The Great Coin Heist (page 2 of 3)

Traumatized

The upstairs haul wasn't bad -- some $50,000 in cash and jewels -- but what the thieves found in the walk-in safe in the study constituted the real prize. There, in a series of display cases, resided one of the most valuable private coin collections ever assembled.

In short order, the thieves tied up Miren and Willis and dumped $1.5 million worth of ducats, rubles, and the rarest of the rare gold and silver coins into several duPont suitcases. They then took off in Miren's new red Cadillac convertible. About 20 minutes later, the butler freed himself and called police.

Because the robbers had managed to avoid the sophisticated alarm system, investigators at the scene suspected the duPonts were victims of an elite group of criminals who'd staged a recent series of waterborne invasions at several exclusive Florida estates.

But it was not long before Willis offered a more prosaic explanation: "We hadn't turned the system on," he said glumly. The thieves had simply scaled the walls of the compound and made their way inside through an unlocked patio door. "That door never had latched properly," Willis added.

Gone were 7,000 coins including the famous 1866 "no motto" set, the prized Linderman and Cohen 1804 silver dollars, and a number of gold coins struck by private and territorial mints. One of the more notable specimens of the latter was a token from the Colonial days, the "Brasher doubloon" of 1787.

There were 257 coins belonging to the Mikhailovich collection. Originally the property of a cousin of Czar Nicholas II, it had disappeared from Russia under mysterious circumstances and become to coin collectors what the Maltese Falcon was to Humphrey Bogart. Willis had managed to acquire the collection during the 1950s and had begun an incremental transfer to the Smithsonian Institution. The total value of the theft amounted to about $8.5 million in present-day dollars, and none of the coins were insured.

The thieves had been decent enough; one was willing to scratch an itch on Willis's leg after he'd been tied, and another fetched a robe for the trembling maid. However, the leader had at one point berated Willis for not "working to earn a living like everybody else." And when Miren had a hard time remembering the safe combination, he raised his pistol and said, "You'd better remember or we'll put a bullet through your head."

Miren's police interview constituted one of the last statements either would ever make about the incident. To this day, Willis and Miren steadfastly refuse requests for interviews.

Though Miren's automobile was recovered intact within hours of the crime, she wanted nothing more to do with it. Reporters watched as a new Cadillac was delivered the next afternoon. Gone, too, was the allure of that magnificent estate on Biscayne Bay. The family was so eager to be rid of any reminder of the incident that they didn't even put the property on the market. It was given away, donated to the University of Pennsylvania. They left for a more secure enclave in Palm Beach (a 20,000-square-foot estate valued on 2003 tax rolls at nearly $13 million), where their Florida base remains today.

Meanwhile, police pursued the case. Tips pointed to a group of local hoodlums and not the tightly organized professionals as originally supposed, but the fact that they had all been masked and gloved prevented any positive identification.

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