Just about everyone has had that rush of anxiety when they reach down into their pocket or purse to grab their phone or wallet, only to realize it's nowhere to be found. But what do you do when your wallet or phone is not missing - rather something far more irreplaceable, such as a piece of jewelry? How about a piece of jewelry that happens to be worth $800,500? That might seem unimaginable to some of us, yet it's precisely what happened to one woman during her stay at the iconic Ritz in Paris, France - and she stopped at nothing to get to the bottom of her ring's mysterious disappearance.
Returning to Find the Ring Gone
Paris, France, is known for its opulence. However, it was still quite a shock to everyone when the woman with the $800,500 went to the hotel staff to tell them that her prized possession was missing. The search that ensued was frantic, and it caught the attention of media from around the world. After all, how does one lose a piece of jewelry that's so valuable? And just what made it so special in the first place?
It wasn't long before the woman called the police, and accusations were hurled against the hotel's staff, who would have been the only people with access to the room.
Accusing the Staff
The woman was reportedly quick to blame the staff, which at first might seem like obvious suspects. After all, they're the only people who had access to the room. Still, a ring of that value is going to attract all kinds of attention, not just from petty criminals but also from seasoned specialists. For a professional, snatching a ring is much easier than lugging around all that cash of equal value.
Still, when the ring was first reported to the police as missing, we're sure everyone was treated as a suspect. The Paris police were also no strangers to high-profile robberies, and neither was the Ritz.
The Famous Hotel Ritz in Paris
The hotel itself has long been a place of scandal and intrigue. You don't really have to know anything about the hospitality industry to have heard of the Ritz, and the one in Paris is probably the most renowned of all. Since it was built, it's been a place for the rich and powerful to play behind closed doors. Most of the time, those stories stay hidden within the hotel forever.
However, sometimes they leak out into the public, such as what was happening now with the missing ring, allowing nearly everyone a peak behind what goes on at one of the world's most exclusive hotels.
The History of the Ritz
Most people are familiar with the Ritz Hotel, but they aren't as familiar with its history. The hotel was founded by César Ritz in 1898, and the world's most renowned celebrities have been flocking there ever since. Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald reportedly loved the bar there a little too much, and it served as a setting for one of his stories. Fellow writer Ernest Hemingway was also known to stay here.
Those are just two, but the idea is that if you were and are rich and famous, you go and stay at the Ritz, while you're in Paris, France.
Tales Involving Ernest Hemingway and Nazis at the Ritz
Being the institution it is, the Ritz is involved in quite a few legendary stories. Whether these stories are 100% true or not is up for debate, but one of the best involves frequent guest Ernest Hemingway. Reportedly, the writer gathered a band of French resistance fighters towards the end of the Nazi occupation, and together, they "retook" the Ritz from Nazi hands. In truth, the Nazis had already fled by the time Hemingway and his men reached the hotel.
And along with the hotel, one of Hemingway's main goals was to liberate the bar, which had been used as a Nazi watering hole for high-ranking officers during the occupation.
The Ritz in the 21st Century
While the Ritz has been witness to some of the most iconic events of the 20th century, luckily, the start of the 21st century has been a bit less dramatic. However, a recent renovation stirred some controversy over what some saw as efforts to erase history. Part of the hotel's charm is that it has been so much a part of history, so it's only natural that some worried this history would be erased.
However, the hotel is still a functioning hotel after all, and like any hotel, it had to update and modernize while finding a way of keeping that same charm that makes it so appealing.
The Hotel's Multi-Million-Dollar Renovation
With a hotel as grand as the Ritz, it unsurprisingly took a grand sum of money for renovations. On the outside, the hotel looks similar to a French palace, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the Louvre if you weren't viewing it in person. So, when it came to renovations, this part was fairly easy. The hard part was keeping that same charm when it came to its elegant interior.
When the renovations were finally completed in 2016, everyone, from The New York Times to Architectural Digest, wrote a story about the massive renovations and just how great they turned out to be. The Ritz had seemingly been returned to its former glory as if it had ever left in the first place.
