Robbery

Stealing Rare Teeth from a 30-foot Mako Shark in Montauk

By Dan Rattiner

Sometime in the last few months, five shark teeth were removed from the giant set of jaws that hangs over the entry door of the restaurant inside the Montauk Lighthouse State Park Concession Center. The center is closed this time of year, and there is really no way of knowing if they were stolen after the restaurant closed or when it was still open, but the removal of these teeth, not by a dentist, is turning out to be a much bigger deal than anybody thought.

If you’ve been living out here for a while and you are a deep sea fisherman, then you probably know a man named Bill Hojohn who used to be in the charter boat business in Montauk. A deep sea fisherman himself, he had and still has a summer place out here and he bought his charter boat about twenty years ago and began accepting charters out of the Star Island Yacht Club at that time. As a sort of second job, he collected and then sold found objects from the sea to local jewelry stores and marinas in town. These included shark’s teeth, which might sell for $10 or $20 at that time and also shells and stones and other objects that had been fashioned into jewelry.

One of Hojohn’s first customers was Carl Darenberg Jr., at the Montauk Marine Basin, and Carl, twenty years later, still knows him and considers him a friend and buys from him. Pretty soon Hojohn was specializing in shark teeth.

About ten years ago, Hojohn’s shark jewelry business began to grow so large, not only in Montauk, but elsewhere, that he gave up his charter boat and went into the business full time. Today he lives in Manhattan, though he frequently comes to Montauk. He also goes to other places, not only in the United States, but also around the world, selling his wares. He either has gift shops or sells wholesale to other gift shops or resorts in places as far away as Sea World in Florida, the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, and also in aquariums around the world. His company, Shark Crafts, has become very successful.

About eight years ago, as his business grew, Hojohn began buying very large and very valuable shark’s teeth to fashion them into collector’s items. One such project was the making of a shark’s jaw of giant proportions, featuring actual teeth from an extinct species of Mako shark that used to roam the waters of South Carolina, when what is now South Carolina had lots of bodies of water, which was a very, very long time ago.

“The big toothed Mako lived ten million years ago,” he said. “His teeth are many times the size of a Mako’s teeth that we see today. They appear very much like the teeth of a Great White shark and suggest a fish the size of a Great White shark — thirty feet or more. The difference is that the teeth are not serrated. Great White’s teeth are.”

“Were these teeth all from one shark?” I asked.

“No. The man who found these teeth, who I have done business with for many years, probably sorted through a million teeth to come up with these exact teeth. Each tooth has to be shaped like the particular tooth that fits in that particular part of the mouth. They all have to be the same size, as in the same size Mako. So no, these are not from one Mako, but they are from many Makos that are roughly the same size and they are the proper teeth in the proper places.”

“How did this jaw with these teeth wind up over the entrance to the restaurant in the Montauk Lighthouse State Park Concession?”

“I put it up there about eight years ago. Some of my wares were in the gift shop. This giant jaw was a very valuable thing indeed — it’s been appraised at about $30,000 and I figured it was better up there where people could see it — it’s too high up to reach without a ladder and maybe somebody would ask about it. It was better than keeping it in one of my storage containers anyway.”

Over the years, nobody did ask to have a close look at it. And this year, with a show in Las Vegas looming, where Hojohn would have a booth, he thought to take it down and box it up and have it on sale out there.

“I have a smaller version of this,” he said. “I just thought the large one might do better. So I made arrangements to have it taken down and cleaned up, down in Orlando, where there are people who do that, and then send it along to Las Vegas. Here in Montauk, I have a guy I work with who has helped a lot in the business. He built a box for it — it’s about four feet high by four feet wide — and then he went out to the concession — there were men out there getting it ready for a spring reopening where there will be a new concessioneer, and he was up on a ladder taking it down when he discovered the teeth were missing. He called me and I drove out.”

“Could they just have fallen out?” I asked.

“Impossible. They had to be pulled out. The real part of this display is the entire two outer rows of teeth both top and bottom. There is a third inner row that is plastic. And then the jaw itself is plastic. All the teeth are imbedded in the jaw. Somebody climbed up there on a ladder and removed them.”

Over the years, lots and lots of sharks’ teeth, many of them from fish caught off Montauk, have found their way into the shops and stores of Montauk. Captain Frank Mundus, the famous shark fisherman, fished out of Montauk for forty years. Montauk, indeed, holds more deep-sea fishing records today than any other fishing port in the world. And it’s a world famous destination for serious fishermen.

Hojohn has reported this theft to the State Park Police and they are looking into the matter. The teeth stolen are between three inches and three and an eighth inches long each. He thinks it is certainly possible that they were removed as a prank. But he thinks it is more likely that whoever removed them knew what he or she was doing.

It is hard to say what the teeth alone might fetch. With the teeth missing, the piece certainly has lost a considerable amount of its appraised value. Hojohn has reported the loss, but he has not yet made any insurance claim for it.

“But I’m offering a thousand dollar reward for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of whoever took these shark teeth.”