Be On The Lookout

just five miles away from the Wells Fargo depot. It was Victor's rented Buick backed into a parking spot outside the Swiss Shell, a inn and now defunct two story motel chain within walking distance to Brainard Airport. Federal agents got a warrant to go inside the vehicle. The cash was gone, of course, along with any traces of Victor.

Police reports show he had left the loaded thirty eight caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and twelve gage pump shotgun he used during the robbery in the car, fully visible with the safeties off in the trunk. Transmission parts and a black beret from a military equipment store in New York City began to realize from there he had he had away car there, like the clean car Victor Heraina couldn't have picked a better place to dump the car.

In addition to being next to the airfield, the motel was adjacent to Interstate which runs from Connecticut all the way to Canada. Police recreating the drive said it would have taken Victor just twelve minutes to get to the motel from the Wells Fargo depot, and that's if he was going to speed limit. Detective Ken O'Brien helped with the investigation. There's some speculation about was there an airplane involved.

It's a state airport, but it's a private planes flying and the towers wasn't always means at the time, and you can lean it's, you know, in the twin engine plane there easily, but there were no reports of Oh my god, So the guy puts seven million dollars of cash into a car and no one knows where he is right, no no idea And it's fiance a Ledgers, she has no idea wi she has any contact with him.

Between the two consecutive car hanks, the security guards heard during the robbery presumed signal to someone waiting outside the depot, and approximately one thousand pounds of cash that needed to be transported. Police were working under the assumption that victor had some help but from home. Now everything's going to our minds that he has to rent a van, something else the suspect was. He fled the area and another vehicle. Now beginning to realize maybe he wasn't alone. Previously on

White Eagle, I said, getting her right away. We just had a robbery at Wells Fargo and it's a huge robbery, and it looks like he had everything with it. He needed to restrain one person, but there were two people. I knew that that car was important in the case because it wasn't his and he could indicate a cole conspirator. Why do you beat the horn? He's not saying goodbye to these two guys. He's saying, I'm coming out. My name is Zem William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and

author of more than forty true crime books. What you were about to hear is the true story of a heist, one that funded an international independence movement and sparked an investigation spanning nearly four day gates. This is White Eagle.

The Wells Fargo depot robbery is arguably the most high profile case to come across the West Harford Police Department in Connecticut, an investigation ultimately involving the FBI's fifty nine field offices, scores of agents, other government agencies, and the Hartford and West Harford Police all putting in hundreds of hours of work. It was the biggest robbery case we ever had. We used all kind of manpower in this case.

During my research into the case, there were a number of people I knew I needed to speak with to get a better sense of how things operated among law enforcements. Detective kennel'brien was one of them. His resume is impressive. During his twenty eight years as a police officer with the West hard For Police Department, Ken was also on the Arson Task Force and studied forensics before being sworn in as a special federal agent with the State's Attorney's Office.

Ken is now retired. He's originally from Boston, but his ties to Connecticut run deep. He's lived there with his wife of fifty four years since nineteen sixty seven. Thank you for the coffee. We had been in communication for months at this point, so he suggested we meet in person and do our interview at his house. So I have all the reports right here. Yeah, I have all the reports from the case. Yeah. Kenn O'Brien is a man of many words, sometimes too many when you get

him going. But it's impossible not to love the guy, even when he screens his calls in the middle of an interview. It's it's a depth of office. Somebody's got one of us has a depth of appointment, So can I talk to that? Go ahead? So then that doggedness to finish the story is part of what made Ken such a great detective all those years. It's been nearly four decades and he still has a vivid memory of

what happened after the robbery. He says, the gravity of the situation became utterly apparent when the FBI rolled into town just hours after the heist. By four am, the West Harford Police Station was ground zero. They come in with a team. I bet you that had to be a half dozen agents came in and we had a

conference room. Well we all gathered together and it's like a briefing of his what we know, and everybody drew in a little bit of information they had, what they had done that night before to bring them off the speed By then Victor Haraina's photo was everywhere. I can remember as a six year old kid myself growing up in the area seeing that image of Victor's head shot from his Wells Fargo I D badge running across all the TV stations and printed above the fold in the

newspapers day after day. You just could not avoid it. Since much of the stolen currency was Federal reserve money, the FBI took the lead. Whoever in the charge of the agents looked around and said where are the phones? And there was only one phone in the conference room sitting on a window sill, and he said, that's one phone. That's not our phone. We'll get more phones, I guarantee. Within a few hours there was like six or eight phones. Then they just make a call boom. I had six

or eight phone, didn't no kidding, Yeah, unbelievable. They come in and they like the statue they have that's for me. It's committee town committee with him you know here' even message goes on and on. How was that relationship between the two apartments. We had a real good relationship with the agents. In fact, we had behind the police station was the old now it's called the town hall, but it was the old high school and had a track and the agents would come and go jogging on that track.

