Purses Go Missing While Owners Chow Down

Police are looking into two larcenies that both occurred on Sunday, Dec. 16 and both involved women's pocketbooks being neglected until it was realized they were missing, according to Darien authorities.

According to police, the first incident occurred while a woman was having lunch at the Whole Foods Market on Ledge Rd. at approximately 1:55 p.m. Police said she placed her pocketbook on the back of her chair and, after finishing lunch, inadvertently left without it. She returned approximately 9 minutes later to find the purse gone, police said. Management reportedly told the woman no one had turned it in.

The purse was described as a black cloth Betsey Johnson make valued at $250 and contained approximately $25 in cash and various personal items.

Later that same day, a woman who said she'd visited Ernie's Bar on Tokeneke Rd. Sunday evening and had placed her purse "on the floor adjacent to her bar stool," while she was seated at the bar found it gone at the end of her visit, police said.

Went she went to leave, she realized the purse was missing. It was located a short time later just outside the establishment's rear door. Approximately $300 in cash had been removed, according to authorities.