[MSN] Top officials at Newsday drilled into a safe at the paper's Melville offices yesterday and found three gold Pulitzer Prize medals missing, prompting an investigation by Suffolk police.

Thu Oct 4 07:31:34 CEST 2007

newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-lipuli035400099oct03,0,7919555.story

Newsday.com
Suffolk police probe missing Newsday Pulitzers
BY KATIE THOMAS

katie.thomas at newsday.com; Staff writer Joseph Ma

October 3, 2007

 Top officials at Newsday drilled into a safe at the paper's Melville
offices yesterday and found three gold Pulitzer Prize medals missing,
prompting an investigation by Suffolk police.

The whereabouts of the medals, representing the Pulitzer Prizes awarded to
Newsday for public service in 1954, 1970 and 1974, first became an issue
Monday when it was learned that they had apparently been sold Friday at an
auction in Long Beach, Calif., for $7,000, $4,500 and $4,000, respectively.

Officials had long known that the Pulitzer medals mounted on a plaque in
Newsday's executive offices in Melville were replicas, but had believed
until yesterday that the 2 1/2-inch originals were secure in a company safe.

"We have contacted the police and we are talking to our attorneys to pursue
all legal avenues available to us," Newsday spokeswoman Deidra Parrish
Williams said. "We are naturally disheartened and disappointed to discover
that our medals are not in our possession. We are consoled by the fact that
the medals are not the prize itself. The Pulitzer Prize is the distinction
Newsday earns when a prestigious panel of judges deems the quality of our
work as superior to our peers. While that is something that cannot be taken
away, we hope to have the medals returned to us."

It was unclear whether the medals sold at auction were the same ones missing
from the Newsday safe or were replicas. In 1984, the prize's Columbia
University administrators gave Newsday permission to create reproductions of
the three prizes for display at the paper's New York City offices. Those
copies were created by Nevada-based Medallic Art Co., the same firm that
made the originals. Whether those replicas are made of gold is also unknown.

A former Newsday editor, Bob Greene, who led the team that won the 1970 and
'74 prizes, said he was disappointed. "It's amazing that a newspaper which
has been awarded the highest prize the Pulitzer committee can give has not
properly safeguarded its Pulitzer medals," he said. 

Jim Halperin, co-chairman of the Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries,
which sold the medals, said that, if the medals sold Friday turn out to have
been stolen, it is likely that the new owners - whom he did not name - would
return them. However, given that another set was created in 1984, "that all
of a sudden makes it less disturbing."

Unlike fine art auctions - in which the chain of custody is vital - coins
and medals are generally verified visually by coin experts, Halperin said.
"It just looked real," he said. "They kind of speak for themselves."

Halperin said the consigner who sold the medals was a coin dealer who had
purchased them at an estate sale in Nassau County in 2001, but said the
auction house's policy prevents him from releasing the man's name without a
subpoena.

H. Joseph Levine, who owns Presidential Coin and Antique Company in Clifton,
Va., said the same dealer approached him a few months ago about selling the
medals. But Levine's next auction is in June, and "that wasn't fast enough
for him," he said.

Levine said he expressed concern about how the man had come across the
medals. "If they were issued to an individual, I wouldn't give it a second
thought, but a corporation - and one that is ongoing - you've got to
wonder." The Public Service medal is always awarded to a newspaper, not an
individual.

Several Newsday officials said yesterday that they were unsure when the
medals had disappeared. None had any memory of seeing the medals firsthand,
and no one said they know who last saw them. 

"I was told they were in the safe," said former Newsday publisher Ray
Jansen, who oversaw the making of plaques about Newsday's 19 Pulitzers.

Also missing from the safe is a silicone mold that was used in 1998 to make
the reproductions on display in Newsday's executive offices. "I saw the mold
... I remember it was purple," said Stephen Zimmerman, director of
engineering services. "We even said, 'We've got to keep this locked up.'"

Carl DeMarco, Newsday's revenue accounting manager, oversees the cashier's
office where the safe is located. The room, he said, is the most secure area
of Newsday. Authorized employees used a passkey to enter the room and
visitors must sign a logbook. Three cameras keep watch over the room, and
only two people - DeMarco and the cashier supervisor, Maria Lahtonen - have
access to the combination lock on the safe. The key to a smaller lockbox
within the safe had been lost, and officials called a locksmith yesterday to
drill into the smaller box.

DeMarco said that while some of the safe's contents, such as petty cash and
Newsday gift cards, are routinely catalogued, there was no regular check to
see whether the Pulitzers were present.

Staff writer Joseph Mallia contributed to this story.