Crime & Safety
Woman Stole Grandmother's Jewelry, Police Say
23-year-old Bethlehem woman with criminal record is charged with stealing jewelry valued at $9,000 from her grandmother's bedroom.
On the last day of February, a Bethlehem Township woman discovered that almost $9,000 of her “fine” jewelry was missing from her bedroom jewel case.
Among those in her family she alerted that day was her granddaughter, Nicole Kathleen Werner. In fact, she met with Werner, 23, a student at Northampton Community College who works at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem, court records say.
Later that day, the records say, Werner called back her grandmother and admitted she took the jewelry from the older woman’s home on the 3400 block of Drighton Court.
The grandmother, Kathleen Matweecha, told township Patrolman Andrew R. Keyock “she struggled with the situation for several weeks” before notifying police on the day she and Keyock talked—Thursday (March 14), the officer writes in a criminal complaint.
Later on Thursday, Keyock talked to Werner, who admitted stealing her grandmother’s jewelry in mid-December and selling it over two months to a “pawn shop at Lehigh Valley Mall.” The complaint does not list the shop’s name.
She told Keyock she received a total of about $1,000 for the jewelry, which police said was valued at $8,933.
Werner, of 905 Spring St. in West Bethlehem, has been charged with theft by unlawful taking or disposition and receiving stolen property—both level-three felonies.
She was committed to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $5,000 bail after being arraigned Thursday by on-duty District Judge John Capobianco of Nazareth.
Keyock writes in the complaint that he received an insurance inventory with a description of the stolen jewelry and the values. That description was not included in Werner’s file.
But the complaint does say that Keyock showed Werner the inventory and “she acknowledged the items she had taken.”
Her court file lists two prior convictions for driving under the influence and receiving stolen property/theft.
Online court records list three prior cases:
- In Lehigh County, she was accepted into the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program for first-time offenders for 2008 charges of theft and receiving stolen property. The case was handled by state police at Bethlehem.
- Also in Lehigh County, she was accepted into the ARD program for a 2009 charge of DUI in a case also handled by state police at Bethlehem.
- Last September, in a Northampton County case out of Lower Saucon Township, she pleaded guilty to use/possession of drug paraphernalia. Charges of distributing a small amount of marijuana and exceeding the maximum speed limit by 13 mph were withdrawn.