Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Zaren Ay, Elizabeth, how are you doing pretty well? You're going forward to seeing you this week?
Yeah, it's good to see you.
That didn't seem very emphatic. It seemed like a kind of like a checklist. I said it, how are you?
How are you feeling? Listen? You know it's ridiculous.
I do tell me. I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Okay, Okay, I saw something. I thought this will be a fun thing to ask, Elizabeth, because it's ridiculous. There are six US state capitals west of Los Angeles, and that wild you just told me. I didn't picture. I didn't think about that. Can you name all six?
Juno correct? Honolulu?
Correct?
What's the Oregon one?
Salem?
Salem correct? What's Washington?
Olympia correct?
Okay, what's that for?
Two?
Two more that are west of Los Ane Jelous, Sacramento.
Yes, look at you. That's the trick one.
That's the trick one. West of La? What's Idaho?
But I think it's is it? No?
I don't know west of La. I don't know what's which one? Am I missing?
Carson City, Nevada? Carson City's west of LA barely. So if you go is that you go down by degrees west of Greenwich, England. Right, so you go with the latitude. Uh, the it is actually the longitude rather, it is a Carson City is at one hundred and eighteen point two eight one seven and La is at one eighteen point two four three seven barely. Like we're talking like it's thirty miles at most. Yeah, wow, maybe like more like ten miles.
I wouldn't have even thought that they were like on the same.
Oh. No, I know this because of when I was young, I bought up you know, I often mentioned how I wanted to be a con man. So the magician and actor Harry Anderson from Night Court, he had a book, right, and in his book he tells the story about conning people in a bar by saying which was further west Reno, Nevada, or Los Angeles. And so that's how I remembered that Carson City, because I know where Carson City is located.
Clinos west of Carson City, No slightly, no cards the way, Carson City is like a little bit of further west than Reno.
Because Reno you have to come down out of the mountains where Carson City is kind of butted right up against the mountains.
Okay, I'm looking at I'm like imagining the map, and.
So it was a difference. And then so what ended up happening is the guy who was like one of the bar bets before there was Google and you could look it up. So they had like one of those encyclopedias in the bar to settle bar bets, and so he pushed it around to the bartender to announce who had won, and then he said that Reno was further westn Los Angeles, and the guy had to pay off, and then inside the encyclopedia was the money he had slipped.
The bartender to would say it was reversed. And so I always remembered that that's how I remember Carson City, because I know it's just a little bit west, and I was like, okay, boom, So there you go, there's all six ridiculous. Huh, that is ridiculous. I thought it kind of fun, man, maps, fun with maps.
Fun with maps. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
I love it.
Planning and planning and planning and practicing and practicing and practicing, and then having it fall apart. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Oh you damn right.
I am so right. Because we never talk about really or especially heinous crimes, patterns emerge, so I mentioned this with Randy Lanier. I think some of the details repeat themselves across crimes. So they are the drug smugglers, like Randy, fast cars, fast boats, outrageous behaviors, the art forgers right, audacious fakes, gullible buyers, shady dealers. Then there are the
car talent yes. Then there are the con artists of old and they say that they're about to come into money and they've or that they've invented something amazing that will basically print money, sometimes literally. We have the Ponzi schemers, Oh yeah, investments that are too good to be true, because they aren't. They tell wild lies to hide their monetary shell game. And then we have the heist crews. They plan, they scheme, they dig, they wear wigs.
They have to trust each other, they split the money.
They don't trust each other. So what separates each from the other are the characters, So the people are what make the crimes ridiculous. Sometimes we don't tell stories about these types of crimes because the purp is really like mentally ill or severe drug addict that's punching down to laugh at their ridiculous do that no, And like sometimes we get charmed by a ridiculous purp pulling like a basic crime. So like remember Pretty Pants banned it. The name is what sold me. So today I have a
heist for you. And I was actually positive we'd done this one before. Well, it was called at one point the Heist of the Century, like so many that we discuss, and the venue seemed familiar, like the target. But I searched, and I searched through our case file, archive of episodes, through my own notes. Nothing but it just hits many of the notes that we've talked about before. But this one has characters, and like many heists, it's super cinematic.
And one of the things that I loved about remember Hatton Gardens, the British heist that I covered long ago, was that guy Richie like cast of characters. Yeah, I have such a cast of characters today. It's like the mid Century Boston equivalent.
Oh my god, I hope they have nicknames.
Oh yeah, so who is this gang?
Right? Who is this gang? Elizabeth.
We're gonna start with Joseph Big Joe McGinnis. Yes, so, Joseph McGinnis. He ran a liquor store in the Roxbury section of Boston and was widely regarded in law enforcement circles as like one of the dominant figures in the Boston Underworld.
And from what I understand from watching my recent Vietnam movies, that used to be a black part of town. So he was really he was selling.
Yeah, yeah, Well, he had previous convictions for robbery, narcotics violations, all these other like Underworld sources said that he was totally capable of planning and executing a complex and ambitious heist. Then we have Joseph James Specs O'Keefe.
Yes, I assume he wears glasses.
