Kuhn had become a law-abiding citizen, first working as a prop master for movies in Los Angeles, then moving with his wife to Highlandville, Missouri, where he opened up a topsoil and landscaping business. He buried his history since there was nothing to gain by mentioning that he was an ex-convict. “This was the Bible Belt, they are not very forgiving,” he says.

But the press kept Murphy in the news. Every few years he would give a jokey interview in prison. “The food’s good, although not as good as the Waldorf, and the company’s excellent,” he told United Press International. He painted watercolors. A Florida television station interviewed him, and crewmember Kitten Collins became enamored, visiting twice a week for more than a decade.

The years passed slowly for inmate 024627. “What you have in prison is time to really think about things,” Murphy says. “You’d watch guys going to chapel, and their demeanor changed. You don’t want to believe in God because you think, what if I’ve been wrong all my life?” But in 1975, Murphy did go to church and kept returning, proselytizing to his fellow inmates. “You find out how lost you really are,” Murphy says. “You start the God journey.”

Prison officials could not decide whether this was a genuine conversion or a ploy for early release. The Florida Parole Board chose to believe that Murphy was a changed man and in December 1986, he was released on parole. A year later, he married Kitten and became a prison evangelist under the auspices of Champions for Life, a prison reform group.

Murphy, who now lives with his wife in a small town near Tampa and is helping raise her three grandchildren, has since traveled the world, trying to convince other inmates to see the light. Miami developer Todd Glaser, who got to know Murphy a few years ago, says, “I think he is haunted by those deaths and wants to make amends.”

Once released, Murphy was eager to track down his old pals. As Vermont restaurateur Betty Hillman recalls, “Murph called one day for Roger. He came up to Vermont a few times to visit.” The two men reminisced about the museum caper. “In Roger’s eyes, it was a stupid thing he had done,” Hillman said, “but it was fun. The two men remained in touch up until Clark’s death in 2007.

Allan Kuhn was elusive. After his wife Susan died of M.S. in 2001, he sold their Missouri farm and moved to Alaska to mine for gold. Several years later he got a worried call from his elderly father’s neighbor, concerned that con men were fleecing Dale Kuhn out of his savings. Kuhn moved to Northern California to sort out the damage.

Reading the local newspaper in 2004, Kuhn was startled to see an announcement that Murph the Surf would be speaking at a prison near Fresno, California. Kuhn was curious. He had not spoken to Murphy in decades. He left a message at Champions for Life, and Murphy called back 15 minutes later. “We picked up right where we left off,” marvels Kuhn. Murphy had a proposition for his former partner: “Do you want to go to prison with me?” Kuhn replied, “Didn’t we already do that?”

Their reunion took place in front of hundreds of inmates at an evangelical extravaganza at the Fresno prison. “Jack rolls up with 40 bikers, there are pretty girls playing guitar, there are counselors to talk to the inmates,” Kuhn recalls. “Jack gives his speech, and then he hands the microphone to me.”

The crowd was cheering. The years fell away. They were young men again with a crazy idea, captivated by the Star of India in its velvet case at the American Museum of Natural History, blinded by the radiance and their own hubris to the life-changing consequences of their crime.