Latest news with #Gilder
Time of India
5 hours ago
- Time of India
Diamond heist takes a wild turn as suspect swallows $700K worth of gems in bizarre attempt to evade arrest
Jaythan Gilder, a 32-year-old man, stole $770,000 worth of diamond earrings from a Tiffany & Co. store in Orlando. To evade capture, he swallowed the gems, leading to a two-week wait for their retrieval from his digestive system. Gilder, a repeat offender, faces robbery and grand theft charges in Florida and is wanted in Colorado for a similar 2022 incident. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Gilder has done this before Current situation FAQs A man named Jaythan Gilder, 32, stole diamond earrings worth $770,000 from a Tiffany & Co. store and then tried to escape by swallowing the gems before police could arrest him. He stole the diamond earrings from a store in The Mall at Millenia in Orlando. Gilder pretended to be a representative for an NBA player to gain access to the diamonds, as per being shown the jewelry in a private room, he grabbed two sets of earrings worth $609,500 plus $160,000 and ran away. Hours later, Florida Highway Patrol pulled over Gilder on Interstate 10 near Chipley in a rented Mitsubishi Outlander, as stated in the report by The Smoking arresting him, officers saw Gilder moving something in his mouth and refusing to spit it out. Cops warned him he'd get tased if he didn't open his mouth. He said through clenched teeth, 'I don't have to.' At first, police thought he was swallowing drugs. He claimed the white stuff on his lip was Abreva. A test showed no drugs, according to the his car, cops only found price tags and earring cards from Tiffany's, no diamonds. Cops guessed he had actually swallowed the diamonds and sent him to the hospital. Gilder refused an X-ray and didn't want treatment, as per the report by The Smoking jail, a body scan showed foreign objects in his stomach. He asked, 'Am I going to be charged with what's in my stomach?' He refused laxatives and told jail staff he was Muslim observing Ramadan, so he only ate after sundown. Police waited 2 weeks for him to pass the March 10, he passed two earrings, but they weren't the Tiffany ones, police are still checking where those came from. Later that same day, he passed three Tiffany earrings, and the last one came out on March 12. Tiffany's Master Jeweler cleaned and confirmed the diamonds before giving them back to the store's security team, according to the report by The Smoking 2022, Gilder swallowed earrings again after robbing a jewelry store in Colorado Springs. That time, the store owner shot him in the back during the the hospital, while under guard, he swallowed the earrings so police couldn't take them. Cops searched his poop but never found them, and scans showed nothing either, as per the report The Smoking is now locked up without bail in Florida, facing robbery and grand theft charges. He is also wanted in Colorado for felony charges from the 2022 robbery. His lawyer tried to get him temporary release to attend his mom's funeral, but a Florida judge said lawyer said he has PTSD and depression and needed to grieve. Prosecutors refused, calling him a habitual offender and an escape risk. Back in 2022, he had slipped handcuffs in a hospital and tried to escape through the ceiling, causing damage. His lawyer also claimed he had a 'limited criminal history,' but cops say his record is 20 years long, covering many states, as per the report by The Smoking Gilder, a convicted jewel thief, swallowed the diamonds to hide them from stolen Tiffany & Co. diamonds were worth about $770,000.
Daily Maverick
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Writing what it felt like — Barry Gilder on memory, movement and making art in the struggle
At the Fire Hour stands as both tribute and testimony, a quiet but insistent record of what it meant to survive the storm and to still want to sing. Barry Gilder's novel, At the Fire Hour, is a deeply layered reflection on loyalty, memory and what it costs to live a life split between political commitment and artistic longing. In the book, we meet Bheki Makhathini, a South African writer and exile suspected of betraying the ANC. Suspicion clings to him. Was he a sellout? A spy? This question is at the novel's quietly devastating core. Gilder uses this tension not only to explore personal betrayal but to reflect on the paranoia that haunted the liberation movement's underground networks. Like Gilder, Bheki is a young creative who leaves South Africa in 1976 and goes into exile. He completes a creative writing master's degree in the UK, undergoes military training in Angola and the Soviet Union and returns home after the unbanning of the ANC. His life and the novel become a meditation on the high stakes of political belonging. Fiction becomes a tool to wrestle with what it means to be doubted by your own comrades, and what is lost in that rupture. But this is not simply a political thriller. It is also a love story, a story of creative loss and an intimate sketch of exile. At the Fire Hour spans continents, mirroring the movement of activists scattered by apartheid. These spaces are rendered not as exotic backdrops, but as textured zones of struggle, reflection and belonging. Gilder, who lived through many of these dislocations, lends authenticity to these passages. Through Bheki's voice, he evokes the haunting uncertainty of displacement and the fragility of the revolutionary self. There's an important strand in the book on surveillance and the psychological toll of being under suspicion. The novel's emotional gravity lies not in action but in atmosphere: the loneliness of exile, the