Yeah, Specs, as you can guess, wore glasses. Still, he was one of the gang's primary strong arm men.
Oh so, he was strong valued.
For his nerves, experience with weapons. He had a track record of like pulling off these really dangerous criminal operations.
Do the like a Korea war Vet.
Spex O'Keefe, No, because we're not there yet. Spec o'keeff had a reputation for courage under pressure, I'm like bad guys, and he had a long criminal record. He had convictions for illegal gambling other offenses.
By the way, what era are we in.
We're at late forties, early fifties, Okay, okay, I was going to get to that. So Stanley Gus Gussiora. Gus was fearless. He was known as the enforcer. So like Specs O'Keefe, he had this really crazy criminal record. He was known for his experience with violence with weapons. Those two, Gus and Spex had worked together on a bunch of like criminal enterprises, and they were seen as this natural team. They're both like cool headed experience. They were reliable when things went wrong.
Good to have two cool headed enforcers.
Yeah, then we have Henry Baker. Henry Baker doesn't have a cool nickname.
We call him Henry the Baker, Henry the Baker.
He was a career criminal. His adult life was just like punctuated by you know, spells in jail at the time of the heightst that I'm going to tell you about. He had only recently been released from a prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts, where he'd been serving two concurrent four to ten year terms for breaking and entering, larceny and possession of burglary tools. So he got out on parole. True, yeah, oh yeah, he got paroled five months before the robbery I'm going
to talk about. So his parole status made his participation in this heights really reckless.
He must.
Yeah, well see that's the thing we're going to get into.
That maybe emotionally emotional.
Yeah. So then we have Vincent James Costa. He was the lookout. He got plugged in because he was the main guy's brother in law, Adolph Jazz Maffy Jazz Jazz maffew. I couldn't find out how he got his nickname, but it made me think about how when I want to get my dog Montielle riled up, I call him jazz catspond. Oh yeah, he goes nuts jazz cat and he like starts running around and.
Yeah it was like rough housing, not like doing jazz hands.
No no, no, yeah, he like skidaddles and he runs and he jumps on things and he chases Rosie. But jazz Cat so maybe that's what happened to this guy when you said Jazz would he was your basic solid Boston hard man. And then we have Michael Vincent Vinnie Gigan. So Vinnie he's our next team. It's not an original nickname, Vinnie. He pealed along with some of the other guys. Like that's how he got pulled into it. This name James
Ignation Charity, he's also part of the team. No known nickname, but his government name makes me think that he looked, as my grandmother used to say, like he had a Mappa Ireland on his face. James Ignatius, So he'd done time for armed robbery before, not a criminal greenhorn. Then we have Thomas Francis, Sandy Richardson's Sandy richards as our next guest.
That sounds like a fifty sitcom star like female, like the wife Sandy Richardson.
Sandy was basically James Fardy two point zero. Like they they pulled robberies together, they had done time together, they were best buds.
So a lot of these guys brought somebody with them.
Yeah, and that takes us to the driver Joseph Sylvester Barney Banfield barn He was called Barney because he was a large purple dinosaur. I have no idea why was it a reference to racing legend Barney Oldfield.
That's what I was wondering.
Banfield Oldfield total.
Seems like it's right there. Yeah, and to be and he's a driver.
Who knows, but to be completely transparent, who cares, you know?
Put it there?
So Banfield, he was known as an exceptionally skilled driver, and that made him invaluable during getaways. Obviously, so his specialty had been burglary rather than armed robbery, but he was known to carry a gun, and that brings us to the star of the show, Anthony Fats. Pino Fats, a large Man, was a seasoned Boston hoodlum with this long reputation as an expert quote case man, so someone
who meticulously studied targets before striking. He was born in Italy, naturalized US citizen, had this long criminal record, deep roots in the Boston underworld, and he had a rare talent for studying a target, identifying the vulnerabilities, and then coming up with a very precise plan of attack. According to one gang member who spoke with The Boston Globe later on, Pino quote had no equal and was very energetic when it comes to stealing.
Huh, I might have called him dude.
He really he the guy really liked and respected his energy.
Yeah, don't why not?
It sounds like, yeah, the hoodloman in me recognizes the hoodloman.
You.
So, Fat's Pino had been a principal suspect in a bunch of major robberies and burglaries in Massachusetts. He had been surveilling profitable Boston locations for years, and he had fixed his ambitions on the Brinks.
Building, So he was just always window shopping targets essentially.
Yeah, he was casing the joint perpetually. So he saw the Brinks building and he recognized that it regularly held enormous amounts of cash and that the security was like formidable on paper, but he it had really observable routines and vulnerabilities. So you were asking where in time are we The initial planning for all this took place in nineteen forty seven, forty seven, forty seven, Like, hey, Wikipedia, what was going on in Boston in nineteen forty seven?
Elizabeth? What was now?
Ask Wikipedia?
Well, Elizabeth, and Wikipedia informed me.
So the Boston Trailer Park was established. I don't know what that is, but I didn't feel like looking at it that. Okay, old John Hancock Building was built.
