The jollity ended when the intruder shoved the woman to the floor, then clocked her husband with his gun when he objected. The gang got away with jewelry, cash and an armful of fur coats valued at $400,000 in all. The crown jewel of the heist was a quadruple string of perfectly matched pearls, valued at a cool quarter million dollars, snatched from the neck of Mildred Van Clief, mother of the groom. Buffalo police boss James Higgins blamed the holdup on a sophisticated national gang. Similar crimes had been reported in St. Louis and Champaign, Ill., and Higgins deduced that “aristocrats of the criminal world” were identifying targets by scanning the society columns for tips on gilded shindigs.