fragility of trust and the slow erosion of the self under constant doubt. Gilder does not absolve his characters easily. Instead, he allows the complexity of revolutionary life to settle in quietly, asking the reader to sit with uncertainty. One of the most arresting sequences in the novel explores the brutal techniques of interrogation: Bheki is forced to stand on a brick for five hours, deprived of sleep for two days and nights, subjected to electric shocks on his testicles. These methods are not described for sensational effect, but as part of a system designed to fracture belief, to extract not only information, but ideological collapse. Gilder documents how the body is targeted in the hope that the will might break, and how survival becomes a kind of guilt. In the aftermath of such violence, the doubts of comrades cut deeper. Was Bheki released because he cooperated? Or because they could not break him? The anguish of this experience crystallises in a poem written by Bheki, inserted into the novel: words do not slice skin shred flesh shatter bone dethrone dictators. This tension is echoed in the novel's interplay between art and politics. Bheki, like Gilder, is torn between creative expression and the imperatives of the struggle. 'The more I got involved in the struggle, the fewer songs I wrote,' Gilder told me. 'Things got really hectic… writing reports to Lusaka, moving from safe house to safe house. Wally Serote was writing a novel during that time. I wasn't. I haven't written a song since the 1980s.' Creativity became a casualty of the revolution. The silence was not chosen, but enforced by necessity. Yet in fiction, he rediscovers voice. The novel, which began as part of Gilder's PhD submission, is woven with poems and short stories written by Bheki, forming a narrative within a narrative. 'I kind of really enjoyed getting into his creative head,' Gilder said. 'It helps say things more concisely than one can in the narrative part of the book.' These insertions do more than embellish the story; they deepen it, giving texture to the private interiority that historical accounts so often flatten. At the Fire Hour is also a commentary on the cultural politics of the ANC in exile. Gilder vividly reconstructs events like the Culture and Resistance Conference in Gaborone and Culture in Another South Africa in Amsterdam. These were not peripheral events; they were sites where politics and creativity met, where resistance was choreographed through poems, music and song. Gilder was present at these gatherings. His fictionalisation of them pulses with insight and detail that only a participant could provide. What makes this novel essential is not simply its storytelling, but its function as a historical intervention. In a country still wrestling with the afterlives of struggle, Gilder insists on fiction's power to hold emotional truths that the archive cannot. 'Historians tell us what happened,' he said. 'Novelists tell us what it felt like.' This is not nostalgia. It is reckoning. The novel is a form of political memory work – an attempt to break the silence around suspicion, doubt and betrayal that was never truly resolved. By the end, the novel ceases to be about one man's guilt or innocence. It becomes something far more collective – a mosaic of those who made the movement, lived through exile and continue to carry its shadows. Gilder reminds us that the story of liberation is not just about triumph. It's about what it costs to keep going. At the Fire Hour stands as both tribute and testimony, a quiet but insistent record of what it meant to survive the storm and to still want to sing. DM
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Yahoo
Thief who swallowed $770K worth of Tiffany earrings 'expelled' them over 12 days later, Florida police say
Investigators recovered $770,000 worth of stolen Tiffany & Co. earrings last week after the alleged thief who swallowed the jewelry "expelled" them from his system, Florida police said. The Orlando Police Department announced the recovery of the stolen jewelry from suspect Jaythan Gilder in a Facebook post on Friday. 'Detectives monitored Jaythan Gilder for more than a dozen days at the hospital before they were able to match the serial numbers on the jewelry with the items that were stolen from Tiffany & Co.,' the caption read. In a video accompanying the post, Detectives Aaron Goss and Tiffany Perez shared details from the investigation. 'Later, after the diamonds were expelled from his system, we were able to bring them to Tiffany's, where they were cleaned, and their master jeweler confirmed the inscription and serial numbers matched the stolen pieces,' Goss explained. 'I'm very proud of our team for all of our work. We acted quickly and diligently, working together tirelessly for days on end,' Perez added. Gilder's alleged heist unfolded on Feb. 26 at Tiffany & Co. in the Mall at Millenia, where he allegedly posed as a representative for an Orlando Magic basketball player. He was escorted to a VIP room and presented with several luxury jewelry items, including a pair of 4.86-carat diamond earrings worth $160,000, a pair of 8.19-carat diamond earrings worth $609,000 and a 5.61-carat diamond ring worth $587,000, the court document said. Gilder allegedly attempted to grab the jewelry, during which he struggled with employees, ultimately dropping the ring. However, authorities say he managed to swallow the diamonds before being taken into custody. A scan at the Washington County Jail later revealed 'foreign objects in his stomach,' according to the affidavit. Police also noted that Gilder has a history of jewelry heists, having pulled off 'a similar robbery' at a Tiffany & Co. in The Woodlands, Texas, in 2022. Additionally, he has 48 outstanding warrants in Colorado. Gilder is facing charges of grand theft and robbery with a mask. As of Tuesday, he remains in custody in Orange County. It was not immediately clear whether he had legal representation. This article was originally published on