And we had a locker room and lockers, the amend and woman agents male and female, and we had a gym and the Remember the FBI actually paid for a couple of pieces of equipment so they could use it. The FBI working alongside the West Harford Police Department wasn't unusual. The Bureau would routinely assist officers and state and local cases investigating organized crime, drug trafficking, or in this case, the theft and transport of seven million dollars in cash,

but the manpower in this case was different. The FBI had even sent in profile is up from its headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. A state arrest warrant plus two federal arrest warrants were signed, charging Victor Hereina with a number of offenses, theft from an interstate shipment of funds belonging to Federal Reserve member banks, theft of those funds, and using a weapon in the process of the crime, an

unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. If Caughton convicted, victor was likely looking at decades behind bars in a federal prison. For Detective Kenn O'Brien, every little detail mattered. Take up five thousand piece puzzle and dumping on a table, and now I'm started to try to put pieces together. To each team, we'd go out, then at the end of the day we'd meet again at the Detective Division and there'd be exchange of information. Each day we put another

piece at a puzzle together. They'd go out in teams the West Hartford PD, driving federal aigents around town serving as backup. They also looked into local leads, friends of Victor, former co workers, his excess, as well as his bride to be, twenty year old Anna Soda. I don't think he told any of his family what he was going to do, and she was devastated. I don't think she knew if she knew, she's a great actress, because she was devastated that night. During the first few days after

the robbery, Anna Soda wavered between witness and suspect. She was engaged to Victor Harina. She had lived with him for two years. Could she have had some knowledge of his movements? Was he contacting her? Victor's bride to be said she had no idea where he was or why he'd robbed the depot in the first place. He was very nice, quite uh nervous, very nervous, but sto naive as Anna seemed. Investigators quickly learned she was hiding crucial

details about Victor's getaway car. She claimed to have no knowledge of the rented Buick, but neighbors and friends they told a different story. One witness reported seeing Victor with the buick on Saturday the tenth, the same day he got it from the rental agency. She said he used it to pick up a pizza for dinner and even parked it on the street outside of his apartment, also

enjoying the car's perks, Anna Soda. Others close to the couple told police Anna was seen riding in the car that weekend, and Victor even drove her somewhere the morning of the robbery. When police found the buick, they noted that Victor had put eighty seven miles on the car in just two and a half days, meaning he'd driven it a hell of a lot. She's the greatest flying in the world, and she's telling the truth despite the deception.

To this a. Both detectives Ken O'Brien and Steve Luby describe Anna Soto as a nice person and think Victor left her in the dark. I didn't know it at the time, but other things were true about the marriage application, that you know, we're living together, all the other background stuff she gave me it was true. But the car became important because her lying about the car made us think that she obviously knew more about the case. Was determined that I would arrest her for hindering prosecution and

giving a false statement. Uh and maybe use that as a chance to get more out of her. Anna Soto was arrested on September fift becoming the first arrest connected to the Wells Fargo robbery. Detective Luby says they were hoping the threat of jail time would convince Anna to offer more information, anything that might lead them to Victor. It didn't work. Anna Soto lawyered up and stop talking. He had an attorney, Mike Graham. Mike was a character. He was how can I say it nicely, He's a

little slick. He was making early threats. You know, from the defense attorney's standpoint, they're good threats to be made, that we were harassing her, that we there was talk about how they took her out that night, out of her apartment and a nightgown at gunpoint to search the apartment. So Mike was threatening lossuit for all of us involved. Obviously, you're going to clear the house if he isn't there. We know he's armed if he isn't there, So I

don't care if she was completely naked. She's coming out quick and we're going in. Anna was released on bond shortly after midnight. A little more than a month later, a state prosecutor dropped the charges, telling reporters at the time he was concerned it would hinder the federal investigation. I've reached out to Anna to see if she would be willing to share her story on the podcast, but

I never heard back. She was young when she was engaged to Victor, just twenty and studying to be a beautician. Like Victor, she was deeply connected to her Puerto Rican roots. Anna had lived there for a time with relatives and returned to the States a few years before the heist. At first, it seemed as though Anna's relationship to Victor made her a major player in this story, but within

days she turned into nothing more than a witness. With very little information upon In an elaborate chess game, the FEDS were still trying to win, and Victor Harraina seemed to be one step ahead. Unlike his amateurish work restraining the two security guards at the depot, Victor's moves now felt more professional and calculated, far more than the West Hartford police and FBI would have ever anticipated, promising leads

would f allowed into nothing. Police reports detailed countless sightings of Victor, and yet none of them ever panned out. In all likelihood, was just someone who looked like the guy. There was an alleged sighting in Boston of a man fitting Victor's description. He was said to be high on drugs and sleeping on a park bench days after the robbery. Another weeks later from a man claiming Victor asked him

