The Diamond District has long been a glittering magnet for visitors interested in carats – or crime.
Its heart, the so-called “Street of Diamonds” on 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, is the center of the multibillion-dollar wholesale and retail diamond business.
It handles “more than 90 percent of all jewelry-grade diamonds sold” in the nation, according to the district’s Web site.
It has also been the scene of crimes, including robberies and a spectacular murder that made the city gasp in horror.
It was in September 1977 that a young diamond broker, Pinchos Jaroslawicz, disappeared carrying an estimated $750,000 worth of diamonds.
He was last seen entering the office of diamond cutter Shlomo Tal at 15 W. 47th St. The next year, Tal, then 33, was convicted along with another cutter, Pini Balabin, of the slaying of the 25-year-old broker.
Tal led cops to the body – wrapped in plastic bags and hidden beneath the workbench in his office – eight days after “P.J.” disappeared.
He had worked at the bench above the crated corpse. He told cops that two armed, masked men smashed in Jaroslawicz’s head and forced Tal to conceal the body. He said he feared to call police lest the “intruders” harm his family.
In December 2002, a burglar with his sights on a 12th-floor jewelry manufacturer at 70 W. 40th St. slithered up a stairwell, climbed through a window and broke open a vault – and made off with $1.5 million in gems.
Last year, a masked gunman accosted a woman outside her store, forced her inside and made her hand over more than $4 million in gems from the safe, cops said.