Confessions of a Second Story Man

by Allen M. Hornblum

  “There was one particular bar that seemed to have nothing but criminals and ex-cons in it. It was the Gateway Bar at 20th and Fairmount, just a block from the prison. The place was wild. It was like yard out all the time. You’d hear guys say, ‘C’mon, let’s go. I just got out after 10 years. I got no money and I’m in a bad way. Let’s get going. Let’s do something.’ They were anxious to pull a job.”

  Junior, just out of the Navy and less than enthralled with his job as a welder, was equally anxious to get going. “All the guys in the bar were doing stuff,” he says. “I started to go out with them just to see what it was like. I’d hang in the car while they pulled a job and sometimes they’d throw me a share if they did well.”

  The action was exciting and addictive. He soon teamed up with some of his new acquaintances and pulled a few jobs of his own. “I was playing around, having fun,” he says. “I was smoking reefer, meeting chicks. I started doing stuff on the weekends, making some money, and soon gave up my job as a welder. My family had no idea what I was doing.” Although Junior was a relative novice at this level of crime, he was more than willing to learn. In fact, he suggested a few scores of his own.

  “I told a few guys I met at one of the local bars about a Baltimore gas station that looked like easy pickings,” says Kripplebauer. “When I was stationed in Annapolis, I had a part-time job in order to make a few extra bucks and knew of this gas station that kept the money in the cash register all weekend. They never took it out. By Monday morning there was a pile of cash in there, at least a few thousand dollars. It looked like an easy score. The owner was rarely there on weekends, and there weren’t any guns to worry about.

  “My new friends didn’t take much convincing. Me and Big Mike Savio went down there late on a Sunday night. We walked in the station, pulled a couple guns on the attendants, and then walked in the office. We put the hired help in the bathroom, took the money out of the cash register, and drove back to Philly. It was an easy $1,500 score. We just drove down and did it.”

  The ease with which Kripplebauer pulled a gun on some innocent store clerk shocked even him. It felt natural, totally unremarkable.

  “Surprisingly,” says Junior, “I never even thought about it. Putting a gun in somebody’s face didn’t bother me. I came from law-abiding people. Nobody was involved in crime. My family, everybody where I came from, tried to obey the rules. We hated the company and may have done a few minor things. But we were basically law-abiding. Now, I was around a bunch of guys who didn’t give a fuck. They’d do anything. A number of them were packing guns. Later I began to worry that someday somebody would draw a gun on me and I’d have to shoot him. I would if I was forced to, but I sure as hell didn’t want to. I knew I could be shot too and that all of this was a little risky, but I just figured it beats going to work every day.”

  It was shortly after the Baltimore job that Kripplebauer hooked up with his first true partner in crime—and a most unusual partner he was. Tommy Lyons was an ex-con and an ex-jockey who originally hailed from the wealthy Main Line, but after a short stint at Eastern he grew partial to Fairmount’s friendly bars and the many moneymaking schemes that sprouted there. As a “baby-faced apprentice” in 1950, the 18-year-old Lyons seemed a comet on horseback as he went on a victory rampage up and down the East Coast. From Atlantic City to Pimlico and from Suffolk Downs to Hialeah, Lyons brought home a series of long shots that garnered newspaper headlines and earned the respect of his more senior competitors. Despite his youth and inexperience, young Lyons was making his presence felt on the track. Though his horse-racing future appeared bright, one thing got in the way—his passion for drugs.

  “Tommy had a bad drug habit,” says Junior. “I met him at Jumbo’s Bar at 24th and Brown right after I got out of the service. He was a very popular guy and everybody loved him. Tommy knew everyone, and because he had traveled to racetracks all over the country, he knew the landscape as well. Unfortunately, he was always looking for drugs. A good portion of each day was devoted to getting ahold of the stuff. He had many schemes, but the one he used most often was hiding out in hospital parking lots and stealing the medical bags out of the trunks of doctors’ cars. He knew every hospital in the area. I’d go with him sometimes. He’d park in a hospital’s lot, and when a doctor pulled in and placed his bag in the trunk, Tommy would be on top of it as soon as the doctor entered the hospital. He got caught a couple times and did a little time. More importantly, it killed his career. He was doin’ pretty well, winning race after race and upstaging a lot of famous jockeys, but when they found out he had a drug problem and had been caught selling drugs to a minor, they banned him from the track. He wasn’t allowed to compete any more.

