A Bustleton man has been rocked by cold-hearted thieves who took his wife's cremated remains while stealing a large safe from his home.
71-year old Jon Mogck says he liked Rita from the first time he met her, nearly half a century ago.
"Yeah," said Mogck. "I married her! Ha!"
Her death from cancer last November, hit Mogck hard.
But he pulled himself together and made plans to fly her cremated remains to her hometown cemetery in Hanau, Germany.
Then, last Thursday morning, evil came calling.
A small, heavyset man knocked on the front door, claiming to be a city tree trimmer, working the neighborhood.
"It was so convincing to me," Mogck told FOX 29's Bruce Gordon.
The man convinced Mogck to join him in the backyard to survey some large trees, and kept him occupied out back for ten to fifteen minutes, all the while, talking to someone on a cell phone.
When the man went around front, claiming he had to retrieve some measuring tools, Mogck went inside – and knew immediately something was wrong.
He raced to his bedroom, where a large gun safe was filled with cash, a coin collection and important papers.
That's how it was," said Mogck, pointing to a space in the corner of the room. "Empty- empty space."
The safe, 250 lbs. and bolted to the floor, had been ripped out and carried away.
"I was emotionally...you know, I just went down."
n addition to the cash, coins and documents, was a container holding wife Rita's cremated remains.
Scrape marks on the front steps of Mogck's home show where the thieves dragged the safe out, before loading it onto a waiting Chrysler Town and Country minivan.
Mogck says if he could speak to the thieves, he'd ask only that they return his wife's ashes.
"Well, it means everything to me."
Mogck believes the man who district him out back would have needed at least two accomplices to haul the heavy safe out of the house.
Police think this was the work of so-called gypsies.
Mogck's niece tells Gordon she will pay a $1000 reward for the safe return of Rita's ashes.
