let Jack Murphy ruin this for him.
At this point, this would really be
a betrayal, for Jack Murphy to back out.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- It's a week before
the Museum of Natural History heist,
and Murf the Surf wants to bail out,
but Allan Kuhn is in too deep to just let him walk away.
- Murphy and Kuhn are arguing. They're going at it.
Kuhn really feels betrayed by Murphy's sudden reticence
about all of this.
- In the back of his head,
he's probably saying to himself,
"There's too much heat on us."
He starts second guessing everything.
- If Jack Murphy drops out, the dream is dead.
♪ ♪
- Kuhn reminds Murphy
they've already spotted a weakness
in the alarm system.
All they need to do is find a way in.
Kuhn urges him to case the museum one more time.
- Jack Murphy being in or out, it makes all the difference
between being able to pull this off,
and having to just give it up and go home.
♪ ♪
- Murf agrees to one more look,
and the guys return for one last recon mission,
keeping their eyes out for any way
into the Hall of Gems after hours.
- These three guys weave in and out of the hall
throughout the day.
They split up and kind of divide and conquer.
- These guys are smart.
They know they can't just walk through the doors
of the Museum of Natural History
for a multitude of reasons, and one of them is because
there's an iron gate outside the Hall of Gems.
Once it's shut, you're not getting in.
So the only way in
is through those giant windows.
- There are 19 windows in the Hall of Gems,
and every single one of them is left open
about two inches at the top.
- For ventilation purposes.
I mean, these are old days
before central air conditioning.
- So they're thinking this is going to be their way in,
but it also means that this is going to be
incredibly physically demanding
because they're going to have to get up to those windows.
♪ ♪
- While Kuhn is spying a way in,
Murphy and Clark are clocking how the guards patrol.
- And they realize that the security guards
come through the hall once every hour on the hour,
and they stay there for just about five minutes.
- With a way in and ideas on how to beat
the alarms and the guards,
Kuhn and Clark love their chances.
Now they just need to know,
does Murphy want to go big or go home?
- Murphy caves.
He's on board. They're going to do it.
♪ ♪
- The night before the heist,
the men hash out the plan to grab the jewels.
- They know they need a lookout
and they need a driver.
So Roger Clark, he's the guy
that's going to let them know
what's going on outside the museum walls.
He's also the getaway driver.
- Clark will drop off Murphy and Kuhn
on the 81st Street side of the museum.
They need to climb a fence, sprint across the grounds
without being seen, and scale a fire escape
up to the fifth floor.
- They chose the fifth floor because there's a ledge
that runs around the back of the museum
from the location of the fire escape
over the gem room.
♪ ♪
- The plan is to repel down from the fifth floor
to the fourth floor and swing
from one window to the next.
- The stakes are high--
125 feet high, to be exact.
- They have great confidence in their physical abilities
to pull this off.
♪ ♪
- Once inside, it will be all about stealth,
as they play a cat and mouse game
with the guards.
Between each patrol, they should have
a 45-minute window to break into
the display cases.
- They have a tool kit. It's glass cutters.
It's hammers.
It's all sorts of things that you're going to need
to bust open a jewel case.
- After they grab the jewels, they need to climb up the rope
and do it all in reverse, rendezvous-ing with Clark
at the edge of Central Park.
- There's a lot of jumping. There's rope climbing.
There's vaulting. There's running.
I'm kind of out of shape. I couldn't do it.
♪ ♪
- Shortly after sundown, on the night of the heist,
the three men gather their tools
and get dressed for success--
or, in Murphy's case, for failure.
- You'd think these guys would want
to put on the usual all black,
maybe a ski mask, a little inconspicuous,
but Murphy has this personal philosophy
that if he's going to get caught,
he's going to look good.
♪ ♪
So he's got on this dark green velour jacket.
He has a turtleneck sweater on,
corduroy pants,
And he is ready to look good if he gets caught.
♪ ♪
- Murphy and Kuhn have broken into dozens
of hotel rooms, homes,
and even a jewelry store or two,
but they're about to attempt the biggest,
most daring heist of their lives--
breaking into an iconic museum
to steal the world's rarest gems.