Yeah, I do know that. John F.
Kennedy became US Representative for the eleventh Congressional District his first election.
Right, that's when he gets elected, he joins Congress.
Wally's Nightclub went into business.
Well, hooray.
Mayor James Michael Curley was imprisoned and John Hines became the acting mayor, And so I scanned some stuff about Mayor Curley. I think he may deserve an episode.
Really.
He served four terms as mayor of Boston between nineteen fourteen and nineteen fifty.
Four, different terms obviously not concurrent. I mean they were just like sporadic.
Yeah, he ran for mayor in every election for which he was legally qualified.
Oh like that.
He was busted twice for bribery during his He did time during his last term as mayor. During its term, he also served a single term as governor of Massachusetts. Like the guy's a legend.
Anyway, there's no law in the book says mayor can't.
Be in prison, right, So anyway, that was Boston when Fats was scoping the scene for a heist target like it. So he settled on Brinks and he got to work. But in nineteen forty eight, after months of early planning, Fats discovered that Brinks had relocated to a new building at one sixty five Print Street. So they didn't abandon the scheme, okay, Fats and his associates pivoted and they started a fresh, very painstaking surveillance of the new location.
A lot of more sandwiches and cars and.
Oh yeah, oh, a lot of like scribbled notes in pencil. So Fat studied the building's window lighting patterns to figure out when staff were in there, when the vault was open, when the fewest guards were on duty, And so he figured out that the optimal window for the robbery was just after seven PM, when the vault would still be unlocked for the evening count, but staff members would be reduced. So the gang's prep was like extraordinary in its detail.
Over a period of a bunch of months, members of the crew physically broke into the building on multiple occasions after business hours, not to steal, but to study.
Just to see, like is this window rigged or something?
They just got in there. They mapped the interior, they learned the layout of the counting room and the vault. Then they pulled one of the most audacious elements I've ever seen in one of these operations. They removed each lock from the building's doors one by one, and then they had duplicate keys made for each They swapped the locks. Huh, and then they replaced the locks before anyone noticed. So they sneak in, take the lock out, get a key made,
bring the lock back. Now they have a key to that door.
So that's crazy.
This is on the level of those like who built scale models and the insides of the vaults inside totally.
But this was like you're putting back the original lots to their key still just for the time while the lock is being replaced or you're being key they're carrying in.
There, they're in there when they're keying it. They're doing it that night.
Oh they're they're keying the lock and yes, wow.
So they could just walk through like they own the place.
When the time came, got a janity.
Specs and gusts, they got their myths on the plans for the building's alarm system, and they put them back before the absence was even detected. This was the major thing there gave them intimate knowledge of how to avoid triggering any alerts. They conducted multiple full practice runs in the building in the months leading up to the robbery, coming in after hours to walk the route, practice their timing, identify any remaining obstacles, so they didn't use a scale model.
They practiced in the real thing completely.
This is amazing.
By the time they acted, they'd planned and rehearsed for roughly two years. Two years they did.
Somebody who walked through and I wonder why they're on this show.
Right, Well, okay, so they stole two cars in prep for this. One was a green nineteen forty nine Ford Steak body truck with a canvas top. That's what they're going to use to carry the loot. The other one was a Sedan that they were going to use to block any cops who gave chase.
So smart.
Both were stolen from locations in like the Greater Boston area. Let's take a break there. They're prepped, they're ready, and when we return, they strike. All right, Zarin, So we've got this rogues gallery setting up to burgle the Brinks building in Boston.
And one of the most meticulous and just downright like professional crews we've come across.
Yes, they have gone above and beyond in their prep. They didn't just plan any abstract They ran scrimmages. It would beta test it totally.
It feels like something if you were to go criminal, this is how you would do it. You know, you want to get everything absolutely right, totally, totally.
So by early January nineteen fifty the gang was ready okay, but even then they didn't pull it off on the first attempt. According to later accounts, the crew made at least five aborted runs to the building on the days leading up to January seventeenth, nineteen fifty.
Five times they thought they were going to pull the job, and then they aborted.
And each time they stopped because conditions weren't exactly right. They didn't want to take a chance.
The ViBe's not right, Yeah, the vibes was off.
So their lookout. Vincent Costa, that's Fats, his brother in law. He was going to position himself in a room in a tenant building across Prince Street with a flashlight. He would watch through a window for the vault to be open, and when he signaled all clear of the crew would proceed smart. So on the evening of January seventeenth, nineteen fifty, members of the gang assembled in the Roxbury section of Boston. Joseph Banfield, the driver, took the wheel of the stolen
Ford truck. In the rear of the truck, we had Fats Pino, Spex, O'Keeffe, Baker, Faride, Jazz Mafi, Gusciura, Gigan, and Richardson.
Quite the crew.
Yeah, Joseph McGinnis, the financial and logistics guy. He was present in the getaway vehicle, and Costa was already in his post across the street. So at about six fifty five pm, Costa saw the vault being opened and gave the flashlight signal. So the truck moves into position near the Prince Street entrance. Seven members of the gang Specs, O'Keeffe, Gusciura, Baker, Jazz, Matfi, f Gigan, Ferridy and Richardson. They got out and approached
the building. Each of them had on a navy pea coat and a chauffeur's cap that looked just like the uniforms worn by Brinks employees. Oh, it's a classic look. That's really timeless. Cool.