A History of Heists
The renovations were grand, but they didn't stop the scandals from hitting the Ritz. A couple of years later, in 2018, a jewelry heist at the Ritz made headlines around the world. Armed robbers went in and made off with some $4 million in jewels. They targeted the hotel's jewelry shop, and yes, the Ritz has a very high-end jewelry shop within the hotel, so why would you expect anything less?
Anyway, they stormed the hotel wielding knives and axes and then made their escape, leading police on a chase that seemed like it was out of a Hollywood movie.
The Robbers Went All the Way Into the Hotel's Bar
While they're making out with that much in jewels seemed like something out of Hollywood, the robbery itself was much more rudimentary. The robbers stormed the hotel and went straight for the jewelry shop, where they simply smashed the display cases and made out with as much high-end jewelry as they could carry. The entire hotel went into lockdown mode, and staff quickly rushed guests to the safest places they could find.
Reportedly, at the Hemingway Bar, staff herded guests, and everyone took cover behind the bar. Similar scenes played out in other parts of the hotel as the robbery was taking place.
The French Police Respond
Luckily, there were some on-duty French police near the hotel when the robbery was taking place. The police responded rather quickly and managed to subdue and arrest three of the robbers after they'd finished grabbing everything they could from the jewelry shop. However, two others would end up escaping out the back of the hotel. They either found or had planted scooters in the back, which is how they made their escape.
While two did get away, most of the jewelry has since been recovered, as a lot was dropped by the robbers, and the stuff that was fenced was easily recognizable.
The Kim Kardashian Heist
The 2018 heist followed an arguably even higher-profile robbery shortly after renovations had been completed. Celebrity Kim Kardashian, who is probably one of the most famous people in the world, was actually robbed and tied up in a hotel back in 2016. The armed robbery shocked just about everyone for how brazen it was, and while the Ritz was no stranger to drama, nobody expected what happened in 2016.
The robbery resulted in the hotel boosting security, and while it helped, it obviously still wasn't enough to dissuade the following jewelry store heist a couple of years later.
Kim Kardashian Held at Gunpoint
As we mentioned before, the robbers were armed, but not with knives or axes. They actually had a gun and held the Kardashian at gunpoint while they looked through her stuff. They ended up making off with two cell phones and millions of dollars in jewelry. Although they tied her up, she did manage to untie herself and go and get help not long after the robbers left her room.
While the robbery itself was certainly odd, just for how high-profile the victim was, what happened next was arguably even weirder and involved one of the robbers themselves.
Police Catch the Criminals
As you might imagine, with such a high-profile victim, it didn't take long for the police to round up a group of suspects: 17 in all. The group of men had reportedly been planning the robbery for around two years when they finally orchestrated their plan. And one of the men ended up writing a book about the whole thing. In his book, he didn't express any remorse for what he'd done.
"I saw one of her shows where she threw her diamond in the pool, in that episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. I thought, 'She's got a lot of money. This lady doesn't care at all,'" he later said in an interview with Vice.
When Royalty Was Robbed at the Ritz
While Kim Kardashian was certainly high profile, she was arguably not involved in the most brazen robbery at the Ritz. That title might go to a member of the Saudi royal family who was the victim of a robbery at the hotel. The princess was reportedly staying in one of the luxury suites when she had her jewels stolen from her hotel room. The jewelry was worth around $862,600.
The guest who had her ring stolen was also royalty in a way. She was a Malaysian heiress, which makes sense, considering that her ring was worth around $800,500.
The Story Captures the World's Attention
While she may not have been as high profile as Kim Kardashian or Saudi royalty, the Malaysian businesswoman's plight still attracted media attention from all over the world. Not only had her very expensive ring allegedly been stolen, but it'd gone missing in one of the most prestigious hotels in the world. Everything combined to set up a perfect crime story, and the media took full advantage of it.
The only thing to do after the story first broke was to wait for updates from the police as they asked the staff questions and followed up on any leads.