The last three weeks have led to this moment,
and the heist is on.
♪ ♪
- Now it's showtime.
♪ ♪
- And they get in Kuhn's white Cadillac convertible,
and they drive down to 81st Street
and Central Park West.
They're going to approach the museum
near the planetarium.
♪ ♪
- Murphy and Kuhn hop out,
and they head right to the museum.
- Clark parks the car around the block,
then takes up his lookout position
on the edge of the park.
- He has a walkie-talkie to communicate
with Kuhn and Murphy.
- Once Murphy and Kuhn are on the museum grounds,
there is a spike fence that they need to hop over.
♪ ♪
- But the problem is that there's a 14-foot drop
on the other side down into a sunken courtyard,
and they've got that upper body strength
from being swimmers, so they kind of
just vault over it like gymnasts.
♪ ♪
- Murphy and Kuhn
jump the fence and go down a driveway.
As they get down the ramp,
they see the fire escape
that they are intending to climb.
- The fire escape then helps them get to a ledge.
♪ ♪
And the ledge is going to bring them
to those giant windows that they saw
that lead them right into the promised land,
the Hall of Gems.
But the ledge is so narrow and so long
that it's going to take all their core muscles,
all those things that they have been working on
on the surfboard, they're applying
the same muscles to this ledge.
♪ ♪
- But this isn't the ocean.
They're 125 feet above hard, dry land
and several yards away from the Hall of Gems.
- Murphy is so focused.
There is nothing that's going to stop him.
He's just so hell bent on getting inside the museum
that he doesn't notice the small gathering
of pigeons on this ledge.
He startles them.
They fly away.
They in turn startle him,
and he's now rocking on this ledge
and could fall at any moment.
One false move, this heist is finished
before it even started.
♪ ♪
- Jack Murphy and Allan Kuhn are 125 feet in the air,
clinging to the side
of the American Museum of Natural History,
as they edge their way toward the Hall of Gems.
- This is a horribly treacherous, nerve-racking way
into the museum.
As he's shimmying across this narrow ledge,
he encounters this flock of pigeons.
- I've spent enough time on 77th Street
to know that pigeons are an obstacle.
- These pigeons take off, and Murphy loses his balance,
and his whole upper body is kind of,
like, swaying off of this ledge,
more than 100 feet in the air.
- He's now rocking on this ledge
and could fall at any moment.
- Then at the last minute-- somehow--
he manages to swing his upper body back around
against the wall of the museum,
just like a surfer catching his balance again--
and he's OK.
- He's a little bit more conscious
of his surroundings now,
but he sees these giant windows
that he's been dreaming about getting in.
- Murphy sees that the window is still open,
so he is fairly certain that there's
no alarm that's going to activate
when he lowers the window.
- Murphy has a rope, and he ties it to a pillar.
He's going to have to lower himself from this ledge
down into one of those windows that's in the Hall of gems.
- And remember, Murphy is carrying an airline bag
containing the burglary tools as he's lowering himself down.
- He puts his foot on the sash, and the window goes down...
- Far enough so that they can slide into the window
without breaking the glass,
and then they're off to the races.
♪ ♪
- Jack Murphy and Allan Kuhn's daredevil act works,
but before they rush over to the JP Morgan Collection
and get to work, they need to answer
a multimillion dollar question.
Do the night guards follow the same patrol schedule
as the day shift?
- They hide out in a dark corner of the hall,
waiting to see when the security guards come by.
How often? Is it still an hourly rotation?
- They take their time.
They've taken enough time to plan this heist.
What's a couple more hours?
And that's what they do.
They wait until that security guard is gone,
down the hall, somewhere else.
- And then they're feeling, like, OK,
they can finally make their move.
- Murphy and Kuhn learn that the guard's patrol pattern
is different from the day shift,
but it's good news.
The night guard doesn't even enter the hall.
He just peers through the night gate
with his flashlight and moves on.
It's go time.
