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Rare $10K Saxophone Stolen by Couch Surfer from Ft. Greene Man's Home: NYPD

By Alexandra Leon | July 22, 2016 11:13am | Updated on July 25, 2016 8:26am
 A couch surfer stole a rare Selmer Mark VI saxophone similar to the one pictured here from a Fort Greene resident earlier this month, police said.
A couch surfer stole a rare Selmer Mark VI saxophone similar to the one pictured here from a Fort Greene resident earlier this month, police said.
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FORT GREENE — He's singing the blues. 

A man had a rare saxophone worth more than $10,000 stolen from his apartment after letting a couch surfer crash there.

The victim, Peter Noel Duhamel, 69, said the thief found his 66 Washington Ave. apartment through an ad on Craiglist about a month ago and showed up at his door asking for a place to stay. 

The woman, a German photographer, stayed for several days before leaving to visit Niagara Falls, he explained. She then contacted him again earlier this month to say she had left a pair of valuable earrings at his apartment and asked if she could pick them up.

When the woman arrived, she told Duhamel she had been staying at a loft with other artists, but had been forced to leave due to problems with the building. She said she was staying at a hostel, and Duhamel invited her to stay at his apartment for a few days until the next couch surfer showed up.

On July 7, during Duhamel’s routine gym session around 7:30 a.m., the woman disappeared a day earlier than expected, taking Duhamel’s keys with her, he said.

It wasn’t until a few days later that Duhamel noticed the Selmer Mark VI tenor sax missing from a corner of his spacious loft apartment.

Duhamel said he hadn’t played the instrument in years, which is why he didn’t initially notice that it was missing. But the $10,400 horn was a valuable possession he had for 25 years.

“It’s a rare horn — all you need to do is hold it and compare it to the newer horns,” Duhamel said. “It’s probably twice as heavy because the brass on it is substantial. It has just a beautiful, dark sound to it.”

Duhamel said he drove 200 miles through the California desert to buy the sax after he saw a listing for Paris-made piece in the 1960s.

While he doesn’t remember how much he bought it for at the time, he said it must have been a pretty good deal to make him drive so far to get his hands on it.

Duhamel  never played the sax professionally, but he said he used to sit in at blues clubs in Los Angeles, where he worked as an actor. He took a few classes at Los Angeles City College but was mostly self-taught and would play for several hours a day.

Now Duhamel, who said he is a licensed private investigator, is working with police to find the thief, who he described as about 39 or 40 years old. 

He said the woman was planning on staying in Brooklyn through October, and wondered if he was her first victim.

“I can’t believe, if she’s here from March to October, I’m the only person she stole from,” Duhamel said.

Police said the woman was last seen leaving the apartment wearing a black fedora.