NBC News
25-03-2025
- NBC News
Thief who swallowed $770K worth of Tiffany earrings 'expelled' them over 12 days later, Florida police say
Investigators recovered $770,000 worth of stolen Tiffany & Co. earrings last week after the alleged thief who swallowed the jewelry "expelled" them from his system, Florida police said. The Orlando Police Department announced the recovery of the stolen jewelry from suspect Jaythan Gilder in a Facebook post on Friday. 'Detectives monitored Jaythan Gilder for more than a dozen days at the hospital before they were able to match the serial numbers on the jewelry with the items that were stolen from Tiffany & Co.,' the caption read. In a video accompanying the post, Detectives Aaron Goss and Tiffany Perez shared details from the investigation. 'Later, after the diamonds were expelled from his system, we were able to bring them to Tiffany's, where they were cleaned, and their master jeweler confirmed the inscription and serial numbers matched the stolen pieces,' Goss explained. 'I'm very proud of our team for all of our work. We acted quickly and diligently, working together tirelessly for days on end,' Perez added. Gilder's alleged heist unfolded on Feb. 26 at Tiffany & Co. in the Mall at Millenia, where he allegedly posed as a representative for an Orlando Magic basketball player. He was escorted to a VIP room and presented with several luxury jewelry items, including a pair of 4.86-carat diamond earrings worth $160,000, a pair of 8.19-carat diamond earrings worth $609,000 and a 5.61-carat diamond ring worth $587,000, the court document said. Gilder allegedly attempted to grab the jewelry, during which he struggled with employees, ultimately dropping the ring. However, authorities say he managed to swallow the diamonds before being taken into custody. A scan at the Washington County Jail later revealed 'foreign objects in his stomach,' according to the affidavit. Police also noted that Gilder has a history of jewelry heists, having pulled off 'a similar robbery' at a Tiffany & Co. in The Woodlands, Texas, in 2022. Additionally, he has 48 outstanding warrants in Colorado. Gilder is facing charges of grand theft and robbery with a mask. As of Tuesday, he remains in custody in Orange County. It was not immediately clear whether he had legal representation.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Yahoo
A suspect swallowed diamond earrings. They were recovered after nature ran its course.
After nearly a month, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of diamond earrings have been recovered from a man accused of stealing the jewelry in Orlando, Florida. The Orlando Police Department Violent Crimes Unit recovered more than $769,000 worth of Tiffany & Co. diamond earrings from Jaythan Gilder, 32, of Houston, Texas, last week, according to a news release. Gilder was arrested on Feb. 26 for allegedly robbing a Tiffany & Co. store in Orlando, Florida. During his arrest, Gilder was seen swallowing a few items, which police believed were earrings. More news: Couple sentenced to 375 years collectively for forcing Black children to work 'as slaves' The day after his arrest, Gilder was transported to a hospital where authorities awaited the earrings to pass through his system. Detectives recovered three of the four Tiffany & Co. diamond earrings, in addition to two unidentified diamond earrings on March 10, according to a news release. The final earring was recovered on March 12. After recovery and cleaning, detectives took the earrings back to the store, where a master jeweler matched the serial numbers of the items that had been stolen. "This case quickly turned into a marathon, not a sprint," Orlando Police Department Violent Crimes Unit Detective Aaron Goss said in a social media video, shared on Friday. Gilder is accused of robbing a Tiffany & Co. store in Orlando, Florida on Feb. 26. Gilder allegedly entered the store and told staff he was negotiating a sale on behalf of a player on the Orlando Magic basketball team. Court records obtained by USA TODAY didn't specify which player Gilder was talking about. Gilder, who told staff his name was Shawn, was taken to a VIP room in the store due to the potential size of his purpose, staff told police. Gilder was shown two pairs of diamond earrings and one diamond ring, with a combined value of more than $1 million. Once inside the room with the jewelry, Gilder jumped from his seat, grabbed the jewelry and tried to escape the room. A store associate tried to stop him but failed, court records said. Gilder dropped the diamond ring but managed to leave the store, which is inside a mall, with the earrings. Through surveillance cameras, police were able to identify Gilder's getaway car, which was en route to Texas. The car was stopped by the Florida Highway Patrol a few hours later. Gilder resisted arrest and was seen swallowing several objects, a news release states. Currently held at Orange County Jail, Gilder faces charges of robbery with a mask and grand theft in the first degree. Gilder also has 48 separate warrants which, he will face, according to a news release. Greta Cross is a national trending reporter at USA TODAY. Story idea? Email her at gcross@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tiffany diamond earrings recovered from suspect who swallowed them