  “Unfortunately, Tommy couldn’t kick it; he couldn’t get off the drugs. He said he got started like a lot of other jockeys by using amphetamines in order to keep the weight off; they were always watching their weight. But one thing led to another, and he quickly got into more serious stuff. He started shooting demerol and morphine. It ruined his career, put him in prison, and got him doin’ stickups instead of picking up checks in the winners’ circle.”

  Though Kripplebauer remained friends with Lyons and continued to work with him, the impact of drugs on the diminutive jockey was not lost on him. Lyons was trapped as if he had a ball and chain around his ankle, always looking for the next fix while all that remained of a promising career were faded news clips. Junior wanted no part of the drug scene; he wanted freedom, not an endless search for pills, needles, and heroin.

  “Me and Tommy started to do a lot of work together. Tommy was ballsy, seemed to know everyone, and had seen a lot of the country. He was familiar with every town that had a racetrack. He also had access to guns. If we were gonna do some work together and felt we needed to be armed, Tommy took care of it. We did a lot of stuff in the Philly suburbs but also traveled out of the area. Tommy grew up in Ardmore or Haverford, so we did a lot of work on the Main Line, sometimes burglaries, sometimes stickups. We’d break into wealthy homes in Villanova and Bryn Mawr and on other occasions knock off a supermarket or convenience store. Sometimes we’d go down to Baltimore and do some work. Tommy knew the area pretty good from his days at Pimlico. Between Tommy and some other guys I was meeting from Eastern, I ended up doing burglaries at night and stickups during the day. I never let my day job as a welder interfere with my sideline.”

  Though somewhat primitive in their tactics, the Mutt and Jeff team of Kripplebauer and Lyons was beginning to make its mark. Junior, a strapping six-footer, born opportunist, and serial risk-taker, and the diminutive 101-pound, pill-popping ex-jockey were usually game for anything that would earn them a few bucks. Most of their exploits emphasized balls over brains, but some capers paid dividends while others paid in jail time and lead.

  In 1958, for example, Lyons cooked up a scheme to rob one of America’s most famous jockeys. Familiar with the inner workings of the racing industry, Lyons knew when and how employees were paid—particularly jockeys. He also knew when they cashed their track checks. Seizing the moment, they targeted Bill Hardtack, a successful jockey who was currently riding at Garden State Racetrack in South Jersey. Lyons knew the Black Horse Pike motel Hardtack was staying at and had his towering partner pay him a visit. In broad daylight, Junior knocked on the door and put a revolver in Hardtack’s face when the tiny jockey opened the door. Hardtack, seeing his life flash before him, was forced to give up $12,000. He had just cashed his track checks.

  The heist went down so easily that the unusual duo saw no reason to quit. “We knew these little jockeys liked to ride around town with a lot of cash in their pockets,” says Kripplebauer. “It made them feel big and important. But we also knew when they picked up their checks, how they had done in the saddle the previous week, and what motels they stayed at. It was beautiful.”

  John Choquotte was the next unlucky jockey to get picked off. In fact, Junior and Tommy Lyons nailed four or five jockeys in this manner, including a couple
at Hialeah and Gulfstream racetracks in Miami. They were nice scores, but not all of their gun-toting, moneymaking gambits went as smoothly.

  That same year Kripplebauer and Lyons, along with two other Fairmount boys, were given a tip about the proprietor of a large Miami grocery store. Supposedly, the store’s owner was a bagman for the mob and in possession of a considerable amount of cash, which he kept in his store’s safe. The Philly crew expected a quick and uncomplicated haul. The four men walked into the store pretending to be customers. Suddenly, one of the men pulled a gun and ordered the owner and a female clerk to open a safe in the rear of the building. As luck would have it, however, a cook in the restaurant next door became suspicious when he looked through the storefront window and saw two of the robbers selling groceries to customers and pocketing the money. The cook called the police, who arrived before Junior and Tommy could open the safe.