for a ride to a West Harford apartment complex. One man even came forward and said he was good friends with Victor, speculating that he probably fled the country, maybe

to Argentina. And another so called acquaintance who happened to rent a single engine airplane the night of the robbery and flew from Brainard Airport to Boston and back I believe the FBI followed up on that checking to see if the plane because they would have to do something, you know, before they could use the airport, they'd have to check in or do something a plane, and it would be some record of a plane coming to going, and soon they found nothing. There were several leads, however,

that got law enforcements attention. Take for instance, an envelope that arrived in November that year, postmark from Buffalo, New York and sent to Victor's lawyer's office in Hartford. Inside were three letters purportedly from Victor to his attorney Mike Graham, fiance Anna Soto, and Victor's mother Gloria. In one, Victor thanks Graham for representing his fiance and others. He says he's fine and apologizes for any of the trouble the

robbery may have caused. His mother and Anna. Graham told police the letters contents made Victor's family doubt he'd written them, but they did say the handwriting looked like his. Well. The FBI agreed. A handwriting analysis and other lap tests confirmed that Victor Harraina was the author of the letters, yet there was no way to tell when the letters were actually written, which now raises the question was Victor even still alive, and even if he was, why in

the world would he risk getting caught. Because of this, law enforcement stepped up at search at least twenty FBI agents who are assigned to Canvas Buffalo's Latino neighborhoods. The Bureau even asked Canadian authorities for help. They agreed and promised to search the area as far north as Toronto.

From the outside, it doesn't make much sense, really. A twenty five year old who is engaged to be married overcomes two of his coworkers, steal seven million dollars in cash and drives away no guarantee of contact with his loved ones ever again without going to prison. Who was this person? He was clean. Whiston was perfect guy for the drop. It should come as no surprise that news of the Wells Fargo depot heist was everywhere. The thief had so much money to steal from here that he

couldn't even haul it all away. Police estimate that he left about a million dollars behind. Everyone, including law enforcement, was baffled. A tabloid in Boston called the robbery the Big Sleep Heist, a reference to Victor Harain has failed attempt to drug his co workers. It was huge news. I mean it was all over the front page of every place in the world. Ed mahoney is the harf for Current Reporter. You heard in the last st episode.

Everybody figured that they knew that Victor Herain, it was the inside man, and everybody was waiting for his body to pop up someplace because they figured Weber pulled this thing off Houston and he would prove to be expendable. Years before Ed began investigating Victor Haraina's role in the Wells Fargo robbery, he helped expose one of America's most

notorious violent organized crime figures, James Whitey Boulger. Whitey was under investigation for a million years in Boston to kill all kinds of people when he was responsible for all kinds of mayhem and violence and law enforcement corruption. But I think one of the things that really put him on the national map was his involvement in the murder of two or three figures associated with a company called World Highlight. The World Highlight murders would end up being

one of the stories that defined Ed Mahoney's career. Victor Haraina was another, and for anyone who thought they knew Victor Haraina, a broader picture was beginning to emerge. Victor was, you know. He was from the Brooks in New York, and for whatever reason, his mother moved the family from the Bronx two Hartford, presumably in search of a more tranquil, better safer life. They ended up in UH one of the housing projects, and Victor ended up being a good kid.

Victor attended Buckley High School in Hartford. He was popular and well liked, a fairly good student. If you met him in the early seventies, you'd probably see him as a kind of guy who was going places. He played varsity football and was captain of the wrestling team. He was a trained peer counselor and a member of the Human Relations Club. He had little interest in politics, but was a member of the student council. He was a kid from a very very immodest background in a touch life,

and he was making something in it himself. Victor's junior year, he was selected to participate in Upward Bound, a federally funded youth advancement program that allowed him to take an intensive curriculum of courses at nearby Trinity college. By senior year, he was awarded a thousand dollar scholarship and was chosen to be a legislative intern at the General Assembly. He get a job as some kind of an intern at the state capitol with a woman who was kind of

a famous figure in the democratic politics. That woman was Maryan Delaney, a strong willed figure in politics who for twenty seven years helped run the clerk's office at the Connecticut House of Representatives. According to Ed Mahoney, Delaney took to Victor and advised him on everything from what he wore to how he spoke. Took him under a wing, and that was what went wrong. Victor had his choice

of colleges to attend. He was reportedly considering the University of Connecticut and Trinity College, but Marion Delaney became a powerful influence over Victor and convinced him to go to her alma mater. She got him into this kind of really weird, strict Catholic college in Woodstock, Connecticut called Annehurst College, you know, which was run by a bunch of nuns and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The former all women's college was in such financial despair that they had

recently expanded the student body to include men. In the fall of nineteen seventy six, Victor was one of two dozen male students among two hundred female classmates. A quarterly con kid from inner city Hartford just didn't fin in a place like this. Woodstock, Connecticut is only a forty five minute drive from Harvard, yet for a kid from the pro objects, it might as well be a world away. Woodstock is rural with rolling green hills, large estates, and wineries.

