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Zaren Elizabeth Zaren, It's ridiculous.
Yes, I do okay, I got one for you? You ready? I do okay. Joey Henny, Joey Henny, you heard that name? No okay?
Are we insulting Joey by saying he's ridiculous?
No? Not at all?
Oh he's not what's ridiculous?
Not at all? Please? Joey Henny is a hero of mine to be a hero of yours. I think once I tell this story. He was a baseball lover like you. He wanted to go to a Phillies Pirates game, but he wanted to take with him his emotional support animal. Now, luckily, the Philadelphia Phillies they're very generous and open and inviting to all of this. They actually say on their Phillies official website quote guide Dog service animals or service animals
in training are welcome. All other animals are prohibited. So Joey Henny's like, awesome, I can take my service animal with me to the Phillies game. Because he'd been battling depression. He's an older cat, this Joey, and he's been having a tough go so he brought with him his buddy Wally. Right,
So he and Wally went to the Phillies game. The Phillies were like when he gets to the stadium, not the actual team, but the administ you know, like the officials for the stadium, They're like, oh, sorry, you can't come. He's like, what are talking about. I looked on the website says service animals, Like, sir, you cannot bring your animal in. He's like, it says I can. Have you seen your website It says I can bring service animals, Like, sir, that is an alligator.
Yes, it is an emotional support His.
Service animal was an alligator. He tried. He tried to take an alligator to a Phillies game. He was denied. He had him on a leash. It wasn't like he was just in a paper bag.
I know there are people who use emotional support animals legitimately, but I also know that that is highly abused. There's a difference between a service animal and a support animal.
Well, I know, but he said, Well, according to Henny, he told the Washington Post, when he turns his nose towards you, that means he expects a kiss. He's super sweet natured.
Uh huh, sure, I don't know.
It sounds like emotional support it.
Did he buy a ticket for the wally had a seat?
I suppose, so I don't know I was in it.
I'm there with an alligator looking right at.
Ridiculous, so hard, ridiculous, So phillies.
Phillies, that's incredible. Do you want to what else is ridiculous?
Oh?
Yes, please waiting until the main course to strike. 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.
Damn right.
Sometimes Erin, I hear about crimes that are so well planned and so clever that I sort of don't feel bad about them.
What do you mean? Like?
I mean, I'm not talking about violent crimes or like the workers. No, my heart swells when I read about a crime against fat cats.
Oh yes, I know you're pro crime and it comes to fat.
Cats, especially when it's like really well thought out and it's super like you criminal too, goly, I do you know everything's so out of balance right that, like the richest of the rich, they live on another planet. Man like they're for most Like if they lost half of their worth, they wouldn't even feel it, which is crazy. Like if you took half my stuff, I'd be in a hole in the ground.
I'd be like, give me back that five dollars exactly.
Like so, like I wouldn't commit a crime unless someone I loved was in imminent danger.
Yes, you are not a criminal.
I'm not a criminal, but I silently root for the bad guys who do good in my opinion.
Yes, you do, the moralistic outlaws.
Boy, how do you do I have one for you?
Oh?
Yes, yeah, this crew chef's kiss.
It's a crew.
It's a crew. Peter Salerno. Is that name ring a bell?
He kind of does say.
It with me? Peters. He was born in nineteen thirty nine and grew up in a cold water flat in Yonkers, New York. He was raised by his factory worker single dad. His mom took off when he was young looking for a rich boyfriend. She was like upset that the dad didn't make any money and was like, I want a Cadillac by and then went and you know, hey, stranger, Yeah, yeah, so she she wanted the fancy car, she wanted the cash Sealerno. He didn't want to wind up like his dad.
He didn't want to slave at a job for a little recompense. And he was fit. He was like super buff. He's like, I'm buff, I want nice things.
How do I make this colero.
He befriended the boxers Rocky Graziano and Jake Lamatta. Wow, and they became his mentors and taught him how to fight.
Oh so he's like a thick dude. Oh yeah, No, he's a thick boy. He is buff.
He had anger issues.
You told me he hung up with Jake Lamata.
Yeah, right there, it's under standable.
You can't hang out with Jaglamant unless you understand his angry so angry issues.
Which I get. You know, there weren't a lot of therapies or outlets for young boys at the time in the mid fifties, and a lot of bad modeling, and a lot of bad modeling precisely. So he messed around, and he wound up in reform school, and then he messed around there and he wound up in sing sing, and he was sixteen years old in sing sing, Like you just try and get your head around that. So he gets out keeps getting into more trouble, so his dad reaches out to a pillar of the community, John Savino.
Peter Sealerno, he had a friend named Johnny, Johnny Savino. So this is John John Senior, Big John Savino big, and he was.
He was big John.