  Seven policemen burst into the store and traded shots with the robbers. When the shootout was over, both Kripplebauer and Lyons had been wounded. Junior was hit in his heel and elbow, while little Tommy had sustained serious bullet wounds to his hip and abdomen. Both men were assisted in their recovery by the Florida Department of Corrections. Junior, just 25, was serving his second prison bit, this one a four-year stint at Raiford, one of Florida’s toughest penal institutions.

  After serving out his sentence, Junior returned to Philadelphia in the early sixties. Eastern State and the nearby bars were still doing a flourishing business. Raiford’s stern dose of southern hospitality had proven ineffectual: Junior continued to do burglaries and pull off the occasional armed robbery.

  “If I got jammed,” says Kripplebauer, “and had to go to prison, I just accepted it. I looked at it as if it was an occupational hazard. It was part of doing business. Make no mistake; I sure as hell didn’t wanna be there. But I could handle it. Some other guys would be crippled and fold if they got stuck with a prison bit, but I learned to deal with it. Nobody fucked with me inside. I knew how to handle myself.”

  Shady partners, crazy schemes, and acquiring other people’s money had become his life. Moreover, he was using violence and aggression over skill and guile. Strong-arm tactics had won another convert.

  Gradually, however, Kripplebauer started to venture out of Fairmount for his socializing. He had grown bored with the small, somewhat depressing shot-and-beer joints that had become clubhouses for geriatric gangsters seeking a cold draft on their way out of the neighborhood lockup. Junior now started to hang out at larger, heavily trafficked bars and taprooms throughout the city that offered a more upbeat atmosphere, live entertainment, and a healthy complement of the opposite sex. The Shamrock Bar at Germantown and Erie Avenues became one of his favorites. Along with Storm Saunders and the Hurricanes—the exhilarating black house band that banged out all the new Motown hits—and the sexy women who were always on the prowl for a handsome hunk with a wad of cash in his pockets, the Shamrock also introduced him to a whole new contingent of wiseguys from all over the Delaware Valley.

  One interesting crew came from Kensington, a neighborhood across town known for its many textile factories, its tough, row house Irish workers, and its fierce ask-no-quarter/give-no-quarter spirit. It was also known for a particularly savvy and prolific group of second story men, men who had the guts and guile to pull off some of the biggest scores in the area, including the legendary Pottsville Heist that took a half-million dollars from an upstate coal baron. Kripplebauer was now rubbing shoulders and sharing drinks with members of the K&A Gang.

  “I started hanging at the Shamrock Bar,” says Kripplebauer, “and began meeting guys like Billy McClurg, John Fleckenstine, Joe Bloom, John Berkery, Jackie Johnson, Hughie Breslin, and Charlie Devlin. They were Kensington guys, tough, ballsy, fun-loving guys. They knew how to have a good time. And they knew how to make money. One thing led to another and I started doing some work with Billy, Fleck, and Bloomie and got a real education. They taught me the real way to do a burglary; they taught me something they called ‘production work.’

  “The guys I was working with up till that point didn’t really know what they were doing. They’d just break in a house or walk in and put a gun in somebody’s face. The K&A guys were much more sophisticated. They were organized and had a system. They had it down to a science. They worked in crews. Everyone had a job. There was a designated driver who made regular scheduled stops and kept his eyes open for other opportunities, a watcher who kept a lookout for cops and homeowners, and the two searchers who went through the house or business looking for anything of value. After they were done with one house, they went to another, and then another. Sometimes they’d hit five to seven houses in an evening. It was mass-production burglary. But instead of putting the houses on a conveyor belt, we went to the houses. It was a totally different approach than what anyone else was doing. There was really no comparison between what the K&A guys were doing and what the Fairmount guys were doing. Or any other guys doing second story work, for that matter. I was now learning a new system. I learned production work.