I've been looking for one recently. A pea coat.
Pea coat. I love a pea coat. It's very like Beatnick proto hipster Lower East Side artist moment and ps. Describing a fashion look as a moment is like nails on a chalkboard for me, which is why I just did that. I like to hurt myself that. So they had these rat outfits on, but they were also wearing gloves and rubber sold shoes. Theaters sparkly gloves, they elbow gloves, the gloves rubber sold shoes to muffle their footsteps, and
they were wearing rubber Halloween masks. To be more specific, they wore Captain Marvel masks, which basically I saw a picture and it looked like Tony Curtis wearing makeups. So they were in like some like it hot cosplay. It's exactly what I was like. So each man was carrying a thirty eight caliber revolver.
Okay, this is very much giving like Kubricks the killing. I'm liking this. Yeah, where they robbed with the clown mass they robbed the racetrack.
Or point break or point break you know when point Break came out nineteen ninety one, correct, Yeah, you are, they answered in a form of a question.
What is nineteen ninety FFI.
Thank you so. Using their copied keys, they passed silently through the buildings locked doors, made their way to the counting room, where five Brinks employees were at work. The employees were caught totally off guard. The mask men herded them together, bound their hands behind their backs with ropes, sealed their mouths with adhesive tape, and then they forced
them to lie face down on the floor. No one was struck or physically harmed beyond the restraint, so the robbers then worked quickly in a fish they stuffed cash coin's check securities money orders into these fourteen large canvas bags that they had. Yeah, things were going smoothly, or were they? Yeah? So Zarin, close your eyes, yes, I want you to picture it. You are Sherman Smith, a
cashier at the BRINKX vault. You and two other cashiers, as well as two messengers, are currently bound and gagged on the floor of the vault while a crew guys in very strange looking masks raided the room around you. They made their way into the vault in silence, taking you all off guard as they directed you all to the floor. They took your side arms. There's a rack of shotguns along the wall, but you all realized it would be a death wish to make for them when
the robbers entered the room with their thirty eighths. So here you are on the floor now as they scoop up their loot, shoving money into bags, whispering to each other, knocking over strong boxes. While you do your best to memorize an accurate description of the criminals, you note that they are all about the same height. You're trying desperately to hear them say one of their names, but all you can make out are short, muttered, brief directions to
each other. The crew in the process of trying to open a very large strong box. You know since you just counted it that it contains one million dollars. That's a whole lot of smackeroos. They're having trouble with this one, though. It's a toughy one of the best you have. Just then a buzzer sounds. The man you suspect is the gang leader stomps over to you and rips the adhesive tape from your mouth. He rolls you over on the floor and asks what does that buzzer mean you stay calm.
The buzzer sounds again. You tell them it means someone wants to get in here. The buzzer sounds, and it's the only sound in the room. All work has stopped. The robber asks you what happens if no one answers. You tell him the person may get suspicious and notify the cops. Now you know this probably isn't true. Your guess is that it's Bill Manter, the garage man from
the second floor where the trucks are kept. He has to come talk to the messengers sometimes about transportation, and you know he probably won't get suspicious, since he tends to do this when you are at your busiest up here at night, and you all generally ignore him for a while.
He's used to it.
The gang leader asks where the inside buzzer is located. Sounds like he wants to buzz Bill in and tie him up too. Oh, brother, you tell him it's just outside the doorway before the big door. He steps outside to look for it. You hear him walking back and forth, his rubber soled shoes squeaking ever so slightly on the industrial linoleum floors. You don't hear the indoor buzzer sound, but the one outside the vault, the one bill is pushing,
sounds once more. The robber comes storming back in. There's frantic whispering among the men. Your heart is slamming inside your chest, but you close your eyes and breathe. One of the robbers keeps working on the strong box, pulling out a small saw and going at the padlock. The leader tells the gang to wait. They'll count to sixty and if the buzzer doesn't sound again, they'll make a run for it. Everyone is silent the time ticks by. Then the leader speaks. He tells his boys to wrap
it up. Leave the box. They can't open, it's too big. They grab their bags gingerly open the vault door and look both ways, and then scurry away. You let out a long ex Another cashier asks if everyone is okay. You all murmur affirmative replies. One of the messengers rolls over to you, and you're now back to back wordlessly, with just runs to communicate, you untie each other. You both quickly rip the tape from your mouths and make quick work of freeing your coworkers. Then one of the messengers,
runs over to the phone and calls the cops. It's going to be a long night, damn right. In the span of about a half an hour, the gang loaded more than half a ton of currency and financial instruments into the bags, carried them out to the waiting truck, and then drove away into the Boston.
Night thousand pounds of cash on thousand.