- They're in position now, right in front
of the Star of India.
They're staring at it.
It's so beautiful, and it's almost theirs.
- To see if the case's alarm is truly off,
they perform one last test.
- Allan Kuhn has this rubber hammer,
and he hits the case,
and the glass doesn't break, because it's double-paned,
but it does make this sound, almost like a gunshot,
reverberating around the whole hall.
And so he grabs all of his stuff.
He thinks this is it, that someone's going
to come running for them, but nobody does.
- No security guard comes.
- So this tells him, one,
it's probably not that well guarded,
and two, that that alarm on the case
really isn't working.
- To make sure they haven't tripped
any silent alarms elsewhere in the museum,
they check in with their lookout.
- They're in communication with Clark,
who's on the ground, via walkie-talkie.
He's like, "I don't hear anything."
So they just keep going.
- Murphy and Kuhn break out their burglary tools
and set to work, confident they're minutes away
from getting their hands on the biggest jewels
they've ever seen.
- One of those devices is a glass break.
It has a suction cup that attaches to the glass,
a rod, and then a scoring device.
And then they make a perfect circle scoring
around the center of the case,
but it doesn't break out as easily
as they had hoped it would, because it's double-paned,
laminated glass.
So it takes them a lot longer
than they had anticipated to cut through.
- After 30 frustrating minutes,
finesse isn't getting the job done,
and the clock is ticking,
so they try a different tactic--
brute force.
- They take duct tape,
and they tape over the circular area
that they want to punch out.
And this will muffle the sound, and it will also prevent,
if the case breaks out, the shards of glass
go crashing down to the floor and make a lot of noise.
- Because of how loudly the hammer rang out last time,
Kuhn and Murphy need something to mask
the noise of breaking glass,
and they find just what they need
among the relaxing, natural sounds of nighttime New York.
[jet engine whooshes]
- The museum is in the flight paths of both the JFK Airport
and the LaGuardia Airport.
- The airliners come in on the Upper West Side,
and turn and go into LaGuardia.
So they timed the breaking of the glass
to the arrival of an airplane overhead.
[glass shattering]
- Murphy carefully reaches inside
the broken case and removes
the 563-carat sapphire,
the Star of India.
Not sure if they've tripped any other alarms,
they retreat to their hiding spot and radio Clark
to tell him they've got one of the stones.
- They are synchronizing their work
on the cases with the movement of the guards.
As a guard comes through on patrol,
they stop work, stay quiet.
The guard will come by, maybe shine
his light in through the gate, and then move on.
- Once the guard is far enough away,
they head straight for the DeLong Star Ruby.
They repeat the process on the next glass case--
score, tape, smash,
and grab the goods.
♪ ♪
With the Star of India and DeLong Ruby in hand,
it's already a very lucrative score,
but these guys didn't come all this way
for just two stones.
- The Eagle Diamond is really important for the thieves
because a rough diamond is easily cut,
and so from there, they can cut the stone down,
losing just a little bit of weight,
and sell the piece as a faceted diamond.
- They're stealing not just the three that they planned
to steal, but when they see how easy it is,
it seems to me that they decided we're going to
stay here as long as we can without being caught.
We're going to continue to smash the cases
and take as many gems as we can.
- They decide to push their luck
and try for the Midnight Star and the many smaller gems
displayed alongside it.
- So far, everything's been going smoothly,
but hours have gone by.
Something is destined to go awry.
Murphy and Kuhn approach one of the gem cases,
and then, just out of the corner of their eye,
they see a little flash of light.
- It's the guard, and he's early.
Kuhn and Murf can't make it to their usual hiding spot
without being seen.
Instead, they sprint towards the corner
next to the gate as the guard rakes his flashlight
around the hall.
- So if the light captures them, the jig is up.
♪ ♪
- More than four hours into the heist,
Jack Murphy and Allan Kuhn have their hands
on three of the most valuable gems in the world.
But while trying to snatch even more,
they're surprised by a night watchman.
- It's a security guard who's just a little bit early
for one of their rotations.
