$75,000.00 Dollar Gem goes Missing from Carnegie Museum Collection in 1981 never to be seen again

I will never forget sitting at a Pittsburgh Mineral & Lapidary Society meeting in late 70s when Del Oswald a curator with the Carnegie Natural  History Museum presented the plans for a brand new Hillman Hall to show off the museums collection which had been hidden away for years . he fought many years to get the hall built as museum officials where always trying to eliminate the collection but in the end Del won out.

http://www.carnegiemnh.org/online/hillman/

They had a grand opening and with in a few weeks of opening a major gem was missing from the collection despite excellent security system.  which is described in article from Pittsburgh post gazette .

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19841007&id=3xEdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IJYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3536,3825841

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2002&dat=19810727&id=WK0iAAAAIBAJ&sjid=77EFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4669,5623068
 After the robbery I asked Del would he like me to look the security over  to see if there was a hole some where since I worked with alarm systems  he said No.  Which got me suspicious this $75,000.00 gem gone and its all hush hush whats going on.Also why was just this stone targeted  It really seemed like an inside job but why?  You could not sell a stone like that legitimately and cutting it down into smaller stones would not make it worth any where near what it was whole .

But then a couple years later things would get very interesting and bring down many big names in the city on tax evasion charges . Del Oswald  personally and with out the museums knowledge was caught up in a tax avoidance scam  run by some  gem dealers where a donor would buy a a raw uncut stone which might cost $1500.00  and an additional $500.00 to have it cut but then they would give them to museum at a cut value  and get a deduction letter for $10,000.00  retail price gem was worth . not the $2000.00 it cost and where taking an illegal $8000.00 deduction

Eventually the whole thing unraveled and many got caught and had to pay up and I have always wondered was this tax scam the reason the stone disappeared? as it would have been part of the scam being run and traced to some one even higher up the food chain the IRS could target? 

Of course we will never know and Del and many of the donors have since passed on and the gem still missing and its story as yet untold. 
The last time I saw Del was at a mineral club meeting where he explained the whole tax scam and how it worked while no one went to jail it cost plenty of $$$ for those involved  to get out of this mess ,and who ever stole the stone the statute of limitations has since log run out and they got away clean