"How did I go from law-abiding citizen to a life of crime?" Kuhn says, grinning. One night a bartend

Jack Murphy, hotels in las vegas nv a.k.a., “Murf the Surf,” hotels in las vegas nv and Allan Kuhn speak on their involvement in stealing priceless gems from the American Museum of Natural History—and the roles John D. MacArthur, Eva Gabor, and Nora Ephron had in getting them back.
T hey are old men now in their 70s, two robbers who were famous long ago and now sport white hair, Butch and Sundance in twilight. hotels in las vegas nv Five decades ago, Jack Murphy (a.k.a., “Murf the Surf”) and his partner Allan Kuhn were high-spirited beach boys who gave swimming lessons at Miami Beach hotels and had a lucrative second occupation—as jewel thieves. In 1964, bored with preying on wealthy divorcees and tourists, these athletic young men drove to Manhattan and pulled off the most audacious jewel heist of the last half-century. Climbing up the stone walls of the American Museum of Natural History on the evening of October 29, 1964, they broke in through a window and stole priceless gems from the J.P. Morgan hotels in las vegas nv jewel collection: the Star of India sapphire, the DeLong Star ruby, and fistfuls of diamonds and emeralds. Murphy, now garrulous and robust at age 77, explains, “Just like mountain climbers and skiers, as a jewel thief, you go for the challenge. It’s dangerous, it’s glamorous, there’s an adrenalin rush. We couldn’t just keep doing Palm Beach.”
Apprehended within 48 hours of the robbery, the two men, plus accomplice hotels in las vegas nv Roger Clark, became national folk heroes. With the jewels hotels in las vegas nv nowhere to be found, an ambitious 23-year-old Wellesley graduate, Nora Ephron, landed her first front-page story for the New York Post by sneaking into the hotel where the thieves had stayed. “These guys had committed the perfect victimless crime,” Ephron recalled in an interview in the fall of 2010. “It was delicious. No one had a clue what they had been up to, they just seemed like fabulous hotels in las vegas nv party boys.”
Upon their arrest, the three beach boys taunted and outwitted the authorities. Federal and state prosecutors vied to retrieve the jewels, convening separate grand juries and stealing each other’s witnesses. Only after a bizarre series of events—including a Miami chase scene that included Kuhn jumping out a hotel window, double-dealing by a fence, and ransom money paid by one of America’s richest businessmen—were most of the jewels eventually recovered. The three beach boys, who pled guilty, spent more than two years at Rikers Island.
The second and third acts of Murphy and Kuhn’s story have equally dramatic arcs. Their sentence completed, the three jewel thieves walked out of prison free and famous—and then made choices that took each of them in radically different directions. The bonds of friendship have frayed, yet the men have been forever bound together by their night at the museum. Roger Clark, the amiable bumbler who served as the lookout, suffered hotels in las vegas nv from heart disease and died in 2007, at age 71. But Jack Murphy and Allan Kuhn, once high-living partners in crime, still talk about their good old (bad old) days.
Jack Murphy has made being Murf the Surf (his preferred spelling) into a career. A charismatic mile-a-minute talker, Murphy is based near Tampa and makes his living as a prison evangelist, traveling the country—Angola one week, Raiford the next—discussing his rap sheet and urging convicts to find God. In conversation, he is mesmerizingly manipulative—funny and ebullient, then abruptly hotels in las vegas nv exuding a hard-edged and menacing persona with a thousand-yard stare. He delights in keeping people off-kilter. “I wasn’t hotels in las vegas nv always the kindly hotels in las vegas nv white-haired grandfather that you see before you now,” he says. These days, he goes to comic extremes to convey that he is a law-abiding citizen; the fear of even a parking ticket upsets hotels in las vegas nv the former second-story man. “I don’t want to get in trouble with the Miami cops,” he says. “I’ve had enough trouble here.”
While Murphy even has his own Web site touting his role in the museum robbery, Allan Kuhn, by contrast, has spent the intervening decades doing everything possible to be invisible. hotels in las vegas nv His phone is unlisted. He lives in a tiny mountain town in Northern California, a winding two-hour drive from a major airport that ends with a few turns down a rutted dirt road to a rustic rental house. Kuhn has not met with a reporter in 40-plus years, and insisted as a condition of our interview that I not reveal the name of his hometown. Photos of Kuhn as a young man highlight his chiseled build and daredevil hotels in las vegas nv grin; even now, at age 76, he’s in wiry good health and bears a long white ponytail and laidback demeanor. A believer in New Age spirituality, his living room features a shrine with candles, offerings, and photos of U.F.O.s.
A childless widower, Kuhn stumbled into a new line of work in 2007. After complaining about insomnia to a local doctor, hotels in las vegas nv Kuhn was given a prescription to grow medical marijuana, which was surprising to a man who had done jail time in the late 1960s for possession of a joint. His backyard crop now provides a lucrative livelihood. When I visited, Kuhn had just returned from delivering a batch to Los Angeles clinics, and the house reeked of weed.
