Star of Sisi

Toronto ? The gem was hidden in the wall of Granny’s home. When the police found it, they promoted Danny Blanchard from very clever accused con man and ATM cash thief to alleged mastermind of an international jewel theft ring.

He always did show promise, say people who knew him.

“There was so much more to Dan, it amazed me. He was more than just an exceptional shoplifter,” said Matthew Hassenstab, whose acquaintance with Gerald Daniel Blanchard, now 35, goes back some 15 years.

Specifically to a night when Hassenstab was a store security officer at a shopping mall in Omaha, Neb., and Blanchard, then 19, had just plunked a bag full of stolen clothes into his car’s trunk and climbed into the driver’s seat.

Hassenstab grabbed him through the open window; Blanchard hit the gas and raced off with Hassenstab clutching his neck. The security guard managed to climb into the moving car, over Blanchard’s lap, and punched him several times until the car stopped and the police came, he recalled.

“I guess that didn’t stop him. He was very intelligent. But I don’t think he got smart enough to realize he was going to get caught,” said Hassenstab, now 38, who decided soon after that night to get out of store security and start a vending business. Blanchard pleaded guilty to charges related to this incident and others and was deported to his native Canada in 1993.

‘Catch me if you can’

Police in Winnipeg, Manitoba, say that Blanchard went on to stage a string of brazen and sophisticated thefts from bank machines across Canada. He led a gang that built an empire on theft and fraud, manufacturing credit cards imprinted with stolen data. He also bought condos under fictitious names, using false credit, and maintained a globe-trotting, jet-set lifestyle.

And, when it all crashed, prosecutors allege, he tried to arrange to have his ex-girlfriend, who is free on bond and cooperating with police, kidnapped and killed.

“They lived a high life. They spent a lot of money. It was ‘Catch me if you can,'” said Winnipeg Police Superintendent Gord Schumacher, who headed the investigation into Blanchard’s activities.

Police describe these thieves as the most sophisticated they have seen in Canada, and their methods have sent bank security companies scrambling to close loopholes exploited by the technologically savvy gang.

Arrested in January, Blanchard is being held without bond in a Winnipeg jail, unavailable for an interview.

His attorney, Danny Gunn, declined to discuss the charges in any detail. “Some of this is just ludicrous,” he said. “Some of it isn’t.”

Star of Sisi

What elevated the police view of Gunn’s client is a famous stolen jeweled pin called the Star of Sisi. The small but elaborate pearl-and-diamond piece was worn in the 19th-century Austrian imperial court by Empress Elisabeth, a tragic figure who still commands a cultlike following.

Elisabeth, or “Sisi,” was said to be the most beautiful woman of any of Europe’s royal courts. She was on a perpetual diet to keep her 16-inch waist and devoted hours each day to her flowing hair, which fell below her knees. The court jeweler, Alexander Koechert, made most of the 27 gem-encrusted pins, called “stars,” that she wore in her hair.

In 1998, this particular pin was in a glass case sealed with special security screws, on public exhibit in one of Elisabeth’s bedrooms in the east wing of the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, the living quarters of the Habsburg imperial family.

By day, 5,000 to 9,000 people, along with guides and guards, wander through the public exhibition rooms. At night, alarms are set to detect motion.

According to Franz Sattlecker, director of the palace, the thief, or thieves, somehow unscrewed the lid of the glass case during visiting hours on a busy June day, then replaced the pin with a fake purchased in the palace’s gift shop.

“We couldn’t figure out how they could have done it,” Sattlecker said from Vienna. “It was definitely very clever. And very uncomfortable for us.”

The real pin remained lost until last month, when Winnipeg police knocked on Blanchard’s grandmother’s door with a search warrant and information from sources they won’t divulge. The Star of Sisi was found hidden in a wall. Police have charged Blanchard with possession of it. They aren’t saying whether they think he had a hand in the original theft, but they contend he does have considerable expertise in thwarting sophisticated security systems.