Judge halts Leopold's trial

November 21, 1930

Judge Bertini will make it known on Monday if he will dismiss the indictments against Archduke Leopold of Austria or let the case go to the jury, which has been hearing evidence for three days.
Leopold has been charged with the theft of $450,000 diamond necklace that belonged to Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria.


(The necklace was given by Napoleon to his second wife, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, as a gift for the birth of a son. The necklace remained Marie Louise's possession, even after Napoleon's exile and her return to Austria. When Marie Louise died in 1847, the necklace was inherited by Archduchess Sophie of Austria, the wife of Sophie's nephew, Franz Karl.
When Sophie died, the necklace was left to her three sons, Franz Joseph, Ludwig Viktor and Karl Ludwig, who bought out his two brothers' share in the necklace. Karl Ludwig died in 1914, and the necklace was inherited by his third wife, Maria Theresa of Portugal.
By the late 1920s, Maria Theresa was in need of money, and she decided to sell the necklace. She found two people, who called themselves Princess Baronti and Colonel Townsend, who agreed to sell the necklace in the US for $450,000. But due to the depression, the two realized that the asking price was impossible. They signed on Maria Teresa's grandnephew, Archduke Leopold, to vouch for the necklace's authenticity. Harry Winston was among the jewelers who began negotiations to buy the necklace, which was eventually sold for $60,000 to a New Yorker, David Michel. Maria Theresa received about $6,000 from the sale as Townsend and Baronti claimed more than $53,000 in expenses.
The archduchess then went to court to regain her necklace. Leopold was jailed, and Townsend and Baronti fled the authorities.
The necklace was returned to the archduchess, who died in 1944. Four years later, Maria Theresa's heirs sold the necklace to Paul-Louis Weiller, the French industrialist, who held onto the necklace until 1960, when he sold it Harry Winston. That same year, Winston sold the necklace to the American heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. She donated the necklace to the Smithsonian institution in 1962. The necklace is on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. )

http://mineralsciences.si.edu/collections/napoleonnecklace.htm