Out of touch for many years, Kuhn and Murphy now frequently reminisce with each other, yet memories have a way of shape-shifting. “Allan can’t remember anything,” complains Murphy, noting that Kuhn has smoked a lot of marijuana. Kuhn shakes his head, saying, “Jack has a need to make every story just a little better.”
A kaleidoscope of other recollections fills in the fractured gaps. Maurice hotels in las vegas nv Nadjari, now 90, the Manhattan prosecutor who pursued the thieves with Javert–like determination, still vividly remembers the case that made his career. Detective Richard Maline hotels in las vegas nv dictated his memories in a 50-page oral history, which his widow Barbara passed along to me. Roger Clark, before his death, confided tidbits hotels in las vegas nv to family members and friends. Freedom of Information requests produced a trove of yellowing documents from police, prison, and court archives.
T he Miami beach boys were clean-cut and photogenic, unlikely types to turn up in a police lineup. hotels in las vegas nv Kuhn and Clark had spent several hotels in las vegas nv years in the Navy. Murphy, a college dropout from a middle-class family, was a surfer. Their spree began as a game, a way to rebel against society. “It was never about the money,” insists Kuhn. “It was always the thrill of the chase.”
Kuhn had a gritty childhood in West Grove, Missouri. His father abandoned the family when he was a toddler, and his mother hotels in las vegas nv worked menial jobs to support Kuhn and his baby sister. “We were always poor,” he says. As a 15-year-old, he was arrested for breaking into neighbors’ homes and sentenced to probation. After a semester at Southern Illinois University, Kuhn enlisted and saw the world via submarine. hotels in las vegas nv When his tour of duty ended in 1962, he left the Key West Naval Air Station and headed to Miami Beach, landing a job as a swimming instructor at the Casablanca hotel, hotels in las vegas nv an art-deco classic on Collins Drive.
“How did I go from law-abiding citizen to a life of crime?” Kuhn says, grinning. One night a bartender took him into a backroom, where a local jewel thief was nursing a graze from a bullet. The man told Kuhn that he had just been shot by a police officer while trying to rob a coin store; he dared Kuhn to finish the job. “I climbed up the building and found the hole in the roof that Johnny hotels in las vegas nv had cut,” Kuhn recalls. “I went down a rope and I cleaned the place out. It was just truly a thrill.” He had been earning $100 a day with tips at the Casablanca; hotels in las vegas nv a few days later he claims he was handed an envelope containing $180,000. “I’ve always been adventurous,” he says.
Murphy, the only child of a telephone-company lineman and a housewife, grew up in Oceanside, California, with two strangely contrasting passions—the hotels in las vegas nv violin and surfing. “Our home was always decent, clean, moral, no drinking, honesty in all things,” his mother hotels in las vegas nv Ruth wrote in a letter attesting to her son’s character. The family moved to Pittsburgh when Jack was in high school. He brags that as a 15-year-old he played violin with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and won a tennis scholarship to the University hotels in las vegas nv of Pittsburgh. On a snowy day his freshman year, wanderlust hit. “I’m standing in the slush, you could see the junk in the air floating from the steel mills,” he recalls. “I thought, I’m going to die here.” A train came by and he hopped on, eventually arriving in Miami, in the winter hotels in las vegas nv of 1955.
He stacked hotel pool chairs, raked beaches, painted cabanas, and was hired to perform diving stunts in hotel aquatic shows. He claims that Barbara Walters’s father, the showman Lou Walters, who owned the Miami Beach nightclub Latin Quarter, booked him for gigs. After a nine-day acquaintance, Murphy married Gloria Sostoc, hotels in las vegas nv a well-to-do hotel guest, in 1957, but five years and two sons later, the couple divorced. He quickly remarried. Seeking to capitalize on his fame as a championship surfer, he moved with his second wife to Cocoa Beach and opened a surfboard store. But after a financial dispute with partners, Murphy lost the shop. With his second marriage unraveling, Murphy returned to Miami Beach.
One night he joined friends on a boat ride to rob a mansion, earning a quick $15,000 as his share of the proceeds. The easy money was irresistible. Murphy and Kuhn, who had mutual friends, soon began working together to plunder hotels in las vegas nv the city. A bellman or a manicurist might tip them off that a tourist had left her room; a crooked insurance agent might know which rich locals had upped jewelry riders. “We accumulated master keys at most of the hotels,” Murphy claims. Kuhn insists that he never used weapons. “I just didn’t think it was necessary to take something forcibly from someone else.” Murphy had no such qualms. “I had some connections with bad guys. I did some enforcing,” he says. “I had already been further down the dark road than Allan.”
As jewel thieves, they were not subtle. “You do a job, and you go back to the bar that night,” Murphy says. “It’s in the newspapers and it’s not long before ev