So they quickly make a beeline to a dark corner and hide out.
- The guy flashes his flashlight.
You know, if they're spotted by the guard,
then the jig's up,
and they might have to scamper out of there.
- The two men huddle motionless in the corner
counting on the guard to get on with his rounds.
- To anybody else, that might be frightening,
but they are a lot cooler than most of us.
♪ ♪
- You're just expecting sudden disaster.
♪ ♪
And then, when that doesn't happen...
♪ ♪
It feels like this magic trick.
- The security guard moves on.
The two men could make a getaway,
but decide to get back to work...
[glass shattering]
Breaking into the Midnight Star's case.
- They've got the Star of India sapphire,
the DeLong Ruby, the Eagle Diamond,
and the Midnight Star.
But they didn't just come for clout.
They also came for cash.
And so now it's time to take things
that they can really sell.
- Inside this last case is a rainbow-colored
assortment of smaller gems--
emeralds, aquamarines, opals, and more.
These should be much easier to fence
than four of the most famous stones in the world.
- You can't cut the Star of India.
You can't cut a star sapphire. It won't shine anymore.
It won't-- it won't have a star,
and it will be of no value.
- Nearly five hours after the heist began,
Murf the Surf and Allan Kuhn are finally satisfied.
With more than two dozen gems tucked into their tool bags,
it's definitely the biggest score
of their lives.
All that remains is a clean getaway.
- They go back out the way that they came in.
So the rope that they shimmied down,
they're now going to climb back up.
- It's a much more difficult task climbing up a rope
than it is climbing down a rope,
particularly with their bag of tools and gems.
- Back outside on the ledge,
they once again have to inch their way along the length
of the building.
- If they fall, all the hard work
they just did is for naught.
So it's pretty treacherous for these guys.
And they know that.
- They go back over to the fire escape
and down the face of the building,
and they're back in the courtyard.
I cannot imagine what was going
through these guys' heads when they make it back
to the courtyard, because they've just pulled off
the biggest heist in New York history,
they haven't set off a single alarm,
and they don't have a single guard
coming after them, as far as they know.
So they're feeling pretty darn good about themselves.
- It's this feeling of euphoria.
We did it. We're in the clear.
We pulled off the impossible. - They had a great plan.
They got in quickly, they got out quickly.
- Once they were over the fence,
they radio Clark with the good news
and tell him to clear out.
There's just one last bit of business to take care of.
- So they're in the bushes,
and they start dividing the jewels.
The purpose of this was,
if one of the guys does get caught,
the other guys can fence the jewels,
get some money for bail,
and try and help each other out.
♪ ♪
- Once Kuhn and Murphy leave the museum,
they decide they're going to split up.
They hope that this makes it less likely
that they're going to get caught.
- It kind of becomes an every man
for themselves scenario.
- As Murphy walks away from Kuhn,
he marvels at his own success, the heist of his life,
a pocket full of rare jewels, and not
a single police officer in sight.
At least, that's what he thinks.
- As Murphy is leaving the museum grounds,
he encounters a whole group of police officers
gathered together.
- Now he's freaking out.
Did we trigger a silent alarm?
Were we too loud? How did Clark not call us?
Is Clark backstabbing us?
Like, all of the worst fears that could happen in a heist
are beginning to bubble in his head.
- Here they are. They're just waiting for me.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- Jack Murphy and Allan Kuhn
have just escaped the Natural History Museum
with millions in stolen gems and no alarms raised.
Then, suddenly, Murphy is face to face
with a dozen NYPD officers.
- Murphy happened to encounter a gaggle of cops.
He thought, "OK, maybe the jig is up."
- Being Jack "Murf the Surf" Murphy,
and a guy who manages
to get himself out of every situation,
he sees someone walking their dog.
And remember, he's not dressed like a cat burglar.
He's dressed like a tourist.
- So he tries to remain calm, play it cool.
And he whistles so that the dog jumps up on him,
and he starts to strike up a conversation
with the dog owner so that,
as the police officers are walking past,
he can just kind of say, "Good night, officers."
