(March 21, 2014) A local woman whose jewelry and gold coins valued at approximately $500,000 were stolen from her home in May told a judge that although the monetary value was important, what they meant to her was priceless.
“It’s what each piece represents,” the victim told Judge William Simpson in Circuit Court in Snow Hill on March 6.
One was a brooch she designed for three gemstones her mothers gave her after she gave birth to a child in 1963. Another was a three and one-quarter carat diamond ring appraised in 1978 for $15,925. Today, she said, it would be worth $91,000. Another stolen item was the gold pocket watch of her father-in-law who died in 1956.
Another stolen item was a diamond and platinum bracelet given to her mother. In 1978, it was appraised at $10,000. Today, she said, it would be worth $57,500.
In her family, she said, special occasions were marked by gifts of jewelry. There were many such occasions because 131 items, mostly jewelry, were stolen. That number could grow.
“It’s an ongoing list,” she said.
Also ongoing is her task to find current values of items she discovers to be missing. She checks eBay prices and takes into account the inflation index since the items were originally appraised.
So far, she has identified 83 stolen items as having a value of $508,000.
“It’s a slow time-consuming process,” she said of remembering and calculating the worth of each item.
“They were collected over generations by many family members,” she said. “Many were one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable.”
She also said she had held those jewelry items and gold coins in trust for future generations.
“I am overwhelmed with guilt that they were lost in my keeping,” she said.
The thief, Maurice Anthony Holden, 32, of Melfa, Va., had little to say in Circuit Court in Snow Hill last Thursday.
“I’m sorry for her loss,” said Holden, who entered an Alford plea to the charge of first-degree burglary. In an Alford plea, the defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges that the prosecution has sufficient evidence for a guilty verdict. In exchange for that plea, the State’s Attorney’s Office did not prosecute a charge of theft over $100,000.
Holden and another man broke into the woman’s house off Route 611 on May 6 while she and her husband were away for a few hours. They traveled in a van with telephone directories as a ruse so they could pretend they were delivering them to get access to properties.
Inside the victim’s house, they removed an entire safe, which contained valuable jewelry and gold coins. The safe was later found in a wooded area.
Assistant State’s Attorney Steve Rakow said “only a handful” of items were recovered. Many had been melted down.
Some of the jewelry was pawned in this area, but telephone records revealed Holden and his partner in crime traveled to New Jersey to pawn other pieces of the jewelry. 18-carat gold St. Christopher’s medal was sold to a pawn shop in Virginia for $100.
Judge William Simpson sentenced Holden to 15 years in prison, with all but five years suspended, for stealing the woman’s valuable jewelry and other items. Judge William Simpson also said Holden is liable for $200,000 in restitution. After his release from prison, Holden will be on supervised probation for four years.
The trial of Holden’s alleged conspirator in the burglary, Kente Wilcox, 30, of Westover, is scheduled for May 1. Wilcox is also scheduled for trial that day in a burglary that occurred not far from this victim’s residence in which the occupant shot him.
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