He was like a huge dude. Like everyone knew him too, like physically, and then so sat So John Savino he was a mobbed up construction and waste management guy connected to the Genovesei crime family. Good for him, Uh, Sealerno, I knew you'd like that. Hey, So Seleerno, this troubled kid just gets out, just fresh out of sing sing. I'm sixteen years old. He moves in with the Savino family and they welcome him in as a son. They had an older daughter, and then they had Johnny, and
then they had these twin girls. So Peter and Johnny they're lazy. They're just lazy teens. But they also couldn't keep jobs, and at this time, like they had to have a job to keep everything running. So Seleerno, he just drifted on. He tried a stint in college thanks to the beneficence of his mom's new rich boyfriend.
Oh she did get herself.
He hooked up with a rich dude. It's like, can you send my son to college? I wanted to be a doctor like you. And the guy's like, yeah, shoo, whatever, honey, and they send him and he's just bored. Like he he does not make it like a semester.
Your son kind of thick in.
Thinking the body. And so he made his way back eventually to the Savino family. He got a job as a milkman. He's doing he hated every second of it early and then he met Papa Savino's brother Nick, and so as a friend of the family Sealerno, he gets welcomed in. He's given the occasional errand one of the errands was driving Nick's daughter, Linda and all her friends
to the mall Ta Can Go shopping. So on one trip, a friend of Nick's daughter was lamenting the fact that she'd run out of money and couldn't continue her shopping spree. That you know, there are all these other things she wanted to buy and I just don't have any more money. So the girl's brother's there. He whips out a hundred dollars bill and is teasing her with it, and she accuses him of taking it from their grandmother's hidden pocketbook back at the house, like, did you take grandma's hundred
dollars ball? Ok And he's like, yeah, I took it, but you know there's so many she's not going to know it's missing. Okay. So Peter Sellerno's ears penny drops, so he takes the kids back home, takes note to the house. The girl was like bragging about how her family's going to go out to dinner that night. So that night Sealerno struck. He goes back to their brownstone and he starts to creep in, but he realizes that the other apartments in the bill we're gonna be able
to hear him, you know, the floors are creaky. So he walks around to the side and he looks up and he sees an open window, and there are these brownstones all close. So he figures a way to shimmy up between the close buildings and slip in the open window. Like you know how when walls are close enough and you can wedge your back on one and feet on another, kind of crab walket. That's what he did. So he goes in, slips in the window. He finds a pocketbook
full of cash. He takes it, the whole pocketbook, you know, empties it out, doesn't do anything else nowhere else, slips back out off into the night. A career is born. So you know, he was strong, he was nimble. He's aware of his surroundings, like just constantly clocking everything. He started watching other marks, like shopkeepers. There's one guy where he saw that he followed him back and forth from his green grocer stall every day, and notice that he
would go home and he'd go back in. He never went to the bank. He's like, he's got to be keeping all this at home. Then he would strike. So he found out that John Savino, his oldest daughter, Dolores, she and her boyfriend had started a burglary ring of their own. He's got competition, yeah exactly. And they were operating under the guidance of John Savina.
Oh so they were Big John's crew.
They were Big John's crew. So you know, he's giving them tips and he's like sending him out on these little jobs. But sooner, yeah exactly. So Savino, though, he finds out about Sealerno's burglary skills, these new blossoming skills. So Savino starts giving him jobs and most of them
involves stealing safes, and so they would wet. They would Yeah, they'd take the safe back to the Savino house, empty him out, somehow pop them open, and then they buried them in the backyard as a means of disposing of them. Which I just keep thinking the future residence, Like, is someone going to move into a house in Yonkers and then want to put a pool in Saints in the ground?
Amazing?
So Savino he sees big things for Seleerno and his criming arts. He knew just the thing to help that along. Do you know what Bova is? These nuts?
Seriously, it's familiar.
I'm talking about a man named Frank Bova.
Thank you so you got me to I did.
Frank Bova, he told which every time I was typing this, Frank Bova.
You're still read in the face.
So Frank Bova, these nuts told people that at one time he was an army ranger who was tasked during World War Two with stealing documents from the homes of Nazi officers. He was like, it was super secret, totally legal. Total. I snuck around and went in and I grabbed it and was like you know, I'm out of here. I'm a hero in us check me out. I'm a hero.
And he said that all these top secret missions had trained him to become the best cat burglar both east and west of the Mississippi, like I'm the best there is now. Of course this was not true. No, he was a cook in the army during the war. But it was a good tale to tell Salerno, who was oddly naive about hearing such a shaggy dog story the origins of his burglary skills. But he did have skills. For twenty years, he was one of the world's best burglars. Bova.
And you've never heard of him because he never got caught. Oh, the police never knew about him. During his active criming years. He was completely under the radar, like a good army ranger. Yeah he wasn't mobbed up, but he was in the periphery.
Yeah.
Yeah, he'd kicked portions of his take for territory or like tip offs. But time started to catch up with him. He wasn't his nimble and spries before, and slowing down would speed up the chance of getting caught. So he kept an eye out for a protege and John Savino. He delivered with Peter Salerno. Bova's targets were generally wealthy. Uh, he was a jewel thief. He wasn't just a petty little thing. Bova trained Sealerno. He trained him how to dress.
