Murph the Surf is ALIVE!

Thanks to Corey Kilgannon's piece in today's NYT, 'A Jewel Heist at the Museum,' when Murph the Surf gets the inevitable bylined obituary (and he will get a bylined obituary) I won't be saying to myself, "you mean he was alive yesterday?"  Mr. Kilgannon has reprised the October 1964 Star of India heist from the Museum of  Natural History, complete with a current photo of Jack Murphy at 82 in a tropical shirt looking very tan and fit in Florida.

I'm not sure if I had more time in life that I'd like to grow up and be just like Jack, but I'm sure there were parts of his life I would be envious of.

In Mr. Kilgannon's piece he recounts Murph telling him that immediately following the heist Murph was standing at the bar at the Metropole Cafe, listening to Gene Krupa's band. The Metropole was a live music venue  on 7th Avenue in Times Square with nearly topless dancers. They wore pasties. It was the era of Carol Doda. And if you're adventurous, you'll look her up and find that she got her own obit when she passed.

The doors to the Metropole were open, but you could only see a narrow slice of the women dancing nearly topless on the bar. There was an angle to the entrance from the sidewalk, that if you jostled enough and tried to jump up and get taller, you could see a slice of one dancer. There was also a hefty bouncer in front. Not being of age to drink at the time, I could only go by the Metropole, hear the music and try and gain a peek. Times Square was Sin City.

The Star of India heist was a sensational news story of 1964 that featured a daring theft, non-existent museum security, colorful beach boy, Miami-based characters that killed no one and fired no shots. No animals were hurt during the heist, not even the pigeons that Murph disturbed on a ledge as he and Jack Kuhn inched their way toward a window to gain access to the gems displayed one floor below.

Daring jewel thefts always grab the imagination, and 1964 saw the release of the movie Topkapi in September, a tale of a thief being lowered onto a highly secure display of a jeweled dagger in Istanbul's Topkapi palace.

Murph and his accomplices were life imitating art. Never mind that they were rounded up two days after. The story lived on for months because the stolen gems, along with the centerpiece, the irreplaceable Star of India, a 563 carat golf ball-sized sapphire, were not initially recovered.

I remember the heist well. I was in high school, and when the dust settled, my father and I went to the Hall of Gems where the Star of India had been put back on display. We looked at the window the thieves were able to open, a tall rectangle that reminded me of the large windows in my grammar school, P.S. 22. The kind of windows that let a tremendous amount of light in, and were darkened when needed by green shades pulled up and down by tiny pulleys.

I remember looking at the stone and wondering what all the fuss was about. Sure, it was pretty, but I couldn't get my head around what they claimed it was worth. I'm just not a gem guy, I guess.

I learned a great many details of the case from Mr. Kilgannon's reporting.

• Jack Murphy, 'Murph the Surf' really is a surfer, and apparently a very good one, winning championships in his early days.
• Jack and the boys were alleged to have mugged Eva Gabor in a Manhattan hotel and relieved her of her jewelry. The charges were dropped when Eva wouldn't press charges because it interfered with her West Coast shooting schedule for her starring role in 'Green Acres,' one of the many silly '60s sitcoms. Diamonds might be a girl's best friend, but insurance is probably even better.

When I read Mr. Kilgannon's piece I immediately emailed my son-in-law and told him his father had to read it in Sunday's paper. His father is retired NYPD, and while he's more my age and wasn't on the force at the time of the robbery, there is no doubt he's familiar with it.

My son-in-law, after reading the piece, wisecracked that Murph and the gang would have been better off if one of them married Eva and got the jewels in a divorce settlement. But obviously a life of crime was more exciting than a marriage to a very high maintenance spouse

• The lead prosecutor, Maurice Nadjari is still alive at 95, and while in failing health, still tells details of the case to his son Dennis. In 1974 Mr. Nadjari became a Special Prosecutor appointed by Governor Rockefeller to investigate police corruption in the NYPD.
• Maurice Nadjari recovered most of the gems when a deal was made with the thieves that the fence would relinquish most of the gems, no questions asked. Unlike the paintings from the Gardiner's Museum heist in 1990, the Star of India was recovered fairly quickly from a bus depot locker.
• I did remember that the thieves received light sentences for their cooperation in recovering most of the gems. I also remember that Murph got himself in deep do-do in 1969 with murder charges in Florida and was sent away for a good stretch. Buy Murph did get paroled in the mid-1980s to administer the prison outreach program he developed while inside. Jack had developed a Christian ministry for inmates, and is still involved with the program. 
• One of the detectives who worked the case, Jack McNally, is still with us at 85, alert and looking like a bear whose hug you wouldn't get released from. To me, he has the look of Jack Dempsey when he sat in his window seat at his Times Square restaurant.

When the museum reopens the gem wing next year and puts the Star of India on display again, maybe I'll make a trip there with my daughter and two granddaughters and tell them a little story.

My daughter can get various free admission passes through her town's library by reserving them. We've already saved a fair amount of money visiting the Intrepid and the Museum of Modern Art.

After all, Murph the Surf didn't pay to get in. Why should I?

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