The brothers appeared to keep a low profile through early 2003, living within a few miles of each other in Oakland after each of their marriages crumbled. Though sentenced to decades in prison, they walked in 1998, freed by successful appeals.
PETITE SUMMER LIN ALIAS SERIES
Juries convicted them in a series of tabloid-tinged cases over the next six years, as cops and prosecutors packed courtroom galleries to watch them fall. The Smiths plunged from orbit in 1990, after their arrest on dozens of robbery, burglary, and false imprisonment charges related to alleged misdeeds a year earlier. Younger brother Troy sated his gambling jones in Las Vegas and Monte Carlo. Dino converted a Hunters Point warehouse into a rambling bachelor's pad. Both over 6 feet tall, they wore tailored Italian suits to flaunt chiseled physiques, eager to indulge their appetites for luxury cars and women. They mingled with the glitterati at bygone hotspots Studio West and DV8. Whatever the source of their wealth, the brothers cultivated a playboy lifestyle in their 20s. They were accused of forcing employees to unlock safes at gunpoint. Posing as customers, the brothers visited stores to scout vulnerable entry points, authorities alleged, then returned at night with work tools to pry open a skylight or window, or to bash a hole in a wall.
Police came to know the Smiths for their catlike climbing skills, alarm-system expertise, and cool demeanor. During the 1980s, investigators suspected them of committing possibly hundreds of burglaries and armed robberies, hitting clothing and jewelry stores, rug and furniture shops, restaurants, bars, and homes. Their infamy derived from repeated run-ins with police over two decades. So began the three-year search for Dino and Troy Smith.Īt the time, the Smith brothers already owned a reputation somewhere between notorious and loathed within the Hall of Justice. The crooks had escaped with $4.5 million in loot, the richest jewelry heist in San Francisco history. Officers soon realized the dizzying scale of the break-in. Martinez wriggled out of her restraints and untied her co-workers as police pulled up. “We've been hit,” she told the woman who answered.
Short and lithe, she hopped over to a phone and punched the speed-dial button to Lang's sister store. Martinez rolled off the pile only when she felt certain the gunmen had left. They worried he would suffer a heart attack. Placed on the bottom, Frey, a lanky man in his early 60s, wheezed under the weight of his co-workers. The duo bound their captives with plastic flex cuffs and duct tape before stacking them face down on top of one another. The thieves inside the shop handed the bags to the man until a woman's voice crackled over their walkie-talkies. He saw a third man standing on the opposite side, in a vacant restaurant attached to Lang's. As they worked, Frey noticed that a crude hole had been cut in the office's rear wall about five feet off the floor.
Tall and muscular, the two men moved with athletic grace, their manner calm and efficient. “Think of the poor children in Iraq,” one thief shot back. “You're taking away our livelihood,” Martinez said. The precious gems and metals created a soft crunching noise as they tumbled into the plastic bags. Some items dated to the mid-19th century most were one of a kind, customized by previous owners. A 1920s filigree diamond bracelet inlaid with Thai rubies. A $25,000 platinum Edwardian bracelet studded with emeralds. Eighteen-carat diamond rings and sapphire teardrop earrings. The robbers grabbed the display trays and began dumping more than 1,000 pieces of jewelry into garbage bags. A man had appeared on the landing, aiming a silver handgun at him. He headed back downstairs, but stopped halfway. Beeghly picked her way across the small space, passing the safes along one wall, and pushed on the bathroom door.Īs it opened, two men dressed in black lunged toward her. Scraps of wood and sheetrock littered the back office, debris from the store's ongoing renovation. Beeghly walked to the rear of the shop to change her clothes. They chatted for a minute, then Frey climbed upstairs to switch a security videotape. Before the store opened in half an hour, they would need to set out dozens of jewelry-laden display trays locked overnight in three safes. Richard Frey and Erin Beeghly arrived for work the next morning around 9:30, unaware of the previous night's disturbance. Police officers responded and peered into the darkened showroom. Someone or something inside Lang Fine Estate Jewelers tripped an alarm at 11:17 p.m.
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