Uh, how to be invisible but also clean.
Yeah, how to how to like train, how to how to work out, increase your your masks.
To pull yourself up by just your.
Fingers tape, yeah, exactly like swim and all this other stuff. So how to avoid the security and assorted pitfalls at these mansions. And he wanted that for Seleerno, but for a cut of course. Okay, So Bova had Selerno first burgle homes in Scarsdale, New York, and other southern Westchester municipalities just as a as a means to practice. The first one was selected because when they drove by, they saw that the mailbox was just stuffed with mail, so
they're obviously out of town. They didn't just like or lazy like me, So they didn't just like park down the street and then sneak up. They saw that the house backed onto a course, so they went around to the country club and parked and then snuck across the green at night because they're like, there aren't going to be any golfers out. They're doing stuff that the car is not suspicious because they're having like you know, get together.
And we used to do that to meet girls in high school.
There you go, exactly, you were, Bova. So they climbed up this balcony at the house and they used a copper strip to override the window alarm upstairs, like change the current, he explained to Salerno, like that, if you're going to have a knife on you, it has to like you're gonna need it to pop out the window frame, but it can't be more than three inches because then it's a weapon.
Right.
So once inside, Bova explained that they had to lock the bedroom door as soon as they got in there, or if there wasn't a lock, just like shoves up up against it. Give you some time, and then always start in the dressing room. That's that's your place. Don't trash it. Whatever you do. You have to gently push into the drawer of unmentionables to feel for something hard, something yeah, box on whatever, Take the stuff, put it in a pillowcase, drop that pillowcase out the window, and
then shimmy down the way you came in. Now, the one problem is that when rich people go on vacation, a lot of times they'd take their jewels with them, like if they're going to go to like a fancy you know whatever.
People fresh, Yeah and so.
But the job that they were on was just a practice run. Now it was time for the real thing. They hit up a huge mansion in Scarsdale. They pull up driveway full of cars. They drove way down the road and approached the house from the woods behind the house. Wouldn't it be nuts to break into a house full of people?
Yeah?
I mean they could see everyone inside and enjoying. Cool cool man enjoying a lux dinner party. So Bova kept watch as Sealerno went to the back of the house and climbed up to a balcony off the master bedroom. He worked just as he had in the test house. So at first he found nothing, and then he stumbled onto a hidden safe. Not hidden enough, I guess he was able to extract a bunch of jewelry. He popped it right there, Diamonds on diamonds on diamonds and cash.
This is a much bigger haul than anything he pulled on his own down in Yonkers, so he took the loot. He made us escape. Bova's still outside just sitting there watching the swells have their dinner. Now then you know they get out whatever. Meanwhile, Sealerno, he was growing sweet on one of the twins, Lauria, ten years his junior and a teen at this point.
Like teen, my impulses, Stone, you can't be like.
He bought her a car, but she just wasn't really feeling it because she had a boyfriend.
Oh my god.
As you can guess, though, he won her over. He took her whole family on vacation to Florida, spreading cash around like crazy.
Yeah, he's a man competing with boys.
Well there's a problem, though, Sellerno. He's twenty five. He's trying to woo a fifteen year old. But that's not the problem. He was married and had four kids. Oh. He and his wife got together when he was like seventeen, like.
Fresh out of sing sing started early, but they.
Had hadn't lived together in a while. They had this really chaotic, violent relationship, the violence on both of their parts. The kids were in foster care at one point, and I think that's where they were when he took up with Gloria. But either way, So, Gloria's parents less than thrilled that their teenager is dating a married father of four.
This is the same guy who did not want to end up like his father. Yeah, and he totally exceeded.
Yes, raced past him, raced right by. So Seleerno, he's like, I really want to get with Gloria. Gloria's parents not so thrilled. So he's like, look, I'm.
Gary parents my boss.
Yeah, he's right, mobbed up, I mobbed up boss. He Sellerno had bought a house with all this money.
He's been making money.
So he gave his wife the house and then got a quickie divorce, and he and Gloria went to Maryland and they eloped. And then the marriage age there was sixteen, so she had just turned sixteen.
Good to go there.
No one knew about their secret marriage. And then a year later he bought her a four carrot diamond ring and they had a huge Italian She was already pregnant.
When she was seventeen and pregnant.
Okay, and the family, you know, so his family's growing, his criminal enterprises, everything's swelling, everything's swelling. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll follow Sellerno as his star rises as a cat burglar. Hello Zaren, Hello Elizabeth, Hello, so nice to see you. Peter Sellerno.
Yes, my guy, kind of I don't know.
You'll see. He was quickly becoming the world's greatest cat burglar, replacing his teacher Frank Bova. Say it both of these my yeah, Bova, these nuts My.
Wait, yours mine mine? Okay, So I'm not going to play along with your games making fun of me, Elizabeth.
