Mosbacher’s Wife Robbed of Cash, Jewelry Worth $30,000 in N.Y. Hotel

Detectives searched Wednesday for a robber armed with what appeared to be a submachine gun who held up Georgette Mosbacher, the wife of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Robert A. Mosbacher, as she stepped off an elevator on the 20th floor of a Manhattan hotel.

Police said the gunman took Mosbacher’s wedding band, watch and other jewelry plus $400 in cash, her passport and personal papers. A police spokesman estimated the total value of the jewelry seized at $30,000.

Detectives said the robbery could have been a random incident. Mosbacher was uninjured.

A police spokesman said that the 43-year-old owner of a cosmetics company was approached by the robber just before dinner time Tuesday. The mustachioed man in his 20s, wearing a white jacket and carrying what appeared to be an Uzi submachine gun, apparently was waiting when Mosbacher got off the elevator at the Barbizon Hotel on Lexington Avenue.

Mosbacher told detectives that she refused to obey orders from the robber, who wore stereo earphones, that she let him into her room. She is staying at the hotel while the Mosbachers’ cooperative apartment on 5th Avenue is being renovated.

“I tried and told him: ‘The door won’t open; the key won’t work,’ ” she told reporters who interviewed her at the hotel after the incident. “And I told him: ‘I’m not going in there.’

“I took off my earrings and said: ‘There’s a bench over there, and I’m going to sit.’ I said to myself: ‘I’m not going to live,’ but I thought I’d have a better chance in the hallway.”

While the gunman’s hands were filled with her handbag and jewelry, the elevator door reopened and Mosbacher dashed in. When the elevator reached the lobby, she ran to the front desk, hoping the hotel’s staff could close off the stairway and trap the gunman. But he already had fled.