Ex-Employee Suspected in Kidnaping, Theft of $250,000 Worth of Dental Gold

A former employee of a Placentia dental supply firm and another man allegedly kidnaped a secretary at gunpoint Sunday afternoon, forced her to unlock the business and stole $250,000 in gold, police said Monday.

After demanding she open a safe at Degussa Dental Inc., the men allegedly bound the woman’s wrists, tied her to the plumbing beneath a bathroom sink and threatened to kill her if she identified them, Placentia Police Lt. Daryll Thomann said.

The abducted woman, a 31-year-old resident of Huntington Beach, was not harmed. Her name is being withheld, Thomann said, to protect her because the suspects are considered “armed and dangerous.”

Suspected in Second Theft

Police identified one suspect as former employee Bret Allen Langford, 18, of Garden Grove. Langford, who had been a laborer at Degussa until last May, also is a suspect in a September theft of $20,000 in gold from the business, Thomann said Monday.

The second man, who was armed with what police believe to be a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, “is known only to us as Jerry,” Thomann said.

On Sunday, police said the unidentified secretary was apparently followed by the pair from her residence to the home of relatives in Costa Mesa. As she got out of her car at about 12:30 p.m. she was kidnaped at gunpoint.

The woman told police that Langford had knocked on her door on Saturday, but that she did not answer it. Instead, she reported the incident to Huntington Beach police.

Officers said no one witnessed Sunday’s abduction, after which the secretary was driven in an older model yellow Honda Civic to the dental supply company in the 100 block of West Orangethorpe Avenue in Placentia.

Waiting to Be Melted Down

There, Thomann said, her abductors took one-ounce ingots of gold valued in excess of $250,000. The gold ingots, which were of varying degrees of purity, were in storage waiting to be melted down into crowns, he said. The woman managed to wriggle free of the plastic straps that held her and telephoned police from the business.

“There was some procrastination in letting us know” what happened, Thomann said, because the woman was afraid she would be killed by the pair.

The secretary has been ruled out as a suspect, Thomann said.

According to police, the secretary was aware that Langford was suspected of stealing a delivery of gold worth $20,000 on Sept. 29. On that morning, a postal worker who delivered the package apparently had seen Langford working at the company previously. When asked by Langford if there were any packages, the postal worker gave him the delivery, company officials later learned.

Because of the previous theft, the secretary told police that she did not answer when Langford came to her door on Saturday but instead reported his visit to Huntington Beach police and also left a message with Placentia police detectives, Thomann said.

“They apparently had been following her for some time,” he said of the two suspects.