Back in nineteen sixties, there was someone else calling Peter Sellerno the world's greatest burglar. And this time someone said it while drunk and in public. And that's someone was John Saviano's thieving daughter, Dolores, of the crime ring.
That she had.
So she got wasted at a nightclub one night and said that she guess what, everybody, I'm paying everyone's tab and then she slams ten thousand dollars in cash on the bar. So she then announced that she got the money by working with quote, the best burglar in the world, Peter Salerno names names.
She's de Niro's worst nightmare.
I think I think most people in the club just roll their eyes and then ordered whatever was most expensive.
Except for the one person who'd be listening.
The guitar player.
I see, there's always the one person.
I think that's Sirio Dominic Lttella, the guitar player. He was intrigued.
Of course.
He was a posh mama's boy. When he was in high school, he was in a band called the two plus Two's. They played with Tony Orlando and don Zaren big time laugh at him. So Littella he fell in with bad kids though, and unlike the Savino family, his parents weren't about it. But yet the parents were kind of in the Savino orbit. But his mom was just like this crazy task master, like uber helicopter mom, like she did everything.
Were they trying to be good Americans? They didn't want to have like yo, I think these other Italian Americans are making us look bad.
He was her special, precious baby, should never do anything wrong.
He's you know.
So they told the parents told Littella that he had to sign up for military service. So in nineteen sixty three he enlisted in the Navy, and he did that to avoid the draft in Vietnam. He kind of jumped ahead of it when he got out of the service and needed a job, but he didn't feel like doing legitimate work. I mean, I know how that feels. So he fell back in with the bad boys.
I know that feels.
When he wasn't criming, he moonlighted as a guitar player at a nightclub, and that's where he heard Dolores Savino brag about working with Peter Salerno. He wanted to do that. I want to work with him.
Does he take resumes? I just show him a job I've done.
I get well, so Sealerno. Meanwhile, he had moved the entire Savino family down to Florida. He bought John and his wife a restaurant at the Tangiers Resort and motel. They're living the good life. Sealerno was down there too, he had a business. Gloria is down their whole family.
He's like, bounce into Cuba at this point. Maybe no, it's sixty three. I've been waiting fie your family.
He's doing so as luck would have it. Lttella's family. Like I said in the Savino Orbit, they're friends with the Savinos. The Savinos are feeling like there aren't a whole lot of Italian Americans down here right now that I know, and we're feeling a little lost. So they started inviting friends from back home to come and stay. One of them, the Lttella family, come down. Okay, Fate takes over because Latella, now, oh, I heard that Peter Sellerno is like the world's best burglar. He's right here.
Lttella tracks him down, begs to be taught the ways of a burglary ninja.
Please.
He's working as Sealerno's accomplice logistics man lookout. But this was after a rocky start. At his first heist with Sealerno, Littella pooped his pants literally like a lot. Oh so much so that he had to wipe himself on the luxurious drapes in the homes dining room. It was so bad. Smell was terrible, it was everywhere.
Was it nerves?
It was nerves?
Oh my god, he's the worst. He was not having a second job on my crew, that is it. I'm sorry.
In the early days of their career together, he would often get so nervous that he had to poop. No, he was always the lookout because you tell him, like you wait out here.
In the bush. The whole car. Oh, the lookout. Okay, not in a car, stuck in the bushes.
Letter rip. They gave him a nickname Diarrhea Don, and they kept it for his whole Everyone called him Diarrhea Do. But he was able to recover.
You know, he worked through recovered from diarrhea.
Wiping your poop on the on the drapes.
Do you think he did like the towel move like baking, drying your back, but through the legs.
I have all these these descriptors. I'm not going to say anything, so anyway, Lttella.
The heavy side of the soft side, you know, there's like there's like the inner sheet. I think he's I didn't even for the thicker one. He wanted a maximum coverage and absorbancy.
Just doing a lot of scooping. So Lttella, he's not only you know, covered in his own feces. He's also sweet on a Savino daughter one lucky girl Gloria's twins, Sondra. Now, like where Gloria was like the good girl, Sondra is kind of like a rare Yeah, maybe she likes the poop. She wasn't she wasn't interested, she wasn't interested in Diarrhia Don No, she had a creepy boyfriend and her parents were totally over him. So they're like, let's set her up with Diaria don.
No, he's a nice boy. Why do they not like this girl?
So Littella. He got the gig with Selearno basically because the Savino family was like, this guy looks good. He obeys his mom, like they don't really know about the poopins, and so they're like, let's get him a gig with Seleerno being the you know, the high skuy get some cash, and then that's wooing money. The rest is history. So they wind up together. Oh my god, Gloria.
How did your mom meet your dad? Story?
Well, actually, there's he dressed terribly here. He wore like shorts and sandals all the time. Don doesn't wear shorts, hello, And so it was Sandra who was like, no, I'm sorry that don doesn't wear shorts and you need actual She just taught him to dress because the mom was buying all this basically, So, Gloria, she's leaping through a copy of Town and Country magazine one day at a store and she notices that there are a lot of photos of like phenomenal homes and stories about upcoming parties.