Pounds of cash. So they drove to a pre arranged safe house where they unloaded the bags and divided a portion of the loot, and according to later testimony, each member received about one hundred thousand dollars as an initial share, initial share, and that's like one point four million today a whole hall. So yeah, nineteen fifty one hundred thousand, you're like, okay, yeah, the whole haul of two point seven to seventy five million then is like thirty eight
million today. Yeah, serious money. So they had already agreed that any crazy.
Missing out on that one million was a big time miss. Oh yeah, we're talking, yes, seriously.
Oh yeah, that's so like whatever half thirty eight is, ohkait. So they'd already agreed that any traceable checks and secure would be held or destroyed and then they made another agreement they weren't going to touch the money for six years.
That's super smart, it was.
That's the statute of limitations in Massachusetts for armed robbery very so if they make through the six years, then they can't be prosecuted for the crime.
Wow.
Yeah.
Also, I mean the problem often with the crew that big is that one of them goes out and spends something and then they all get caught. So one person's Cadillac purchase ruins everybody.
They've seen it.
So come up with that six year windows from all of them.
Yeah. Yeah, it was a clean run except for the buzzer thing with the garage man. And then there was some other stuff. They left some things behind. One of them dropped their chauffeur's cap. There was the rope that they used to buying the employees, and then the adhesive tape that they put in their mouths.
But they don't have like DNA evidence that that's the.
Thing is Like today that would be curtains for them because of touch DNA DNA and databases of like rope and tape and all that stuff. But back in nineteen fifty, these are just like meager traces for the authorities to hold onto. So the response by law enforcement was immediate and massive, like the front page coverage in the papers
was crazy. But the police, like the police Commissioner in Boston, issued a mobilization order to all precinct captains and detectives, like within the minutes of getting the call, because they knew, like the Brinx cashiers could tell how much was taken, and so they knew the magnitude of this. The Boston Police superintendent looked through the emptied vault and was like, saw all the methodical nature everything, and he told reporters
he had no doubt it was an inside job. Really, oh yeah, And he figured that like they had the blueprints, they must have had rehearsals. Had to be an inside job. So within hours, thirteen people were detained for questioning well two including two former Brinks employees, both were quickly exonerated.
And a couple of people.
Exactly the more they looked into it, they realized the inside job theory was wrong. As we know, j Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, personally took over supervision of the case.
It was so huge. A lot of media, Yeah, there was.
The FBI, Massachusetts State Police, Boston Police Department. They all launched what would become one of the most intensive investigations in American law enforcement history. Over the course of the following months and years, years, investigators would interview more than one thousand suspects, interrogate virtually every known criminal in Boston, and then follow leeds in cities like across the United States and beyond.
So they're going out to Detroit and talking abou the Purple Gang, whatever left them.
And exactly the Purple Gang they go after. So the physical evidence discovered outside the vault was like frustratingly thin. February fifth, nineteen fifty, a Somerville police officer discovered two of the four revolvers that the had taken from the Brinks employees in the vault, discarded near the Mystic River.
Oh right, and he didn't realize that. He just found these guns and entered in the serial numbers in the database, and then when it went on to the wire, then someone in Boston was like, oh, hold on.
That's those numbers again. Exactly.
March fourth, nineteen fifty, pieces of the stolen nineteen forty nine Ford truck were found at a dump in Stoughton, Massachusetts.
Pieces of the truck.
Pieces, a subtlene torch and a sledgehammer had been used to dismantle it, so the engine block was smashed, the body panels cut apart so that they finding the remains. Though, because they had like witnesses who saw truck speeding away, they figured, okay, so now we know it's like in this area, right. But see they kind of threw them off by putting it in Stoughton and then not where they really were. Some canvas money bags were found discarded in a Boston junk yard, but none of these like
pointed to an individual. So the initial suspect list compiled by investigators numbered ninety.
Three people three the initial list.
By spring of nineteen fifty, they narrowed it to eighty eight. By nineteen fifty three, it stood at forty four. Three years down the line, tips came in from the public from the underworld. Most of them are totally useless.
The young Malcolm X was on the list.
Yes. An anonymous caller on the second anniversary of the robbery claimed to know the truth. Seems a man in New Jersey was reported to be spending lavishly. They investigated eliminated the Purple Gang. As you said, they were under scrutiny, but then they got ruled out. Other Prohibition era bootlegging gangs were looked into similarly cleared. Meanwhile, the FBI encountered a wall of silence from the Boston underworld, which isn't much of a surprise. But see, there always rats.
Exactly, or somebody who needs to, like, you know, get out of something or maybe do a favor, because.
There to sts are saying yeah, no. So the criminal sources were like uniformly unhelpful, even the ones who had always been helpful before. One suspect told agents quote, if I knew who pulled the job, I wouldn't be talking to you now because I'd be too busy trying to figure out a way to lay my hands on some of the loot. He's honest. So the investigation continued with like little to no momentum.
The criminal of that statement is so amazing. I'm trying to get my fingers on it. I already got agendas.
Let's take a break, and when we return, we're going to join them and see how they're coming along, all right, zaren yes, all right, So here we are Brinks, the Great Brinks robberies.