  “The K&A guys used all sorts of equipment, everything from police scanners and walkie-talkies to communicate with one another to brutes, chisels, and crowbars to open safes. But the one thing they didn’t use that was the most fascinating thing for me was their decision not to use guns. The K&A guys didn’t want to do stickups. They wouldn’t carry a gun. They said it was a violation of all the rules. You just don’t carry a gun. I thought they were kidding at first, because I, and all the guys I ever worked with, always carried a gun. I had grown used to packing a handgun when I was doing a job; it felt good. It gave you a sense of security and allowed you to believe that you were in control. But the K&A guys were serious. They argued that a gun never got them anything but a lot of trouble, and you could make more money without carrying a gun.

  “I didn’t believe them at first, I thought they were kidding me. They kept on insisting it was true, no weapons. I couldn’t believe it. I knew they weren’t pansies. The Kensington crowd was tough; they’d fight you all day and night over the slightest insult, they were incredible street fighters, but they didn’t want to carry a weapon while doing a burglary. They didn’t want to hurt anybody. And if you were caught, you had a lot less to worry about. The bottom line was the K&A guys were fun, really knowledgeable about what they were doing, and tough as nails. And most importantly, they were making money. I decided to put my gun down and join them.”

  Bill McClurg, a K&A burglar whose rap sheet goes back to the 1940s, remembers meeting the tall, striking German-Irish lad who had already done a stint in the Florida State Pen and was willing to learn the way real burglars, Kensington burglars, did business.

  “That Shamrock, boy, that was really some joint,” recalls McClurg, better known as Billy Blew to his friends and associates. “It attracted people from all over town, it was a jumpin’ spot. Junior started showing up in the early sixties after he came back from Florida and we sort of took him in. He was a good guy, Junior—good-looking, outgoing, energetic. He just started doing some work with us. We showed him how to do production work.

  “Junior was used to working with a gun, but we told him he didn’t need it. It just meant more trouble in the end. All of us had guns, but we never took them on the road with us, not when we were working. We tried to be as meticulous and cautious as possible. We didn’t want any screwups. We even made sure whoever was driving had papers on the car. You didn’t want to be doing a house and find out your driver got stopped and couldn’t show proof he owned the car. The whole thing could go down the tubes because of a stupid mistake. That’s why we never carried guns on the job. We didn’t want to create problems. That went for Junior as well. We weren’t lookin’ to hurt anybody and we didn’t want to get hurt either. We wanted to burglarize houses, a lot of them. That was production work. That’s the way we learned it in Kensington. It was a Kensington thing and it worked. There was nobody out there like us.”

  As Junior like
s to say about the old working-class neighborhood’s contribution to crime and the K&A Gang’s reputation as America’s best second story men: “The Kensington guys knew what they were doing. They totally transformed second story work. They’d do 10 burglaries a night while everyone else was doing one a week. There was no comparison.”

  Part II

  The K&A Gang

  3. Kensington

  I got a call one morning that they needed another guy for a crew they were putting together to do a piece of work in North Jersey. They told me to come down to Kensington and meet them at Kellis’s Bar. I walk in there a couple of hours later all decked out in my suit and tie ready to go to work, but I must be early or something, ’cause none of the guys I’m supposed to meet are there. So I order a drink and check things out. There’s a couple of guys there I think I recognize, but I stick to myself for the time being. I had only been there once or twice before, but know it’s a favorite of the guys in the crew. The joint is right under the Frankford El at Kensington and Allegheny and gets a lot of traffic. It’s nothing special, just your basic shot-and-beer joint for local factory workers and transients who want to get lubricated.

  Then a funny thing happens. A guy comes in and half the joint walks out. I mean, some of them don’t even bother to finish their drinks or pick up their change off the bar. Something like this you got to take notice of. He’s a big guy, pretty mouthy, and he seems to know everybody. And everyone knows him. The guy orders a beer and tells the bartender he’s gotta make a call. So he’s on the phone a couple minutes and then comes over to where I’m sitting and without saying a how-do-you-do picks up some of my change that’s on the bar and starts putting it in the phone slot. I don’t pay it no mind, but after another minute or so he does the same thing. Now, I’m looking at this guy who’s paying for his call with my money.