So she takes the magazine to her husband, Peter Salerno, and it's like, you know what, this is a great source of targets, just like a look book right here. So Sealerno and Tella they stopped finding homes to rob, either by like getting mob tips or just driving around neighborhoods. Instead, they prepared by creating a leads list. By using Forbes Magazine's list of the wealthiest people in America, they found
addresses in Who's Who in America. They studied photo spreads and architectural digests and town and country, and then they went through all the society columns and newspapers for announcements of like who's in town and who's hosting big parties.
Damn, ABC always be crimeing smart coffee is for closers. This is amazing. You got the good lead shit.
And here's the thing, like people loved to show off their obscene wealthy and Seleerno and Lotella took advantage of that. You know, they're putting it out there in the public. All this information and the mansions were enormous. So Bova's technique of sneaking in while the parties were going on
was perfect. So like guests, they get summoned by these butlers and these maids to go and have these absolutely huge dinners, multiple course dinners that could take hours and hours in this like you know, way situated dining room so they can see out to like maybe part of the yard, but it's it's not, you know, noisy for the rest of the house. It would have been rude to get up and leave the table. You don't, you know, you don't get up and wander around or anything, get bored.
And the staff, the staff is super busy in the kitchen and the dining room.
Can you imagine if you were like one of these guests, Elizabeth, and you're like, I am kind of nosy. Imagine if you excuse yourself to go the bathroom. You go to these second story upstairs bathroom. You're going down, you're feeling patting along the carpetage walk, and all of a sudden, you hear a noise and this guy pokes out. He's got on a mask and like a pillowcase diary. Don You're like, I've heard about you, no but honestly, like
you had that moment. I can't imagine as a criminal thinking that that would be it's a good move, but it really limits.
There are a couple of years random they're upstairs in these mansions. No one's going upstairs, Like if you have to step away to powder room, it's notstairs. So the rest of the house is like completely deserted.
I get it.
And so also when everyone's home, no alarms are set. Oh yeah, genius. Isn't that incredible? And a lot of the things I read too, are that some of the older homes like they didn't have air conditioning the way that we did, so we leave the windows open air thing. Yeah. So according to Peter Sellerno quote, they never expect you. They don't expect anybody to be in there with them while they're having dinner.
Yeah, they're so busy and engage.
Yeah. And then Ltela talking about Seleerno quote, it's remarkable, but he had this sixth sense of finding it. And you're talking about a big master suite with dressing areas, you know, closet areas. If it was there, he found it. And then Sealerno backs it up. A lot of them didn't even know it was gone till the following day. So it's just in and out they considered themselves gentlemen, thieves.
They never carried guns, no weapons, they were never violent, and if they had to, they'd leave empty handed.
Yeah you gotta yeah, cut and run.
So there were this rash of burglaries in both New York and like the Tony areas.
Connecticut, upstate in Connecticut.
Yeah, and then like Long Long Island, uh that way, yeah, and then it's Florida. So they're hitting both like they go for the winter, they go down winter in Florida. Precisely. The cops are catching on, they see the pattern. Some are calling them the fat Cat burglars, but they eventually became known as the dinner set gang. So they targeted the dinner set, the wealthy folks. You know, their schedules revolve around social events, not work. The dinner set.
Yeah. So although I kind of like the fact a lot.
So one day, sealernosaw ad for an inflatable raft.
Like a zodiac with the out the harder kind.
Yeah yeah, not like a pool float.
Yeah, it was.
It was amazing, guys.
It was a unicorn like the plastic candle paddles. They come apart with too much water.
No zodiac, and so he knew it would be the perfect way to get at beach front properties because like Palm Beach, Long Island sounds Gold Coast. Those are the homes of some of the richest people in America, oh sometimes in the world, and they were pretty much inaccessible.
On unless you get from the water.
It's huge fences, long driveways, but not anything at the water line. So if you come in and out on the water, there are also no roadblocks, nothing.
The thing is the sheriff's Yeah, sriff.
Boats exactly, so Sealerno and Ltella. They followed their targets with the seasons. Like I said, north to Connecticut and New York, Palm Beach for the social season, and they hit all the big names. DeWitt Wallace, founder of Readers Digest, and from that family they got one hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars worth of jewels while Wallace and his wife were finishing their dessert. The heiress to the Flagler Railroad fortune five million dollars stolen while she hosted a
black tie dinner nice in and out. From nineteen seventy one to nineteen seventy two, they hit more than a dozen homes on the Gold coast. Yeah, Zarin close you ass Oh yes, I want you to picture it. It's January nineteen seventy three. You are inside a large estate north of Palm Beach, Florida, on Juno Beach. There is but one road in and out from the mansion to
the rest of the world. You are a spera fitted sheet belonging to Sir John Rupert Hunt Thoron and his wife, Lady Thoron, also known as Esther Driver DuPont, heir to the DuPont fortune.
