THE HAGUE — Nearly six years after the US ambassador’s wife reported jewelry worth millions of dollars stolen from a Dutch hotel room, police said Thursday that it had been gathering dust in a forgotten drawer for years.
The $9.3 million collection of gold and diamond jewelry was found in the hotel room where the couple stayed for a few months leading up to the supposed 2006 theft.
Dawn Arnall did not even know that her jewelry was missing until months after the hotel stay.
She assumed the jewelry was stolen, but hotel workers in fact handed the rings, necklaces and earrings to management for safekeeping.
The items went unclaimed for six months, so a female employee was allowed to keep them, in line with hotel policy, police spokesman Wim Hoonhout said.
“Nobody realized the value of the jewelry,” Hoonhout said.
One of the necklaces was set with a five-carat rose diamond worth $5.3 million.
The female employee promptly put the jewels away in a closet and forgot about them. Last year, while doing housework, she rediscovered the items and decided to have them valued.
She then handed the jewelry to police, who last month returned them to Arnall in the US, where her husband died of cancer in 2008.
In the meantime, an insurance company had paid out for the missing jewelry.