According to law enforcement, the legendary British rock and roll group Led Zeppelin had more than $200,000 in cash stolen right out of a hotel safety deposit box.
It was July 29, 1973, and Led Zeppelin was gearing up for their final show in a three-night run at Madison Square Garden when road manager Richard Cole made a shocking discovery — the band's hotel safety deposit box had been cleaned out. The haul? More than $200,000 in cash, earnings accumulated from recent concerts on their ongoing US tour that had been earmarked for upcoming expenses.
The next day, while the band members remained holed up in suites on the 17th level, their personal manager Peter Grant held a press conference to address the brazen theft. A thorough police investigation was launched, but to this day, the case has never been solved.
Police informed the group that the cash was still present when Cole accessed the box at 1:20 a.m. on Sunday morning. However, by the time he returned to check it again at 7:30 p.m., nothing remained inside except five passports.
Investigators working the case at the Drake Hotel on Park Avenue found no evidence that the box had been forced open, which only deepened the mystery. The facility operated on a two-key system — one held by desk staff to pull the box from the safe, and the other held by Cole himself, needed to actually unlock it. Police technicians removed the locks and took them away for further analysis, making it even harder to determine exactly what went wrong.
When it came to commenting on the incident, hotel detectives had nothing to say. Assistant manager Michael Stiller did confirm, however, that the hotel maintained no records of what guests kept in their security deposit boxes. He also stated he had no knowledge of how much money had been stored in Led Zeppelin's box.
None of this kept Led Zeppelin off the stage, though. The band went ahead and performed as planned, and when the show wrapped up, roughly 85 young admirers were waiting in the foyer hoping to catch a glimpse of the group.
To this day, the contents of that security box have never been recovered.