Oh wow, these are some rich.
Folks, and you are a very expensive fitted sheet. You are a spa to be exact, the finest pure Egyptian cotton made in Italy, some of the most expensive bedding in the world. You aren't used much on the bed, but that doesn't mean you aren't doing a job. You are well laundered and you sit in the linen closet. You are wrapped tightly around a leather traveling case belonging to Lady Thoron. The case is covered in all manner of custom stamps and stickers from far flung exotic locales.
As you sit in the linen closet, a lavender sachet tucked behind you. You hear the staff ring the dinner bell of Sir and Lady Thorn. You are a magical sheet that can hear and see, and taste and smell. You are a marvel. You are Italian.
You dare right.
After a while, you also hear the sound of an outboard motor out on hoby sound. It draws closer, but this is nothing new. Plenty of people toodle up and down the sound even after dark. You have an incredible bat like hearing, though I mean the sheets are expensive for a reason. You hear the sound of two people alighting from the boat you heard and making their way
up the beach to the house. A moment later, you hear a quiet rattle at the French doors leading from the bedroom to a balcony, A little pop, and then you hear the wind outside. Someone has made it into the house. You hear footsteps approaching. Your cotton heart beats faster. The darkness of the linen closet is pierced with light. As the doors to the closet swing open, you can hear rustling. Someone is pawing their way through the either bedding.
Please please, please please leave. You think I have a job to do. Then you feel it, hands, gloved hands. You are petrified as the hands squeeze you tight, violating your smooth fabric. The hands feel the leather, valise and freeze you let out a silent screen. You can see, you can hear, you can smell, but you can't speak.
You are mute.
As the hands unfold you're carefully tucked corners. Do you know how hard that was to achieve? Your charge is now exposed. The hands rub over the exterior of the case, taking in the stamps and stickers and fine leather. The hands open the case. You hear a little gasp. The owner of the hands is awestruck by what he sees.
In the case are twenty five carrot and twenty two carrot sapphires, a five carrot marquise diamond, and a flawless seventeen carrot natural pink pear shaped diamond worth one point eight million dollars. That's almost twelve point five million dollars today. The hands set down the case and make a half hearted effort to fold you back up. Then, just as quickly as the two men arrived, they dash away into
the night. Salerno and Littella made off with twelve million dollars of jewels that night in total, which is almost eighty three million dollars today. Wow, the DuPont's running deep with jewels. So the two of them go to New York to celebrate with their fence.
Who's their fence, Elizabeth?
In an interview with sixty Minutes, Salerno himself routed out the fence. Quote a guy named Wally Gans who was at the forty side. Who is It's the forty seventh Street Diamond Exchange, which is the biggest exchange in the world. To me, I mean, you know, I've been under the ground. They had their own vaults, they don't go to banks. They got more diamonds and cash there than God.
Please tell me he was dead at the time.
Yes, So, Salerno and Littella, they were paid ten cents on the dollar, and that was the going rate for stolen gems. Plus they had to kick up to the mafia on top of that. Plus Gans didn't always give them fair value.
For the hot live of course not, but they still did quite all. It's all free money to him, exactly.
So after the DuPont and Flagler jobs, Gans and his wife retired to North Miami, beach Gans was a suspect in all manner of illegal activities, but he was never indicted.
No look at him slippery.
I know. So Sealerno and a Latella flush with cash. Soandra, she said, the Lttella's wife bag's full suitcase is full. We would put it in envelopes of twenty thousand dollars at a time, and I can remember having to go to the safe deposit box and changing it because I couldn't put another envelope in it, like they had to keep upgrading.
I were using it as like a paper weight. I was like reading something. I just put money on top.
Well, no, listen, Gloria. She had a four hundred dollars a week allowance. She said she used to collect random cash that she found in her husband's pockets and she would then put it all in a bank account. And then once Selerno he needed cash to hire a lawyer, so she went to the bank and withdrew everything that she that she had found over the years, brought it home in an envelope. They dump it out on the dining room, able to count it. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Oh wow, I mean this is they had pocket change that was literal pocket.
Change, chump change. So an uncle of his like to joke quote, they're in the iron and steel business. She irons and he steals, hey, hey, please tip my waitress. And with that we'll take a break and then I'll let you know how things are going in the steel business.
Welcome, hey Elizabeth, Hello Elizabeth.
Ads so good. I want more. Welcome to Dateline nineteen seventy five.
Oh I brought the wrong.
Pants seventy five. Seleerno got arrested and convicted on a federal drugs charge. Oh, he got set up by a rival burglar and who wanted in on his turf. That's one of the stories that you hear. So he served time at the Atlanta Federal Correctional Facility.
Not a place to do, no time.
And he but like, here's the thing. He agreed to cooperate with the Feds in exchange for a shorter sentence. He's like, this is not good. I want out of here. What do you want?
Yeah, who do you want?
I'll tell you anything, because remember he's in the mob orbit but he's not made.