And there's Victor, you know, penniless, stuck out in the middle of nowhere in the woods, with no money, no car, no nothing, and it just kind of fell apart. Victor left Annhurst without finishing his freshman year, and from that point on things took a turn. He jumped from one

job to the next. Police reports show he worked at the state capitol, where he had interned as a student, before finding work as a roofer, a special education counselor at the Harford Board of Education, an apprentice at a local aerospace company, and at one point he even joined the National Guard. There were a series of relationships as well. In Victor left his longtime girlfriend Maggie not long before she was due to give birth to their daughter for

an old friend from high school named Pamela. The two married and split up that same year, when Pamela was three months pregnant with Victor's second child. Pamela told police the marriage ended because it was clear he still had feelings for Maggie. For the next few years, Victor went back and forth between the two women. They eventually joined forces to get him to pay child support, and by two he was paying them and planning a new life

with Anna Soda. Both exes described Victor as a loving father, though not always present. They said he was traditional. He liked to be the breadwinner, even though he had trouble holding down a job. Even the Wells Fargo depot job wasn't a given. Victor's brother told police Victor had actually been suspended for a month earlier that summer over an issue involving some missing money. Detective Steve Luby says police thought Victor saw an opportunity and seized on it. You know,

some local kids saw this money. He's dealing with this money every day, figures this is gonna be an easy heist. These armored car people, they were notorious for being careless with money. I mean, we had reports in the past of five thousand dollars dropping off the rear bumper in a bag and these things when the guys drove off and forgot to put it in the truck. You know, they handled large amount of moneys. But the security, if you look back at the security, it was not that

good at a lot of these companies. Pamela, Victor's ex wife and the mother of his second child, said she never understood why he went through with the robbery, but didn't think he could have pulled it off alone. She said she wouldn't be surprised if he wound up dead somewhere and maybe, just maybe he'd gotten in over his head. She also told pal Lae something that stuck with me, a potential motive even She said Victor had a tendency

to run. He left mag when she was nine months pregnant, He left her when she was three months pregnant, and now it seems he ran out on Anna before they got married. The big question at the time, where would Victor run too? And all the stuff are getting early on him. It was like a longe wolf. He he would He was never involved in much of anything that we could determine. It's like, all of a sudden, this guy just existed and there wasn't a lot of background,

a bottom to be had. Police thought Victor saw an opportunity and he took it. They didn't think for one minute was some kind of mastermind criminal. Then about six months after the heist, police got a lead they could

not ignore. We got a cough from Massachusetts State Police and some d OT Massachusetts Primate Transportation workers cleaning a rest area, the first one right off of four couple of miles up from this at the border, and they were cleaning up there and they found a wallet and identification and with Victor Nu's So first of all, now we know two things. He's heading to Boston. And also in your mind at the same time is if the wallace there is your body remains nearby. Mass State police

were there, the FBI think went up there too. Sure, finding Victor's I D near Boston was a solid lead, but it also can't be ruled out that anyone could have planted that wallet to throw police off Victor sent so to speak, that is, if he was even still alive. The FBI and State police didn't get much information from the wallet discovery, giving them really little to nothing to

go on. After that, leads slowed to a trickle. The Wells Fargo Armored Service Corporation, which had initially offered a three fifty thousand dollar reward for information, bumped it up to half a million dollars. It was the largest reward ever offered for a single crime in the United States. Even that didn't work. But just when the FBI thought all roads to Victor lead nowhere, the unthinkable happened. Victor

went public. On September twel exactly one year after the heist, three handwritten postcards arrived at various news outlets around the country. One to the Harvard Current in Connecticut, had an image of the Statue of Liberty on the front. It arrived inside an envelope postmarked from New York City. FBI forensic experts confirmed the postcards were written by Victor, yet once

again there was no indication when they were actually written. Still, based on what he wrote, Victor not only wanted to set the record straight about the robbery, he also wanted to send a message quote, I will clear up any confusion that still exists about me or what happened to the money. Shortly, be on the lookout. Next time I'm White Eagle and the money shows up. That was traceable money. It's sounded to think of something organized here, we follow

the money. White Eagle has written in executive produced by me Em William Phelps and Diheart Executive producer Christina Everett. Additional writing by our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate producer and script supervisor is Darby Masters, Audio editing and mixing by Jackie Huntington's. Our series theme forms Regal or Grand is written by Aaron Kaufman, and special thanks to

Arlene Santana and Will Pearson at I Heeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.