Haute Heist

Correction Appended: January 31, 2007

Baron and baroness at bay

There were few couples more chic in all Paris. He was the Baron Robert Augier de Moussac, 48, haughty of glance, with an apartment, where else, on elegant Avenue Foch. She was the American-born Baroness Stephania von Kories zu Goetzen, still stunning at 47, possessed of digs on the Left Bank fully as grand as his. They were seen everywhere, usually together, at Gstaad or Cap d'Antibes in season, and at other times in the toniest watering holes of the capital. Only recently the Paris magazine Officiel de la Couture et de la Mode had ranked them among the most elegantly dressed members of the jet set.

They may also turn out to be France's fanciest thieves. So claimed the government last week as the baroness sat in a Swiss jail awaiting extradition and the baron was hauled away by French detectives. The pair was charged with possession of stolen goods; the goods being some of $5 million worth of jewelry taken from the Hotel Ritz last October, including a white-blue 44-carat diamond ring worth $2.5 million, a 6.65-carat pendant, a diamond-studded gold necklace, earrings and a gold watch.

The jewelry belonged to Mexican Businessman Hugo Salinas y Rochas, 74, and his wife Marie-Isabelle. Answering a knock on their hotel-room door, the couple were grabbed by two young men carrying pistols, who handcuffed them to bedposts, taped their mouths and then made off with the jewelry, which had just been brought up from the hotel safe.

Aware that fencing such glittering, easily identifiable ice would be difficult, the insurance company that had covered the jewels offered a $300,000 no-questions-asked reward for their return. For eight months nobody responded to the notices in Le Figaro. Then French police were told that an intermediary was trying to make contact with the insurance firm.

A meeting was arranged in the vault of the Swiss Bank Corp. in Geneva. The insurance company's representatives at the encounter were actually undercover Swiss and French police. Who should arrive bearing stolen ring and pendant but the Baroness Stephania von Kories zu Goetzen. She was accompanied by two young men. Under questioning, the trio fingered the baron as the instigator of their "transaction."

Le Quotidien de Paris called the caper "the snobbiest heist of the year." The snobs who were implicated, it now appears, were hard up for money despite their splendiferous ways. The baroness had been living by candlelight in her Left Bank apartment, not for romantic reasons but because the power had been turned off for nonpayment. The baron had survived by serving as a house sitter for a rich Venezuelan woman on the Avenue Foch.

In TIME's article about the return of the stolen Salinas jewels and her arrest on charges of possession of the jewels, which were later dropped, it did not mean to suggest that the Baroness von Kories zu Goetzen was involved in the theft of the jewels or convicted of any crimes in connection with the theft or otherwise. TIME regrets the inaccuracies in the article and any embarrassment caused to Baroness von Kories zu Goetzen. This correction was published June 23, 1986.

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