The rash of burglaries recently at homes of pro athletes is an old story. Thieves who make hay while the athletes play have long tried to take advantage — along with the trophies, medals and money — by breaking into their homes when nobody’s there.
If the athlete’s playing a home game, it’s reasonable to assume the house may be empty before it’s emptied…of anything valuable. The headlines are bigger when the victim is Travis Kelce, whose face value has exploded because his girlfriend is Taylor Swift. When it comes to poking the bear, thieves couldn’t have found one with more notoriety unless it was ol’ Smokey himself.
Kelce and his Kansas City Chiefs teammate Patrick Mahomes, whose houses were burglarized hours apart last month, have company…today and yesterday. As their players are being targeted, the NFL, NBA and NHL have warned them about “an international crime ring.”
So the perpetrators have changed, but the victims’ occupations have not.
It was the spring of 1971. The Montreal Canadiens captain was weeks away from retirement, and the team declared March 24 as Jean Beliveau Day. At that night’s game against Philadelphia, Beliveau was honoured, with his wife and daughter present. He agreed to the event only if there were no cars or any gifts, only money for charity. The $150,000 raised that night (more than $1 million in today’s dollars) became the financial foundation for Beliveau’s charitable foundation.
Meanwhile, at his home in suburban Longueuil, thieves were gifting themselves with cash and whatever memorabilia they could find. If they were ever caught, it remains a secret.
Beliveau died 10 years ago this weekend. Earlier this year, he was posthumously victimized. A native of Quebec City, he had signed a 60-year-old “priceless” picture of him at the annual (and famous) Peewee Hockey Tournament’s inaugural year, during a charity match between the only teams he played for — the Canadiens and the Quebec Aces. Last spring, the photo was stolen from the peewee tournament’s museum. The man who donated it from his private memorabilia collection said he cried like a baby. An arrest was later made, but the photo is still missing.
Jean Beliveau’s name is on the Stanley Cup 17 times, 10 as a player and the rest as a Canadiens’ executive. Only one player’s name is there 11 times. That’s his long-time teammate and his successor as the Habs’ captain, Henri Richard, who passed away in 2020. Richard had seven Stanley Cup rings — one of them created to represent the Canadiens’ five consecutive Cups (1955-59), six others for the individual championship years.
Notice that Richard “had” seven rings. After he retired in 1975, burglars broke into his home in suburban Laval, and six of the rings were in the cache of valuables they stole. A couple of days later, he received a ransom call for his rings. Richard hung up. To this day, the rings have never been found.
The home of the non-famous, non-athlete writing this column was once burglarized in a Montreal suburb, the day after taking his family “on assignment” to Florida for spring training. Those thieves made off with our family’s valuables…two black-and-white TVs and little else.
The TVs were never found.
