SALT LAKE CITY — The men believed to have committed a jewelry store robbery in Salt Lake City on Halloween may be linked to multiple robberies in California and had thoughts of robbing another Salt Lake store, according to court documents.

On Oct. 31, two men entered Stroud Jewelry, 905 E. 2100 South, and acted as if they were interested in purchasing several pieces of jewelry. Moments later, a third man entered and all three robbed the jewelry store at gunpoint, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in 3rd District Court.

As the men “went through the display cases, stealing whatever jewelry they could,” a fourth man entered the store to help, the warrant states.

Salt Lake police released a photo of the suspect robbers to the public taken from the store’s surveillance camera.

A week after releasing the pictures, the New York City-based group Jewelers Security Alliance — a private organization that specializes in jewelry-related crimes and tracks the occurrence of these crimes nationwide — contacted Salt Lake police to inform them that they “immediately recognized the suspects as being involved in a series of eight different robberies out of California over the past four months,” the affidavit states.

Police also learned that prior to robbing Stroud Jewelry, the same men are believed to have been in King’s Custom Jewelry, 701 E. 2100 South, about two blocks away and 20 minutes earlier. Employees, however, feared the group was “casing” their store, or checking it out before robbing it. Their suspicions were raised when they noticed the men arrived in a vehicle with no license plates that they parked in an adjacent business, according to the warrant.

“This again worried (the owner) and his staff that these suspicious actions were indicative of a robbery about to take place,” the affidavit says. Employees at the jewelry store told police they believe the men left because they suspected that there were more employees in the back office area of the business and left to rob the other store.

Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call police at 801-799-3000.