♪ ♪
- Murphy was so focused on this museum
that he never actually studied the neighborhood
around the museum.
There's these two police precincts just blocks away.
- And then, luckily, a cab pulls up
alongside him at a stoplight.
So he just slides in and slips away.
- After the heist, Clark immediately
drives to his parents' home in Connecticut to lie low.
Back at the hotel, Murphy and Kuhn
are preparing to get the gems and themselves back to Miami.
- The plan is that we're going to fence
the jewels after the heist.
We're going to make some money,
and we're going to open a bar or a club in Miami
called the Star of India. And that's documented.
That was really their plan.
- Early the next morning they head to the airport,
and they decide to travel with more
than just the stolen jewels.
- Their next move is probably
as cavalier as the actual heist.
- Kuhn was dating a girl, an innocent bystander
named Janet Florkiewicz.
- What she doesn't know is that they're about
to draft her to work as a courier.
♪ ♪
- She agrees to go to Miami,
but he says "You have to use a fake name.
"You have to pretend not to know us.
Oh, and can you carry this bag, and don't ask what's in it."
And of course, the bag has all of the gems,
unbeknownst to her.
- While they're flying to Miami,
the museum staff discovers the Hall of Gems in shambles.
Within minutes, the NYPD and the FBI
are scouring the crime scene.
- What evidence is left behind?
Not a whole lot.
There's broken glass, and I don't think
they said anything else.
- The value of the stolen gems is difficult to calculate.
They're estimated at $410,000,
roughly $3.9 million in today's dollars.
But other experts say the jewels'
one-of-a-kind nature
makes them ten times more valuable.
- The gems were not insured at the time of the robbery.
The museum director stated that the insurance
was too expensive, because they were
considered to be priceless.
- The embarrassments for the museum
pile up when investigators realized their night guard
missed spotting the thieves.
And that was just one of many security lapses.
- For all practical purposes, the museum
had no functioning alarm system
in the gem collection at that point.
There were no alarms on the windows.
And in the gem case where the Star of India was on display,
there was an alarm system, but the batteries
were all corroded on that
and hadn't been changed in years.
♪ ♪
- Less than 24 hours after the heist,
investigators catch a break.
Murphy and Kuhn's pre-heist party
and liquor-fueled bragging catches up with them.
- There was a young man at the party
who, for one reason or another,
informed on these guys to a uniformed police officer
at the local precinct by the museum.
- With this lead, NYPD detectives
obtain a warrant to search
the thieves' suite at the Cambridge Hotel.
- Detectives find some of the burglars' tools.
They find books about the gems.
They find the floor plan.
- 26 hours after the heist,
Roger Clark has no idea the police are onto them,
and he returns from his parents' home
to the Cambridge Hotel to retrieve his things.
Although it's the middle of the night,
detectives are still in the suite gathering evidence.
For Clark, the jig is up.
- And Clark starts to sing almost immediately.
And it didn't take long for all of this
to start to unravel.
- The next morning, law enforcement in Florida
rushes to intercept Murphy and Kuhn
before they can fence the gems.
- They become people of interest for the police,
but now the FBI is involved.
And the FBI raid Kuhn's apartment.
They come in, and they are looking in every
nook and cranny for these gems.
- After a flawless heist in New Yorkc]
and a smooth getaway to Miami, it takes less than two days
for the FBI to link the Natural History theft
to Jack Murphy and Allan Kuhn.
- The FBI tear up Allan Kuhn's apartment in Miami
after the heist, and they don't find a thing.
- When Kuhn returns home,
they arrest him and demand that he reveal
where he's hidden the stones.
- The gems haven't been fenced yet.
They're still in the possession of Kuhn and Clark.
But where are they? The FBI can't find them.
- But Kuhn keeps mum.
And when Jack Murphy gets back to the apartment,
he too stays cool under pressure.
- According to Jack Murphy, they hid the jewels
in a trash can inside the apartment.
According to Kuhn, he had hid them
in the ceiling in the hallway of the apartment,
but the FBI is none the wiser.
