The casually dressed thieves appeared calm and confident when they bashed a display case in the middle of the day Friday and snatched an estimated $800,000 worth of diamond-encrusted jewelry from a luxury Aspen hotel.
Aspen police this week released surveillance video and photographs of the suspects while they were inside the Little Nell Hotel on East Durant Avenue during the heist.
The oldest of the three suspects had a backpack on and could be seen in the act of putting a watch on his wrist. A younger man wore a black baseball cap and a smile, and a third man was wearing a cross pendant and carrying a bin of jewelry. None of the three had any kind of disguise over his face.
Aspen police released the video and images in hopes that someone will recognize the thieves and come forward, Assistant Aspen Police Chief Bill Linn said.
One of the thieves used a screwdriver to pop the glass lid off the display case at 1:15 p.m. The display case is owned by a New York City business called the Piranesi.
A Little Nell employee said the older thief stuffed a diamond ring and a set of diamond earrings into his backpack, according to an article. The newspaper cited a source who estimated the total value of the stolen jewelry was $800,000 and included an 18-carat diamond.
“It’s definitely high end,” Linn said.
The burglary trio fled in a black Ford SUV with a California license plate near Rubey Park, he said. The SUV was a rental. Police have obtained security video of the suspects as they moved around Aspen, Linn said.
“The investigation is still quite active,” he said. “We have security video from all over the place.”
One of the security images was taken at the Aspen airport.
“They’re from out of town,” Linn said of the suspects. “I’d characterize them doing this at a busy time in the middle of the day as pretty brazen.”
The video shows the three thieves entering the store separately and meeting at the display case.
