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About four months after the robbery, a break came when Harold Gray, who'd been directed by Willis to try to recover the collection, got word that a shadowy source in Philadelphia had been in touch with a Miami bail bondsman "about those missing coins." Gray agreed on a price and sent the bondsman and his wife to Philadelphia, where a sting was set up with help from the local FBI. The moment the bondsman's wife handed over her cash-stuffed handbag, agents swooped down. They apprehended two men who had 13 territorial gold pieces from duPont's collection in their possession.A few months later, a small-time Miami hood decided to settle a domestic argument by dropping his wife with a left hook. The woman's father sought out his son-in-law and beat him senseless. When the son-in-law was carried into the hospital, an attendant cut away an odd-looking bandage on his ankle to discover a strange gold coin taped there. Police were called in and summoned Gray, who made his second major recovery -- the famed 1787 Brasher doubloon. "We might never have found it if the guy had been a better fighter," says Gray.
After those initial successes, Gray returned to a more ordinary legal practice, but never stopped his pursuit. Every coin dealer of note knew to contact him or the FBI if any of the duPont coins turned up. In 1981, Gray was informed about a man who'd come to Denver's American Numismatic Association with a suspicious coin. In an FBI sting, the man, identified as a mob runner, was nabbed and found to be in possession of the $1 million Linderman 1804 silver dollar. Twelve years later, acting on another tip, Gray traveled to Zurich to help Swiss authorities apprehend two Israeli couriers offering to sell several 19th-century gold pieces from the collection.
"We've got most of the good stuff," Gray says today, though a number of territorial gold pieces as well as the bulk of the Mikhailovich collection is still missing, and the case remains officially unsolved. For Gray's part, he is fairly certain who pulled the job. "A bunch of small-timers stumbled into the haul of their lives," he says. "They probably sold the coins for peanuts shortly after the robbery. All we can do is try to get them back."
"You've got to understand," says Miami coin collector Alan Luedeking, "to numismatists these are more than just rare coins. They're irreplaceable bits of history. Having one is like holding a lifeline to the past." Joining a friend in a box at last spring's NASDAQ-100 Open on Key Biscayne, Luedeking was introduced to his fellow box-mates. Among them were a charming couple named Willis and Miren duPont. Luedeking swallowed, any interest he had in the tennis match before him gone in an instant. "The coin-theft duPonts?" he blurted.
When Willis affirmed with a pained nod, Luedeking went on to congratulate him on the recovery of the "no motto" silver dollar and asked if he was still collecting coins. "He told me he was not," Luedeking says. "It was quite a disappointment." Luedeking couldn't help asking a few more questions. It was like running across someone who'd gone down on the Titanic. Willis revealed that, for him, the most pleasing recovery was the 1804 Linderman dollar, and that of all those still missing, he'd like to recover the "Stella," an 1879 $4 gold piece said to be worth $1.2 million today.
Luedeking can be forgiven his eagerness, for the story is the stuff of myth. Have those Russian coins been secretly returned to their homeland? Does some James Bond-like villain display those invaluable gold pieces in a hidden room behind the walls of a South American hacienda?
Anything is possible, Gray admits, and he understands the enduring appeal of the story. For his client, though, and however resolute Willis may be in seeking the return of his coins, memories of the incident will always be painful. Over the years, the reason why has become clear. While younger son Lammot has grown to adulthood, with a wife and child of his own, in 1983, Victor, then 20 and a senior at Rollins College, died in an automobile accident near Lausanne, Switzerland. In a single moment, one of the sons Willis had feared for that night in 1967 was taken after all. Even with all the resources in the world, there are certain recoveries that cannot be made.
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