Ocean--and FBI--Yield Token of Love

From the moment it was found bobbing amid debris in the Atlantic until it was recently removed from an FBI vault in Calverton, N.Y., a diamond ring has remained an elusive token of love for a woman who lost her fiance in the crash of TWA Flight 800.

But today, two days before Christmas and 159 days after the crash, Julie Stuart will finally get to wear the engagement ring Andrew Krukar intended to slip on her finger last summer.

FBI Assistant Director James K. Kallstrom is scheduled to meet with Stuart in Manhattan and hand over the 1.6-carat diamond.

“It’s taken a long time. And at this point, it’s more bitter than sweet,” said Stuart, a 31-year-old human resources manager who met Krukar more than a year ago at the Connecticut company where they worked. “But the ring, it’s what I have left of him.”

Until now, the diamond has been known only as Item 26 at the Calverton hangar that has become tragedy’s own scrapbook, where twisted pieces of the Boeing 747 sit and valuable personal effects remain in a vault, waiting to be returned to the families of the 230 people who died.

The antique-style diamond was floating in its original maroon silk box when it was plucked by divers from the Atlantic Ocean on July 18.

Authorities said they could not release the ring until they were sure of its ownership.

Weeks after the disaster, Stuart assumed that the ring was lost forever in the Atlantic. But when a friend in France sent her a copy of the Aug. 1 issue of Paris Match, which featured some of the items recovered from the wreckage, she spotted it.

“It was his final wish, the ultimate symbol of our love,” she said. “And when I get it, I’m not going to take it off.”