Yeah, he's not America. He has no vows of silence.
Nope, so nineteen eighty he testified against a mob underboss on Yellow Delacroce. He stated that he was with mobsters in Lonzo's restaurant in New York Cities, Little Italy, and he heard Delacroce order a hit on a guy who was later found dead in a parking lot. So he was a witness to this order. In exchange for his testimony, he and his family went into witness protection.
That's all it took.
Round all took. He needed it, dude, Dela Croce put a price on his head of one hundred thousand dollars.
He was a mob boss, mob boss then he wasn't like he said, he was an underboss, but he actually had real power.
He had power. Yeah. And so Peter Salerno's witsect name is amazing, by the way, Pierre John Carden really Yeah, Pierre Cardan the little John off.
In Macy's, and they would kind of come up with a name like Pierre what's your middle name? John John Carden.
So he was getting income from the Feds until he could get himself established, but he never really like got him self established. So but Sealerno and Ltella, as well as their families, they got new names, and then they spent the next eight years living in Washington, Minnesota, Oregon. They moved around a bit. While in protection, Selerno worked on a gym invention that he was calling the Mighty Bender. And it doesn't look like anything ever came of that.
I tried to find it. That's a crime. There's my crime.
Boom.
Yeah, in eighty five, the government money ran out and the.
Family how does that work? Do you know how the witness protection? Like do they give you, like, we'll give you ten years worth of money or what.
I understand is that they'll get Yeah, they'll give you ten years or like if you can start generating enough money, like if you get a job and do that kind of stuff, then you know it tapers off or whatever. But there is like a hard deadline and it looks like it's five years of like get a job or we cut you off. And so then they just start moving from hotel to hotel because they don't have this solid income. Gloria, she didn't miss the jewels and the
luxury cars. She missed like the simple days of Oregon. She was a girl Scout troop mom and like way all up in the PTA's all about it my drama. Salerno was a baseball coach. Here's my baseball coach, peerre Carden. How do you do? Who has like the coach? And he's got like a thick New York Italian American accent. They hung out at the library. The whole family went to the library all the time. Silerno did a little
gem research there, but you know, as a treat. So when they were in Minnesota, they learned about the Pillsbury Mansion in Minneapolis, which has since been torn down.
I understand.
Yeah, and they hit it successfully under the watch of the US Marshall Service. So he does he robs the Pillsbury mansiones while in witness protection.
From his bosses, the US government. Yes, he was hitting his boss. I like this.
Eighty six, Seleerno got busted for attempted burglary in Hollywood, Florida. The homeowner's son hits Seleerno over the head with a trophy. Oh and then he got convicted and sentenced to twelve years.
These are the surprises I'm talking about in home at burglaries, getting hit in the head with the trophy.
He's just all not on my.
Watch, Yeah, exactly. Once again, teenagers always try me. I am not the one I've been waiting for this.
I want this reason to dreaming of that. That's totally like you know when kids are like, I'll fight him, and I'll exactly I hit him with the trophy to me, I told Jim.
Yeah.
So, but here's the thing, Seleerno. He gets released in order to help law enforcement because agents told the judge that he was more helpful to them outside than inside.
Yeah.
So, in uh January of nineteen eighty eight, he gets caught again, this time tumbling over a wall in his subdivision in Boca Raton where there had already been two robberies. Like, how far has he fallen?
He's now like an old cat where he can't make the same job, get a little clumsy.
Yeah, to like a Boca Raton subdivision, subdivision.
That's so believable. And he was nothing of offense subvision but for the thief.
Yeah, he was with his wife and his sister in law, and it didn't clarify. I don't know if that was Sandra, if it was Lttella's wife, or it was Dolores. Oh, that's another sister in law. Anyway, his wife was there. One of the sisters in law, and then another dude. He was wearing a ski mask and he had a stolen nine millimeters semi automatic gun on him, which is very out of care rules. Yeah, and he was ordered to continue that twelve year sentence that they had gotten
him out of. An agent said to the judge, quote, he violated our trust and he violated your trust. And Salerno said, I have no guilt. I have nothing to hide. I did not disgrace this court and I did not disgrace you.
Okay, dude, I don't think you get to decide that. Probably no offense. I mean it's a great theory.
Salerno is a term Steve Cole. He said that it was Sealerno's winning personality, this likable personality that was helping him infiltrate other crime rings that were not affiliated with them. And so apparently he helped out with a narcotics investigation that spanned South Florida, Vegas, DC in New York. His attorney said, quote, these individuals will welcome him with open arms. So it was like, yeah, you know, it takes one
in no one. So when Seleerno got out of jail, he learned that Gloria had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had no health insurance, and he needed money, so he and Lttella headed north in the winter of nineteen ninety one to kick off the mother of all crimesprees for real. Yeah, because they're doing it for real now.
Yeah. Now they need the money desperately.
Yeah. One of the first homes they'd hit was one they'd hit decades prior. The same people still lived there.
I love the detective.