Staff Search for the Missing Ring
One of the first things the hotel did after the ring was reported missing was to enlist staff in finding it. So, the hotel's army of workers began to comb every inch of the woman's room, then the woman's floor, and finally the entire hotel. They searched nearly everywhere, leaving no sheet unturned and no nightstand left unmoved. Despite all of this heavy searching, they still weren't able to find the ring.
Of course, this also meant that they had to search the rooms of pretty much all the other guests at the hotel despite the unlikelyness of the ring being there.
The Search and the Hotel's Standards
Of course, not just anyone is given a job at the most luxurious hotel in the world. It takes a special kind of person to be able to uphold the high standards of the Ritz, which is exactly what the staff did throughout their search for the ring. The Ritz also offered every guest that was staying there an extra three nights due to any inconvenience that may have been caused.
We're not privy to their exact rates, but the three nights for every guest probably added up to a massive sum of money and lost profits for the hotel.
The Heiress Starts Making Mysterious Calls
While it's understandable to be upset after losing a priceless ring, what happened next amounted to a PR disaster for the Ritz. During their search, the staff noticed that the heiress began making several calls to people who weren't the police. All they could do was keep up with their search and hope the situation didn't devolve into a media frenzy on the beloved grounds of the Ritz hotel.
The same thing had happened years earlier at a luxury hotel in the Netherlands, and the last thing that the Ritz needed was another robbery story tied to the hotel.
The Woman Starts Making a Scene
Understandably, the woman was upset that her ring was now gone. However, she started to yell at staff and accuse one of them of taking her priceless ring without any proof to back up her claims. It wasn't long after that the press arrived at the hotel, and staff could probably sense what was going to happen next. It looked likely that the woman was going to take her complaints to the court of public opinion.
You don't have to be a private investigator to figure out what happened next, as the press waited outside and the woman appeared before them, dressed in luxury clothing.
The Media Outside the Ritz
As we've already talked about before, the Ritz was no stranger to drama, even drama that included stolen gems and armed robberies. However, with a string of robberies all in only a couple of years, the hotel desperately wanted this whole issue to go away. It quickly turned out to be a public relations nightmare for them, and if the whole thing did turn out to be a robbery, their reputation was going to once again suffer.
The journalists weren't allowed to enter the hotel while the search was going on, but they did wait patiently for the guest to come out and give a statement to the press.
Her Statement to the Press
The hotel staff probably knew what was about to unfold as the woman stepped outside in front of the cameras. As soon as she walked outside, you could hear the click of cameras as the woman declared, "I have been robbed." A journalist approached her, and she leaned in to begin telling the world her story. It almost seemed as if she was relishing her time in front of the cameras.
At least, that's what one member of the staff was thinking as she noticed something that was a bit peculiar about the guest and differed from other elites she'd spent time around.
A Theft Out of a Hollywood Movie
The member of the staff noticed that the victim seemed very eager to share her story. Ordinarily, this would be perfectly normal, but when it came to the rich and famous, something seemed odd. Most of the guests at the hotel, even those who had been victims of crimes in the past, never wanted to make their private lives public. Their public image, if they even had one, was completely separate from their private image.
For example, the Saudi princess who'd had her jewelry stolen didn't even release her name, and to this day, it remains a mystery as to who she really was. Then there were the accusations, which seemed like something out of a movie.
Extraordinary Allegations
It wasn't long before allegations against not only the hotel's staff but also other guests staying there began to emerge. Some of them were celebrities getting ready for a film festival. Rumors began to swirl that someone had entered the room and took the entire safe. Among the list of names were a-list celebrities such as Emma Watson. Watson herself was getting ready for an upcoming release about a burglary.
The accusations, although rooted in mere rumors, didn't take long to find their way into the hands of the press, who were eager to report on not only possible suspects but especially famous suspects.
The Real Value of the Ring
While there had been whisperings about the value of the ring up until this point, there hadn't actually been a confirmed figure. So, when police released information concerning how much the ring was worth, it threw everyone in shock. Just where they got this figure for themselves is a bit of a mystery, and it's not clear if they got it from the victim or from their own estimates.
