Charge in Theft of Jewelry

A married couple from Calverton admitted last week, in separate statements to the police, that they had stolen jewelry from the woman’s mother, a resident of Springs with whom they had been staying, to feed the man’s heroin habit.



East Hampton Town detectives, who had been investigating the repeated thefts from a Lotus Avenue house, took Jacqueline Cobb, 30, and Jason A. Cobb, 33, into custody on Nov. 19. Each was charged with grand larceny in the fourth degree, a felony. More charges could be pending.



According to their statements, Ms. Cobb went into the bedroom of her mother, Laurie Granitto, three times between August and October, and removed gold jewelry valued at thousands of dollars. She sold the items at pawn shops for scrap, she said, never receiving more than $80 a sale.



The couple, with Ms. Cobb’s daughter by a previous relationship, had moved into the Lotus Avenue house during the summer, unable to find a place to live, they told detectives. Mr. Cobb said he had been prescribed pain-killing drugs after suffering a major injury in a serious motorcycle accident. “Eventually, after losing my insurance, I turned to heroin because it was cheaper and easier to get,” he told police. “When I did not have the drugs, I would become sick.”



At first, he stated, they sold his wife’s jewelry. “She had run out of stuff to sell. That is when Jackie and I decided to see what kind of scrap we could find around Jackie’s mom’s house.”



The Granittos eventually confronted the Cobbs. “They were accusing us of using their credit cards, and accusing us about the missing jewelry,” Mr. Cobb stated.



The couple moved to the house of a cousin, but 10 days or so later Ms. Cobb returned to her parents’ home with her daughter. Mr. Cobb moved to a friend’s house in Calverton, working as a cabdriver in Riverhead.



Ms. Cobb, during an initial interview with police, was shown what she said was the last pair of stolen and pawned earrings, and she identified them as her mother’s. She implicated her husband in the thefts, though not herself.



The next day, she returned to police headquarters in Wainscott and gave a new statement. “I didn’t tell the truth in its entirety because I was so scared and ashamed for what I had done,” she reportedly said. “I couldn’t let Jay take all the blame, and needed to answer for what I had done.”



“I am trying to stay clean and get my family back,” Mr. Cobb said at the end of his statement. “I am very sorry for what I did.”



During their arraignment in East Hampton Justice Court last Thursday, Justice Steven Tekulsky issued a stay-away order of protection to prevent Mr. Cobb from returning to the Lotus Avenue house. He assigned Carl Irace as Mr. Cobb’s attorney, while Brian Francese of the Legal Aid Society will represent Ms. Cobb. Mr. Irace was appointed because, as co-defendants, the two could not be represented by the same attorney.



Both entered denials to the felony charges, and were released on $250 bail.