Criminals have had their way with Kurt Rath for years. Robbers, burglars, fleet-fingered thieves — the Vienna-born jeweler has encountered them all and always found a way to keep going after some devastating losses.
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A daring heist over the Christmas holiday, however, all but wiped out Rath’s savings for retirement. He arrived at his King Street workshop to find his steel safe torn to pieces.
Photo by Brad Nettles
Kurt Rath, a specialty jeweler, sits in his King Street shop and explains how thieves stole more than $200,000 worth of diamonds, gold and antique coins from his safe over Christmas.
Diamonds, gold, rubies, rare coins. All gone. A $200,000 loss, with no insurance to cover the tab.
At age 71, Rath’s not sure how he’ll recover from this one. “This was my life’s savings,” he said, shaking his head. “I hoped to retire on this. Now, I will have to work until I drop dead.”
The burglary was the third at Rath’s workshop since August. He has no sign out front, no name on the door– nothing at all to indicate he’s there or working on precious stones.
He figures the thief came from a rather small universe of people familiar with his operation, but no arrests have been made and he’s heard little from Charleston police about the status of the investigation. Rath worried for a while that investigators had forgotten about him.
Not so, police said. Investigators are actively working the case and have a possible suspect in the three burglaries but have been unable to get the break they need to make an arrest, Lt. David Young said.
“We’re frustrated, too,” he said. “We’ve been working on it the best we can.”
It’s easy to understand Rath’s shaky confidence in the criminal justice system when you consider his track record.
He moved to Charleston a few years after his jewelry store was robbed in Norwalk, Conn., in 1992. Five men burst through the doors, pistol-whipped and handcuffed Rath and sprayed his wife with Mace. They got away with merchandise valued at more than $500,000, he said.
His insurance company ultimately covered about $200,000 of that loss, but Rath said the claims process dragged on for so long that his 20-year-old business was on the skids by the time the check arrived. The robbers were never caught.
Trying to establish himself in Charleston, Rath rented a booth at the old Gray Goose Antique Mall in West Ashley. While he was gone one day in 1996, a thief swiped jewelry valued at $25,000. No one was caught.
A persistent burglar
Photo by Brad Nettles
The safe in Kurt Rath’s shop held his life’s savings, which were uninsured.
Rath got out of retail, for the most part, and began doing repair and design work for other jewelers and private clients he obtained through word of mouth. He works out of a small, second-floor workshop with few frills. Most of the room is taken up by a large wooden workbench overflowing with hand tools, ancient swing-arm lamps and assorted odds and ends from pieces he is working on. An old advertisement from his Connecticut store hangs on the wall over his desk. Photos of Vienna adorn an opposing wall.
Rath discovered the security shortcomings of the space in early August, when a burglar burst through the front door and made off with wedding bands, necklaces and other jewelry valued at about $4,000.
Rath reinforced the door with a tougher lock, but someone broke in a month later by crawling through a transom. The thief got away with more goods valued at $28,000, police said. Rath and his landlord reinforced the transom as well, and the jeweler made sure his valuables were locked up in a thick steel safe.
He figured that would thwart the burglar for sure. But it didn’t work out that way.
While Rath was enjoying his Christmas holiday, the burglar returned. This time, he got past a locked iron gate, scaled a bannister along the outside wall and pushed in a second-floor air conditioner to get inside. The thief then severed the hinges on Rath’s safe and pried the front door off.
It had to be noisy. It must have taken time. And it all went unnoticed until Rath walked in the door a few days later and found the mess. Gone were a horseshoe pendant encrusted with diamonds, a 40-carat kunzite gem, a bangle with rubies and sapphires, antique Austrian silver coins and much more. “I never expected that,” he said.
Waiting for answers
Police were called again. They dusted for fingerprints, looked around for evidence, and asked Rath to compile an inventory of what he lost. He said he did so, but it took the detective more than a week to get around to picking it up. Weeks went by with little word from police, and Rath said he had trouble even getting the detective on the phone. “Who knows what they are doing?” he said.
Rath said he didn’t insure the jewels because of the poor experience he had after his 1992 hold-up. So now, he must bear the loss alone. But he hasn’t given up hope.
Rath recently hired a private investigator in an effort to find the culprit and get his jewels back. It’s not cheap, he said, “but this is my livelihood. I have to do whatever I can.”
Young, the police lieutenant, said investigators met with Rath’s private eye last week and would do a better job of keeping him informed. The communication breakdown resulted from Rath’s irregular work schedule and the lead detective on the case serving a rotation on the night shift. But police never stopped working on the case, he said.
None of the jewelry has turned up in pawn shops and fingerprints found at the scene have not yielded a match, Young said. But like Rath, Young suspects the thief is someone familiar with the jeweler’s low-key operation.
“This wasn’t somebody who just walked off the street,” he said. “This is obviously someone who knew what was going on up there.”
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