Either way, it was a massive sum of money, and it was also in line with other high-profile thefts that had been reported at the Ritz in prior years.
The Accusations Against Emma Watson
Not long after the search had started, the rumors about other celebrities being involved began to circulate. As mentioned before, Emma Watson was one such celebrity. It didn't take long for her to reach out to Hollywood reporters and begin to defend herself. Predictably, she said that it definitely wasn't her. She was also at no time declared a suspect by police as they began to question employees and staff.
The entire thing must've felt like a fever dream for those involved because it definitely appeared on the outside like something that was more likely to appear in a Hollywood script than in real life.
The Ritz's Reputation Would've Sank
Now, not only was the old hotel dealing with any old high-profile burglary, as it had in the past. But it was dealing with a robbery that had swept other famous names into the mix, as well. If the ring wasn't found or no suspect was named soon, then the grand hotel would caught up in a public relations firestorm. It'd already seen its reputation fall after other recent crimes.
Despite its long history of serving the world's rich and famous in what's arguably one of the world's premiere cities, the hotel was at the time failing to crack the top ten lists on accommodations.
Snubbed by France's "Famed Palaces" List
Some years earlier, the Ritz hotel had been embarrassingly snubbed by the country's Ministry of Tourism. The ministry released their list naming 10 hotels that they designated as "palaces," representing the best that the country had to offer. Many of the places on the list had, at one point, been actual palaces. Still, it was a bit of a shock to staff to not see their name on the list.
How could this cultural icon and Parisian institution not make it onto the list? Whatever the reason, it provided more reason for the hotel's staff to find the missing ring and find it quickly.
Endless Places to Search
Making the search even harder was the fact that the Ritz is an absolutely giant hotel. Not only are the rooms, hallways, and suites big, but they're elaborately decorated in the same way you might imagine a French palace being decorated. And the staff had to check every square inch of every room in this giant hotel. The search at the Ritz was entirely different from the search most people conduct when they misplace their phones.
However, it would eventually turn out to be all for naught, as the true whereabouts of the ring were revealed a couple of days after the search had started.
The Search Winds Down
Staff were still searching for the ring a day after the ring had been reported missing. The victim told them that she'd left it on the table in the middle of the room and had left to go do some shopping. When she got back, the ring was gone. If her recollection was to be believed, then the ring should still be exactly where she'd left it but it wasn't.
Not only that, but as the search went on, it became clear that it also wasn't in her room nor was it seemingly in any other part of the hotel.
The Ring Is Finally Found
Nearly two full days had passed when the ring was finally found. Staff had nearly given up hope, and police were steeling themselves for a lengthy investigation. However, one staff member, turning over trash and peeking inside of a vacuum bag, noticed something shiny. We can't imagine the relief they must've felt when they found the ring inside of that vacuum bag and finally ended the search for the priceless piece of jewelry.
Outlets began reporting on the finding shortly after the $800,500 ring was found, and soon, it became just another story in the Ritz's long legacy. Albeit a weird story. However, nothing could match another true crime story that happened across the Atlantic in Canada around the same time.
The Goth Murders Shake Canada
A murder by 12-year-old Jasmine Richardson and her boyfriend, who was more than a decade older than her, shook an entire country. The bodies of the Richardson family were only found after a 6-year-old went over to the house to play with Jasmine's little brother. When the police went to the home, what they found was a gruesome crime scene containing the bodies of Jasmine's father, mother, and little brother.
Mysteriously, one member of the family was missing from the crime scene. Jasmine was nowhere to be found and investigators quickly got to work trying to piece together what had happened.
What Happened to the Richardson Family?
At first, the police feared that they were also dealing with a missing person, considering Jasmine was nowhere to be found. They were able to tell from the scene that the mother had been the first to go. Her body contained multiple stab wounds. The father had signs that he was involved in a struggle and that he tried to fight back wielding a screwdriver, but this proved to be futile.
Upstairs, they found the most grizzly crime of all. Jasmine's little brother's throat had been slit while he was still in bed. Then there was the case of the missing sister and the alarming clues the police were finding.
