This day in 1973: Led Zeppelin played the last of three nights at Madison Square Garden, New York at the end of a 33-date North American tour. It was on this day that Led Zeppelin lost around $203,000 in cash after a thief made off with the receipts from the two Madison Square Garden concerts. The theft took place from the safe at The Drake Hotel in New York where the group were staying. Tour manager Richard Cole, who discovered the theft, was arrested as a suspect and questioned by police but was later released.
Neither police nor hotel detectives could find evidence that the box had been forcibly tampered with, and Zeppelin’s management seemed almost reticent to press the matter further, given the nebulous origins of the vast amount of cash involved. According to newspaper accounts from the period, Cole told detectives that the money in question was proceeds from the current tour and was kept on hand because the band had “a lot of expenses to pay.”
The robbery has never been solved, but whoever took it at least left the five passports inside the box so the band could make its way back to England and recuperate from the long trek across the states.