- Clark's confession is enough to arrest Murphy and Kuhn
and fly them back to New York,
but with no gems as physical evidence,
the two men are free to go.
Meanwhile, the Museum of Natural History heist
is becoming one of the most sensational
news stories of the decade.
- The press and the public love these guys.
They're tan. They're handsome.
They're charming. They're bold.
Everyone is eating it up.
- When the media learns of Murphy, Kuhn, and Clark,
they become folk heroes.
They are lavishing in their celebrity.
- How do I explain this to my family
and--and my--and my friends all over the country?
And the same with Jack and Roger?
We--we didn't care for all this.
- The men denied taking part in the heist,
but they're also talking too much to the media.
- I think it's a shame that they don't
concentrate their efforts up there in the city
where this happened.
- If I was their lawyer,
I'd say, "Just shut your mouth."
But that's not in their nature.
- Murf and Kuhn's newfound fame
in New York rankles Manhattan prosecutor
Maurice Nadjari, who works this case
with laser-focused tenacity.
- Maurice was motivated.
And he would be damned if he wasn't
going to solve this case.
It was not going to be the heist of the century.
- He views this as a crime against the people
of New York, and he sees these three
pompous jerks almost thumbing their nose
at him and authority, and it's driving him mad.
♪ ♪
- So he starts looking back through the records
of other jewel thefts
both in New York and in Miami.
He comes across a theft that involved
the actress Eva Gabor.
- She's robbed of her jewels. She's pistol whipped.
At the time, it makes headlines.
So he sees this story, and he goes
and has a chat with Eva Gabor.
He shows mug shots, and she's able to point out
that it's Jack Murphy and it's Allan Kuhn.
- Gabor's testimony sends Murphy and Kuhn to jail,
and the judge sets bail at 150,000 each.
They can't pay.
So they're taken to the Manhattan Detention Complex--
aka "The Tombs."
Suddenly, being associated with the heist
isn't much fun anymore.
- It didn't take more than a day
or two for Kuhn to come forward and say,
"OK, I want to cooperate.
I'll go to Florida and recover the gems."
- Based on intel from Kuhn,
Maurice Nadjari recovers the Star of India
and the Midnight Star,
along with several smaller gems,
from a bus station locker in Miami.
- The Eagle Diamond is not so fortunate.
This is probably an item,
because it was a rough diamond,
that it immediately was sold and recut,
and it's now gone forever.
- The DeLong Star Ruby is recovered.
John D. MacArthur, the billionaire,
pays a $25,000 ransom to get that back.
- About six months after the heist,
Allan Kuhn, Jack Murphy, and Roger Clark
plead guilty to burglary and grand larceny.
They're each sentenced to three years at Rikers Island.
♪ ♪
After prison, the three friends
go down very different paths.
- Roger Clark moves back to Connecticut,
and he lives a quiet life.
He had his thrill in the underworld,
and it was more than enough for him.
Allan Kuhn, on the other hand, he gets in trouble again.
He serves one year
in a California federal penitentiary.
And after that, he actually goes back
on the straight and narrow.
- Jack Murphy does not go straight.
He enters, in fact, a darker chapter
of his criminal history.
In 1969, he's convicted of a double homicide,
and he says he didn't do it,
but he gets a double life sentence.
And then, in 1986,
just 17 years into that double life sentence,
he gets paroled.
- Each of the thieves has since passed away--
Roger Clark in 2007,
Allan Kuhn in 2017,
and Jack Murphy in 2020.
As for the Hall of Gems--
- It still houses the DeLong Star Ruby
and, of course, the Star of India sapphire.
So anyone can go and see these two gems.
♪ ♪
- In 1964, Jack Murphy, Allan Kuhn, and Roger Clark
pulled off a perfect heist
using their physical strength, agility,
and a whole lot of luck.
And they looked good doing it.
From the high profile of their priceless targets,
to their bold style and the media frenzy
it inspired, the American Museum of Natural History caper
will always remain among history's greatest heists.
♪ ♪