The Police Find Jasmine
The more the police searched, the more evidence they found linking Jasmine and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, to the murders. Luckily, it also didn't take them long to find the two some 80 miles away from Jasmine's family home. They were quickly arrested and both were charged with the murders of the Richardson family. One of Jeremy's friends was also charged with helping the two flee and get rid of evidence.
The shocking case, involving a 12-year-old who murdered her family shocked just about everyone. Not only did she help to murder her parents, but her little brother as well.
Jasmine and Jeremy
Jasmine was only 11 years old when she met her boyfriend, Jeremy. The two reportedly met at a concert, and it didn't take long for her parents to start to notice changes in their daughter's demeanor and dress. She began to dress in much more black. She also started to wear a lot of makeup and subscribed to a website called VampireFreaks.com. The website was a social media site for goths.
Understandably, Jasmine's family didn't exactly approve of her relationship with a boy who was so much older than her, but that didn't seem to matter to Jasmine very much.
Jasmine's Parents Intervene
Right after they discovered the relationship, Jasmine's parents intervened and told her that she could no longer see Jeremy. For Jasmine, her parent's decision to ban her from seeing Jeremy only made her gravitate towards him more. The family also learned some disturbing facts about the boyfriend during all of this, such as the fact that he told people he was a “300-year-old werewolf,” and that he claimed to wear a container filled with blood around his neck.
Those things alone would be enough for most parents to tell their children they can't see someone, but add to this that Jeremy was a decade older, and the whole thing was a textbook case of pedophilia.
Allusions to Their Plans
Luckily, for investigators, Jeremy had his own blog and alluded to the two's plans to kill Jasmine's family. He wrote, "Payment! My Lover’s rents are totally unfair; they say that they really care; they don’t know what is going on. They just assume… Finally there shall be silence. Their blood shall be payment!” The police said that a young Jasmine was the one who initially proposed the plan.
Along with Jeremy's blog, they had an email from Jasmine that stated, "It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with you,” which was an obvious allusion to her parents.
The Night of the Murders
In court, the judge heard about how the couple snuck into the Richardson family home to carry out their plan. According to Jasmine, they'd decided that they needed to kill her little brother because leaving him to fend without parents seemed "cruel." There was also a witness who saw the couple not long after they'd murdered the family. She said they were in a restaurant, and Jeremy remarked about how the family was “gutted like fish.”
Not only that but the couple was spotted laughing and joking around while they were at the diner. Jasmine told the judge that she thought the murders would bring her and her boyfriend closer together.
Jasmine Richardson's Sentencing
It would take a couple of years for the trial to make it to sentencing. She alleged that she had talked about killing her family but that she only thought she was "talking" about committing a murder and not actually planning on doing so. She claimed she never thought that the two would actually murder her parents and little brother. However, the jury didn't buy it and convicted her for all three murders.
During the trial, Jasmine had pleaded not guilty. Now, it was time for her sentencing, and she would be given 10 years in jail because she was so young. In Canada, 10 years was the maximum an adolescent could be sentenced to.
Jeremy's Sentencing Arrives
Unlike Jasmine, Jeremy was tried as an adult, which meant that he could be sentenced to a lot more jail time. When the jury returned, that was exactly what happened, and the court handed him three life sentences, ensuring that he would never be released. After they were both sentenced, Jasmine and Jeremy allegedly kept in contact and wrote letters to one another. In those letters, the two discussed eventually getting married.
What was absent was any mention of being sorry for what they did to the Richardson family. But where are the couple at today, and has Jasmine been released since?
Jasmine and Jeremy Today
Jasmine went on to serve her jail time, which included stints at a psychiatric ward. There, she was diagnosed with a couple of different disorders, but none especially serious. She was eventually released and reportedly still lives somewhere in Canada, although she doesn't live under the name Jasmine anymore. Jeremy is still serving his time in jail, and although he is eligible for parole sometime around 2033, the odds of him getting out are slim.
He now goes by the name Jackson May, and reportedly hasn't appealed his case for a while. It's unclear if the two still communicate or not and have plans to wed.