CHICAGO (WLS) — The investigation into a brazen robbery at a jewelry store in a northwest Chicago suburb is expanding. Police officials told the ABC7 I-Team they are now looking into other similar incidents in which thieves gained entry to the stores by cutting open walls. The scenario sounds more Hollywood than the Midwest.
The most recent jewelry store break-in occurred last Friday night at Marquise Jewelry in Schaumburg’s Woodfield Mall. The suspects cut holes in the walls of several neighboring stores before entering the jewelry store and stole up to $1.5 million worth of diamonds, gold and other goods, according to the store owners.
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Now, Schaumburg’s police chief confirmed that detectives are investigating “similar incidents” after the I-Team learned of another robbery with a similar modus operandi that took place less than two weeks earlier at a jewelry store in northwest Indiana.
In Valparaiso, Indiana, 55 miles southeast of Chicago, behind the racks of shirts and pants for sale at a Maurice’s clothing store on Laporte Avenue, a large board nailed to the wall obscures the likely entrance through which thieves entered the Kay Jewelers store next door last month.
Valparaiso police told the I-Team on July 23 that officers responded to an alarm that went off at Kay Jewelers shortly after closing time at about 9:50 p.m. They found that someone had “violently broken into the Maurice’s clothing store next door.”
Police found “holes in the drywall between this store and Kay Jewelers,” but the burglars were nowhere to be found and escaped with an unknown treasure.
Kay Jewelers did not respond to the I-Team’s request for comment.
Valparaiso police told the I-Team that “law enforcement agencies that have experienced similar incidents are sharing information.” That includes Schaumburg police, who were linked to the Marquise Jewelry jewelry robbery 10 days later.
Asma Anwar, the owner of Marquise Jewelry, told ABC7 that police told her there may have been as many as six people involved and that the thieves covered one of the security cameras to avoid detection. Anwar and her co-owner said they were shaken.
“I just hope that whoever did this to us will not do it to anyone else,” Anwar said on Monday.
Schaumburg Police Chief Bill Wolf told the I-Team that “this case is complex” and that they are “investigating the matter from multiple angles, including but not limited to similar incidents in the area.”
Bill Kushner, ABC7 police consultant and former suburban police chief, told the I-Team he would do just that.
“I know it’s a through-the-wall break-in, so it’s really quite unusual,” Kushner said. “They’re going to look to see if there have been any break-ins like this anywhere within a reasonable distance of Schaumburg in the last six months to a year and try to find the similarities between those cases.”
The I-Team found that there were other similar jewel thefts in Fairfield, Ohio, and Rock Hill, South Carolina, last year.
A Rock Hill police spokesman said authorities from Illinois and Indiana have not contacted them in connection with their break-in into a small hole in a wall last December.
As the I-Team reported Tuesday, 45 years ago, the even more notorious “Hole in the Wall Gang” was at play, led by a group of Chicago mobsters who stole millions worth of gems.
Their antics are part of Robert De Niro’s film “Casino” and have been described in detail in countless books and magazines.
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