Custom fashion designer Michael Faircloth admitted he’s not much of a reader. But he made an exception for “The King of Diamonds,” a new book by veteran journalist Rena Pederson about the bold, uncaught jewel thief who snuck into the mansions of North Texas’ elite in the late 1950s and ’60s.
“My partner said, ‘You have to read this book, because you know so many people, and it’s a wonderful mystery’ ” Michael recalled. “Plus, he said, ‘It has pictures!’ ”
“The King of Diamonds” was the topic of the latest installment of the Turtle Creek Park Conservancy’s The Write Stuff series, which has influencers and authors discussing their work in front of a live audience at Turtle Creek Park’s Arlington Hall. The installment on Monday, October 14, which featured Michael interviewing Rena about her book, drew a large, enthusiastic crowd welcomed by conservancy President/CEO Tiffany Divis. Among the guests were Lyda Hill, Cheryl Joyner, Shannon Graham, Ellen Winspear, Venise and Larry Stuart, Diane Butler, Lisa Cooley and Jennifer and Richard Dix.
Richard said he’d already read “The King of Diamonds,” and liked it. “It’s a good summer read,” he said.
Many in the hall knew Rena, either personally or through her work as vice president and editorial page editor at “The Dallas Morning News.” She’d also worked as a senior speechwriter at the state department in Washington, D.C., where she was friends with Tiffany, who also worked at State as senior gifts officer and special assistant in the Office of the Chief of Protocol.
Rena became interested in the notorious Dallas jewel thief, she told Michael, after growing up with Nancy Drew and Mickey Spillane mysteries and first reading about the cat burglar as a young reporter in the 1970s. After “sort of marinating” on it for 50 years, she said she vowed to try to discover the thief’s identity upon her return to Dallas to teach at SMU.
“If I’d known it would take me six or seven years” to write the book, Rena said, “I’m not sure I would have done it.”
She described North Texas in the ’50s and ‘60s as a more casual, less security-conscious place — one where people didn’t lock the doors to their homes or their cars. It was a time of burgeoning wealth and a lot of drinking, Rena said, and people would casually leave their jewels out at night after partying.
“They wanted to look rich and act rich,” she said. “There’s a great story about how in the 1950s a woman from the Wichita Falls area walked into Dallas’ Neiman Marcus barefoot, and walked out in a mink coat and high heels.”
Another woman, Rena recalled, had been gifted a 50-carat diamond ring for her birthday. When she wore it one day to a lunch with friends, one of the friends asked sourly, “Don’t you think it’s a little bit vulgar to wear a ring that big?” “I did,” came the reply. “Until I got one.”
It was in this environment that the jewel thief plied his stealthy trade, focusing mainly in Dallas on the homes in a one-square-mile area of Highland Park and Old Preston Hollow, Rena explained. The burglar wore gloves and typically struck during the fall/winter “social season,” leading police to read the newspaper society columns for clues to the culprit’s identity.
There were a multitude of theories about the thief, Rena said, and “everybody suspected everybody else.” At nightclubs, people “would be looking around, guessing who they suspected.” Often, it was someone they didn’t like. Maybe it was a friend of Jack Ruby’s from Chicago, some posited. Perhaps it was a tennis pro … or a maître ‘d … or possibly that Italian sculptor who made busts of the local gentry.
Rena described the King’s brazen entry into the homes of well-known Dallasites — the residence of a young Lyda Hill, for example, and Ruth Sharp’s place — and how police put together a psychological profile of the burglar. As he read the police profile of the King — a young man in his mid-30s, 5-feet-8 or 10, very agile, a mama’s boy, possibly a latent homosexual — “I started to think, this is me!” Michael said, jokingly.
That drew a hearty laugh from the audience, which proceeded to pepper Rena with more questions about the book, and about the King of Diamonds’ possible identity. It was clear people remained interested in the case more than 50 years later, proving Rena’s foresight in pursuing such an enduring tale.
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