I'm waiting for a young Ted Kennedy to get called into this number twelve. Yeah, so no, November of.
Nineteen fifty two. Actually, I didn't hear that a federal grand jury convened her evidence in the case. Jurors didn't think there was sufficient evidence to identify the robbers definitively, so no indictments were returned. I mean, they were just throwing whatever stuck. The FBI is like, we're not giving up. They put pressure on the suspects through surveillance. Remember there's
like forty four suspects at this point. Question a lot of right tax investigations they had, like some peripheral results. Jazz Maffy ate off. Jazz Maffy. He got convicted of income tax evasion in June of nineteen fifty four and did nine months at the Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Connecticut because he couldn't explain his income. Okay, there was, but it wasn't enough to like legally tie him to
the robbery. In the spring of nineteen fifty six, you know, the Massachusetts legislature, spurred in part by the still unresolved case, they raised the state Statute of Limitations for armed robbery from six to ten years.
They bought themselves a double mom did out. Yeah, okre we go.
Congress did the same with a federal statute.
These guys basically changed laws. They did esscially this crew. Yes, you know, they motivated lodging, and.
Their deadline is like getting further and further away. So while investigators worked from the outside, the seeds of the gang's destruction were germinating from within. Let's say, oh yeah, So the agreement to sit on the money lasted only as long as the trust and the money held out, which is to say, not long. In June of nineteen fifty, just five months after the robbery, SPEC's O'Keeffe and Stanley Gusciora they got arrested in Pennsylvania for an unrelated burglary.
But it's still got to work.
Well, apparently the one hundred thousand wasn't enough. But again, they can't touch it for six years. So Specs O'Keefe gets sentenced to three years in Bradford County jail. Gusciura received a much harsher five to twenty years in the Western State Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. So both pleaded total ignorance of the Brinks case when FBI agents came to see him in prison, but from behind bars, both of them were demanding money from the rest of the gang to
fund their legal defenses. Oh right, yeah, So, according to Underworld informants, O'Keefe and Guscura pressed Pino McGinnis, Maffie, Jazz Maffe and Baker to kick in money. Most of SPEC's O'Keeffe's share of the Brinx loot was already exhausted on legal fees.
Are you that much on legal fees? Back then?
Good portion of it got some real good lawyers, I guess, but not good enough to get him.
Out of it.
So after O'Keefe was released from his Pennsylvania sentence, he was immediately entangled in further legal troubles because he had a separate burg recharge and he had parole violations. So he finds himself back in custody they put it. They release him on seventeen thousand dollars bail, and that ate more into his resources, and he's just bitter at this point, he's so mad at everyone else is just sitting pretty So he thought, with like, you know, some justification that
everybody else. They were spending their money while stonewalling his requests for financial assistance. So he starts writing these threatening letters to the rest of the gang from prison, and he makes veiled and like not so veiled hints that he might talk to authorities, and the gang they took
the the these threats seriously. Fats Pino is reported to have arranged for a contract killer named Elmer Trigger Burke a Trigger Burke, a New York professional hit man, to be brought to Bobus to get rid of O'Keefe.
When you say broad, does he mean like go out there and get arrested and get put inside or just like we'll we'll figure out.
This is when O'Keefe was out on bail. Oh okay, So Burke goes from New York to Boston, shoots O'Keefe in an ambush. O'Keefe was seriously wounded but survived.
Oh, trigger, you're not going to use and then.
Burke he Trigger Burke gets subsequently arrested for an unrelated murder, so he's out of the picture. So the FBI approached O'Keefe. Specs o'keef when he's in the hospital after years of resentment, this financial desperation, this near death experience of an assassination attempt, O'Keefe made a decision. On January sixth, nineteen fifty six. Now, hold on, let's look at this date. So they robbed the place January seventeenth, nineteen fifty This is January sixth, nineteen fifty six.
Yeah, their initial six year promise.
Yes, he told the FBI agents who visited him, quote, all right, what do you want to know?
I mean, obviously you can't blame him. He just got a shot contract killer, and he has to know that these are the guys trying to rub me. Yeah.
I did not get away with it, like they'll they'll follow through.
This wasn't like I want your gold watch. Right.
So over the following days, O'Keefe just sang. He gave investigators an absolutely comprehensive account of the robbery. He spilled all of it, about the planning, the participants, the execution, the aftermath. He named every member of the crew and like described in detail their role in what happened. He made it clear that while fats Pino conceived of the robbery and or you know, organized the surveillance, it was McGinnis. Who was the true operational mastermind. He was the man
who directed the crew. He did the logistics. He took responsibility for eliminating incriminating evidence after the fact. He's the one who destroyed the gun, the getaway truck, the clothing.
Yeah, the true mastermind.
Yeah. The case that had defied law enforcement for nearly six years was like suddenly cracked open.
There was more than the Rosetta stone. He gave them the map, phone, a magnifying glass exacly.