Billy Adams sent out a bulletin alerting police that the Dinner Set gang was back.
Baby.
This is what Adam said, quote everything was identical except the date on the police. It was unbelievable. Same thing.
As long as you don't do violence, cops. Really, this is a fun little games.
Florno explains it. He said, quote. I was just obsessed. I wasn't going to let her die because of money. For the lack of money. That money saved her life Perlatella.
Quote.
We broke our rules, you know, not knowing your target, not knowing where you're going, and knowing your escape. Working in the winter, especially in the snow. They're men on a mission, right, Because here's what happens. January twenty first, nineteen ninety two. The two they targeted a home in Westport, Connecticut. Now remember normally they're down in Florida this time of here. So this is what Latella said about that day.
Quote.
I recall the woman being downstairs in her foyer and Pete says, put me up on the ledge. He went up and made entry into the bedroom, and all of a sudden, I noticed the woman look up, and I knew she heard something. The lady homeowner she called nine one one. Pretty soon the surrounding woods were crawling with cops, and the cops sweetie dogs, and then the set to freaked out their new ghetto driver because he hears all the dogs and he just blows. So Selerno and Littella
they had to hoof it. Uh they This is how uh Lttella remembers it. I recall it was like blowing snow, maybe ten degrees out. And finally we just conceded to the fact, saying, you know, Pete, it doesn't look good. That's it. We're done. So basically they were in their own personal Sopranos's episode, which is still one of the greatest episodes of all time. You're not going to believe this guy killed sixteen Chechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator,
so that was them. That was one in the house watching this. So anyway, the canine cuties, they found Selerno and Littella under a pile of leaves near I ninety five, and I hate when that happens to me. Yes, I'm getting found under a pile of so many times rible Sellerno and Littella. They get arrested, obviously, and then they get tied to a bunch of other burglaries. In the end, Littella ended up serving nine years in prison and Sealerno
served four. Their wives got jobs working at a mall in Fort Lauderdale.
And them, yeah, I guess.
And when he got out on parole, thettele got a job selling used boats. And here's what he had to say. Quote the certain regrets I do have is if I scarred anybody from feeling violated, I'm sorry in that respect, you know, because I'm sure a lot of people felt that way, because I know how my wife would feel, you know, if it's any consolation, you know, and it was by us, Believe me, we were gentlemen and we
weren't there to hurt anybody. Salerno. He shared that he had no regrets and enjoyed the jewel thief life and the excitement that came with it.
I got to say, I like his approach.
They asked him if he would do it again. He said no. But when then, like, do you have any plans and you know, would you tell anyone about it? He laughed and he said no, I wouldn't.
Also, no, exactly in my.
Work as a special investigator, I think I found the Sealernos. It looks like both Pete and Gloria are still alive.
Oh wow, yeah, how did you doing.
I'm not telling I'm not revealing my secrets. They have a lovely family. But yeah, it looks like they're both still alive in Florida.
I'm so pridy, thank you.
So all's well. That ends well, I suppose, But Gloria made it. Yay, Gloria. Detective Adams told sixty minutes, I can find anybody I know you can. The quote in anything that you read in the last forty years in regards to jewel thieves, Peter Salerno's name always comes up, and he's the standard by which all other jewel thieves are judged.
Wow.
Yeah, big dog so for the goat trunk. Dolores was right, He's the best in the world. Sarah, what's too ridiculous takeaway?
I gotta say that, I know this is a really base ridiculous takeaway, but I think boat theft is really where it's at. We've covered this a couple of times. If you don't mess that up, I'm thinking that's really the move via boat. You ride up in a boat, Yeah, you rob a house, it's on the water, and you're just it's it seems like, you know, I made a gun out of ice and I have ice bullets of murder. It's the version of her theba It's like the perfect all the.
Smart stuff, like wait till they're having a dinner party, so the alarm's not on. That I think is huge.
And also people, I think it would take a long time before cops would think to look for that as an escape route, especially if you were you made a couple of little signs that you walked away, yeah, or like he put some car whatever it is, you could throw them off. For the longest time, they would not think of that. I'd think if unless somebody saw you, well.
And it's like, you know, I don't mind him hitting the DuPonts. No offense to the DuPont family, but like they're you know, they're still okay, like they didn't but like then when he's going after like a subdivision in Boca, that was.
Yeah. They always get to a point.
I mean the desperation sinks in.
Yeah. And also they start slipping with age and they keep thinking that they can be doing what they were doing. And it's like Michael Jordan on the Whizz it.
Should have been like boa these nuts to find a protege exactly, someone to come up through the ranks, someone who doesn't have diarrhea. It's always a good thing.
Diamond Doors had the same issue diarrhea, no getting a hold. But yes, now that I can picture her crapping herself, thank you.
We all have crapped ourselves.
It's what gaves us all together. It bonds us circle. Yeah, that's it. That's all I have that we all have shadows.
That's true.
Those two things. That's it.
Good pointing, good point.
I'll duly noted.
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