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24-03-2025
ORLANDO: Orlando police have recovered two sets of earrings worth a combined $769,500 (£597,000) after an alleged thief swallowed them more than two weeks ago.
Jaythan Gilder, 32, swallowed the Tiffany & Co. diamond earrings around the time he was taken into custody on 26 February, police said.
Gilder was monitored by detectives at an Orlando hospital for “more than a dozen days” before the earrings were expelled from his system, according to the Orlando Police Department.
Gilder faces charges of robbery with a mask and grand theft in the first degree.
Tiffany’s has since cleaned the earrings.
Police allege Gilder posed as an assistant to an NBA player so he could be shown “very high-end jewelry” in a VIP room at a Tiffany & Co. store in Orlando, Florida on 26 February.
Gilder allegedly distracted store employees, then ran from the store with two pairs of earrings. The suspect apparently also dropped a diamond ring valued at $587,000 as he fled the store.
When officers caught up with him later that day, they saw Gilder “swallowing several objects believed to be the stolen earrings,” police said.
Officials transporting Gilder to jail allegedly heard him say, “I should have thrown them out the window,” media reported.
At the jail, Gilder allegedly asked staff, “Am I going to be charged with what’s in my stomach?”
Police later released an x-ray that appeared to show an individual’s abdomen with a foreign object inside.
Orlando police department said they took Gilder to an area hospital and monitored him for about two weeks until the earrings were recovered.
Detective Aaron Goss said the case “quickly turned into a marathon, not a sprint”.
On 12 March, police said they recovered the fourth Tiffany & Co. earring.
When the earrings were brought back to the Tiffany’s, the store’s master jeweler confirmed that serial numbers on the jewelry matched the stolen pieces, Goss said.
Gilder is currently in custody at the Orange County Jail.
Police allege his criminal history shows a 2022 robbery at a Tiffany & Co store in Texas.
As Gilder, who had 48 separate failure-to-appear violations from Colorado, was being taken into custody, he sneakily “swallowed several items,” the arrest warrant said.
When he was transferred to a jail in Washington County, Fla., several “foreign objects,” believed to be the diamond earrings, showed up on an X-ray image, the authorities said.
There are 48 separate warrants out for his arrest in Colorado.
That’s when he asked a staff member at the jail about whether he would be charged with what was in his stomach.
After the earrings that Gilder swallowed were recovered, the authorities took them back to Tiffany & Company, where they were cleaned and inspected, the police said. The serial numbers on the jewelry matched the numbers on the missing earrings.
Contact information for Gilder was not available on Friday. It was not clear from court records whether he had a lawyer. The Tiffany & Company store in Orlando did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.
After a review of Gilder’s records, the police said that he had been charged “with a nearly identical robbery/theft” from a Tiffany & Company in Texas. (Int’l News Desk)