On January eleventh, nineteen fifty six, a Massachusetts state grand jury issued indictments for eleven men connected to the robbery. Next day, on January twelfth, just five days before that statute of limitations would have expired, FBI agents arrested six of the suspects simultaneously. Oh Nice Baker, Costa Gigan, Maffie McGuinness, and Pinos. It was like four am raised yet totally
first thing in the morning. Two members of the gang, James Ferriday, James Ignatius and Sandy Richardson, they had seen the arrest coming and so they went into hiding.
Smart.
They were put on the FBI's ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The FBI eventually tracked them to this apartment in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Is not far enough, No, where they had been hiding for eight weeks?
Yeah? Wow whatever, Well.
May sixteenth, this is when they get busted. Plain clothes agents like burst through the front door, taken by surprise. The Boston Globe reported that behind these like heavily curtained windows, the two men had quote lived eight weeks of tedium, boredom and frustration, broken only when their confederate sneaked in with groceries and liquor.
Wow. So they're just in there like getting liquored up, playing chess and listen to.
The radio, the radio for eight weeks exactly.
They must have hated each other's company.
Man totally so o'keef. He pleaded guilty January eighteenth, nineteen fifty six, almost six one year, six years in a day. Stanley Guskiura, he was already in custody in Pennsylvania.
Times he get busted, he got.
Extradited in Massachusetts, but he died on July ninth, nineteen fifty six from a brain tumor before he could stand trial. WHOA he was young Joseph Banfield had already died of natural causes in January of nineteen fifty five, natural cause, at the age of forty five. He probably had a heart attack. The trial of the remaining eight defendants began on August sixth, nineteen fifty six, before Judge Felix Forte.
It went until October fifth, nineteen fifty six, so from August October, when a jury deliberated for just three and a half hours before returning a verdict of guilty against all eight. October ninth, nineteen fifty six, Judge Fourte sentenced all eight of them to the maximum life imprisonment for robbery, two years for conspiracy to steal, and eight to ten years for breaking and entering at night. Damn McGinnis, who had not been physically present in the building during the robbery,
he's the masters. He received a life sentence as an accessory before the fact, and then he also got three the other three concurrent sentences. O'Keefe specs in recognition for his cooperation. He got a sentence of four years and got out in nineteen sixty. He later collaborated with this writer Bob Constantine on a nineteen sixty one book, The Men Who Robbed Brinks. All future appeals by all of them were rejected.
Really.
Yeah, Of the two million, seven hundred seventy five, three hundred ninety five dollars and twelve cents stolen on the night of January seventeen, nineteen fifty only about fifty eight thousand was ever recovered.
WHOA do you think that they sprinkled it amongst their family or they spent it?
Yeah, it's a little bit of both, you'll see. So a bulk of the recovery came from this crazy break in the In June of nineteen fifty six, this Boston guy named Jordan Perry got caught trying to pass old musty bills in Baltimore, and FBI agents traced the currency to the Brinx robbery. They found that Perry had been given the bills by this Boston man named John Fatz Bacelli another that's two point zero So second, Fats had offered to pay Perry five thousand dollars to pass thirty
grand of the stolen cash. Agents traced the trail to Fatspacelli's office in Boston's South End.
So this is all based on the fact their money smelled sus Yeah, I don't know about that.
Well, they say, go to fat second Fats office. They tear the place apart. Behind a false wall was a cooler that had more than fifty seven thousand dollars in cash and fifty one almost fifty two thousand of it was confirmed to be Brink's loot. But it was just all musty in there, and that's why. So the fate of the remaining two point seven million was never definitively established.
There's this author, Stephanie Chorro who wrote The Crime of the Century, How the Brinx Robbers stole millions and the hearts of Boston, And she figures that the most likely explanation is that they spent it.
That's what it seems like.
Yeah, and they used it quietly, slowly and on things it left no traceable records, So like gambling, drinking, legal fees, investments.
Yeah.
So Anthony Fatz Pino, the Originator. He was released on parole in nineteen seventy. He died in October of nineteen seventy three at the age of sixty seven. Joseph Big Joe McGinnis, the Mastermind. He died in prison at Walpole State Prison October fifth, nineteen.
Sixty six, did in prison.
Yeah, SPEC's o'keef the informant got released, as I said in nineteen sixty He died in March of nineteen seventy six at the age of sixty seven.
Now, when Spex got released, do you know anything about like if he got back into his community or did he have to leave Boston? I mean, like he uh, did he die in the area.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where he went. I don't know what he did.
I was won because he's I.
Would imagine he got out. I'd imagine he moved far far away. What's interesting is a lot of the cashiers from their Brinks vault, they moved.
Far away because it's because they were suspected.
Well, no, they just it was just too upsett and so like when they had to testify. One came from California, one came from Florida.
Oh yeah, they really really moved just go to like, oh, I'm out here in whatever town, right. Yeah.
I think they were like I'm out Stanley gus Guskiura, the enforcer, He was the one who was extradited to Massachusetts. He never stood trial because of that brain tumor. He was thirty seven when he died. He maintained his innocence to the end. And he was like mad about O'Keefe and the confessions, and he was he was just maybe that's what took. Henry Baker, the veteran criminal, died at Walpole in sixty one at the age of fifty four.
