Two Brooklyn Men Arrested in String of Jewelry Thefts

Paramus, N.J.—The Paramus Police Department recently arrested two men they believe committed a string of jewelry store burglaries stretching from New Jersey’s Garden State Plaza mall to Albany, New York.

The Paramus Police Department said last week that 45-year-old Gerald Williams and 56-year-old Tony Newton, both of Brooklyn, N.Y., were arrested and charged with multiple counts of burglary and theft, plus possession of stolen property and shoplifting.

The pair’s first alleged theft happened earlier this year on Jan. 13 at Kay Jewelers at Garden State Plaza. Police said they responded to a reported burglary at the mall and found that the suspects had cut the front security gate to get into the store after-hours and ransacked the display cases.

Paramus Police Detective Nicholas Luciano of the Special Investigations Unit worked with other detectives to determine that the same two suspects committed at least three other burglaries at different Kay stores in the area and had stolen jewelry from Nordstrom at Garden State Plaza as well, police said. The value of the jewelry stolen in Paramus totaled more than $250,000.

During the investigation, Luciano reached out to the New York City Police Department for assistance, working with NYPD Sgt. Robert Olson over the following few months to review video tapes of burglaries committed across New Jersey and New York.

Police said they were able to identify a pattern of similar burglaries and jewelry thefts, including at two of the Kay stores in the Menlo Park Mall in Edison, New Jersey and “potentially several as far away as Albany, N.Y,” which is nearly 170 miles north in New York state. They also were able to identify a stolen vehicle that was used in the burglary of the Kay store in the Bergen Town Center mall in Paramus.

On Sept. 29, Paramus officers again were called to Garden State Plaza for a burglary, this time of a kiosk (police did not specify which kiosk) and said that they recognized one of the men on the video surveillance tape who allegedly had also been caught on camera in the Kay and Nordstrom jewelry thefts.

The following day, Luciano and Olson tracked down the stolen vehicle from the Bergen Town Center mall theft in Brooklyn. They found Newton inside and arrested him. Williams was taken into custody later in his Brooklyn home. Police said Newton and Williams are related though they