Jeweler Saw the Flaw in Taylor’s Story

Darcy Knight knew for sure he had passed up a real bargain.

What he didn’t know for sure was whom he had turned over to police.

“I’m still trying to figure out who it was,” Knight said Saturday evening, only hours after telephoning police from the Fair Deal Pawn and Gun shop in Rapid City, S.D.

Thanks to Knight, Rapid City police arrested Michael Douglas Taylor, believed to be the mastermind of November’s Orange County jailbreak. Police believe Taylor was trying to sell diamonds that might have been part of the loot in a $450,000-million robbery of a Chicago jewelry store after his escape.

“I passed up a heck of a diamond deal,” said Knight, the pawnshop’s resident jeweler. “I could have bought those and it would have been a screaming deal. A lot of pawnshops do a lot of underhanded things. We do everything aboveboard.”

Knight knew almost immediately that something was wrong when Taylor, “smartly dressed . . . in new tennis shoes” and a cap, and another man, whom police have not yet identified, entered the shop at 401 East Blvd. North. Taylor offered to sell about half a dozen cut diamonds.

“I said, ‘Let me try to find if I can get somebody to buy these,’ ” Knight recalled.

“He wanted way too little, probably about a third of what it would cost me wholesale,” Knight said. “About $2,000 is what he wanted for half a dozen stones.”

“He had different cuts, rounds and what they call a fancy square cut and a pear shape.”

Taylor told Knight that he had purchased the 1- and 3/4-carat diamonds as an investment and was willing to sell them at a small profit. But he wasn’t fooling Knight.

‘Nothing Fit’

“Nothing fit,” Knight explained. “If they were investment stones like he said they were, the prices were way off. . . . Apparently he just needed the money to get out of here.”

Knight told Taylor that he would make some telephone calls to find a buyer for the diamonds.

“He claimed to be a big diamond investor,” Knight said, but “he left here on foot.”

Knight said he telephoned some other jewelers in town and found that they, too, had been visited by Taylor but that they had “kind of spooked him and he left.”

When Taylor and the unidentified man returned to Fair Deal Pawn and Gun later Saturday afternoon, Knight told him he had been unable to find any buyers for the large stones. Knight asked if he had any smaller stones to sell.

Taylor had parked a van about a quarter-mile from the shop. “That’s where he went to get the smaller stones,” Knight recalled. Knight then went into another room and telephoned police.

Taylor returned to the store while Knight was on the telephone, but another pawnshop employee told him that Knight was on the phone with a potential buyer.

“And I was trying to sell his diamonds--to the Police Department,” Knight joked.

‘Stall Him’

Actually Knight was telling Rapid City Police Sgt. David Walton, “ ‘These guys were in with some diamonds and trying to sell,’ ” Walton recalled. “He didn’t think it was right and (thought) we should check it out.”

Knight recalled that police told him: “Stall him. We’re on our way.”

“The timing was perfect,” Knight said. “He (Taylor) was at the point where he wanted to go. . . . He was getting real anxious. It was just at that point that (police officers) walked in.”

As Taylor stuffed the diamonds back into his pocket, three uniformed police officers walked up behind him and arrested him, Knight said. He had not even seen the officers enter the store, Knight said.

“When they arrested him, apparently he had more diamonds on him,” Knight said. “Plus he had a brand new ring, no wear marks.”

Taylor went without a scuffle, but not without an argument, Knight said.

“He threatened to take the officer’s name,” Knight recalled. “He threatened to sue.”