Denver oil billionaire Marvin Davis, 67, a former owner of Twentieth Century Fox with huge real-estate holdings in Aspen, Colo., and his wife, Barbara, were en route from the Nice airport to the Hotel du Cap in Antibes when their chauffeured limo was cut off by four hooded gunmen. The thugs yanked a $40,000 necklace from around Barbara Davis’s throat and forced the oil magnate to open the car trunk and surrender jewels valued at $10 million, as well as $50,000 in cash–said to be “tipping money.”
Even by the region’s highglitz standards, the Davises weren’t average tourists. U.S. Ambassador Pamela Harriman reportedly prodded the French Foreign Ministry, producing an in-person apology to the Davises by a local official. And two days later, cops stopped the felons for driving without seat belts–but with the Davises’ credit cards in their car. The thieves led the police to most of the jewelry–hidden, improbably, under a rock. One of the baubles was a marquise-cut 32.44-carat diamond ring. Talk about your rocks…