A couple during the trial, Baker challenged SPEC's O'Keeffe's credibility in a petition to the court. He said O'Keefe was quote a drug addict, a chronic liar, and one who liked to exhibit himself in the nude through that one that one in there, plus he's a nudist.
He air bathed, you know, like and Franklin.
So Vincent James cost of the Lookout. He got released on parole in nineteen sixty nine. In nineteen eighty five, he got arrested again on charges of cocaine trafficking huh. In nineteen eighty eight he got divorced, and he testified in the divorce proceedings that his share of the Brinx money had amounted to about one hundred thousand dollars, but that his son had cheated him out of most of it.
He copped to the fact that he used some of the money to purchase a piece of land in November of nineteen fifty on which he built a house.
I was curious about that in land speculation.
All right, Yeah, so he bought some land built a house. But you know he didn't have to worry about admitting it. Now statute limitations is up.
And he said, nineteen eighty eight, I mean that's wow.
Yeah. Michael Vincent Vinnie Gegan the parole He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in December nineteen sixty nine. After the trial, he disputed Keif's characterization of mcguinnis as the mastermind. Oh, and he was like, no, you know what, Fat's Pino was the true leader of the gang. And I'll go down saying that. And Pino's like, nazy, no.
You're not helping me.
James Ignacious Faridy the Fugitive. He was released on parole in December of nineteen sixty nine. Thomas Francis Sandy Richardson, the co fugitive. He was paroled in December nineteen sixty nine, and he died in nineteen eighty at the age of seventy three.
So they all got out just in time to get mad at the hippies.
Yes, exactly. Then there's Joseph Sylvester Barney Banfield, the Driver.
Oh yeah.
He died of natural causes in January nineteen fifty five and was only old. He was one of only two gang members never formally charged.
Oh wow.
Yeah. And then there's Adolph Jazz Mafi, the last survivor.
What happened to Jazz?
He was released on parole December nineteen sixty nine, like the rest of them, He was the last surviving member of the gang. He died in September of nineteen eighty eight at the age of seventy seven. Wow, outliving all of his co.
Conspirators, So Jazz was the longest living. Interesting.
So the robbery inspired four films, Six Bridges to Cross in nineteen fifty five, Blueprint for Robbery in nineteen sixty one, Brinks The Great Robbery in nineteen seventy six.
Do we know if any of these were like hits or had stars or anything.
No, and William Friedkins acclaimed the Brinks job in nineteen seventy.
Eight, So it really wasn't at all connected to the killing which came out I think like fifty six or fifty eight.
There's a bunch of books, Joseph Denin's Anatomy of a Crime, which is the basis of Six Bridges to Cross, and O'Keefe's own account with Bob Constantine The Men who robbed Brinks. The robbery remains, like in the Annals of American crime,
an almost unparalleled example of meticulous, long term planning. And it was brought down not by detective work or forensic science or informants developed through investigation, but by the oldest weakness in the criminal enterprise, the inability of greedy men to trust one another totally.
And uh, I mean, I don't know if he was like a junkie or whatever, but like basically apparently a drug addict who the FBI leaned on when he was in his hospital. And then like, this worked on Billie Holiday, this might work on you probably, so, Saron, what's your ridiculous takeaway? I kept listening to hear how these guys would end up on this show because they did not fit the mold. I was like, this, this is really incredible.
It must have been just like a stroke of luck, like a child walked into a room and happened to just find something. But it turns out Keith Specs was just like, you know what, I'm kind of a punk. I don't to tell y'all.
Basically, that's wild, isn't that nuts?
Well, Elizabeth, what is your ridiculous takeaway?
Again? I was so shocked at the level of planning unraveling because of human foibles.
The years of doings. Let's run it again, guys, Let's run one more time, first positions. Let's take it from the top.
It's like they couldn't they couldn't just sit and wait the six years for the money, So they're doing crimes leading up to that. I mean, that's if they had just just sat still.
Also, I mean, not to have an extra ridiculous takeaway, but they got to the point where they were gonna, you know, bring in the gunman. The trigger man. What is trigger from New York to like rub out Specs. But I think they should have had that up top, which is, if anybody talks, we're gonna take it out on you and your family. So that way that that fear of God and fear of violence might have kept him in line a little bit longer.
Yeah, but you'll note not a single one of them waited the six years to touch the money.
That's what I'm saying that I didn't think it even would, so they couldn't.
It was I mean, imagine if someone is like, here's one point three million or whatever.
You know, I can make that six years go oh yeah, singing past.
Oh yeah, Well you have you have, like, you know, determination and discipline, a level of.
Self control because I'm thinking I'm gonna get a big payday. So this is not just a job. Your job is do not.
But again, think about what the like. One of the common denominators criminal activity is no impulse. I'm like all this money and you're like, don't touch it.
It's why do you make a good criminal? I had, I would confederates. I wanted to work alone, and I couldn't become like a hit man. There's not a lot of jobs you can do alone.
Oh I need to talk back. Hold on a cycle. Let's Dave. How about a talkback?
I love.
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