Confessions of a Second Story Man

by Allen M. Hornblum

  They traveled light. There was little baggage: Tommy’s large suitcase and a small overnight bag for each crew member. By the time they had hailed a taxi and were on their way to a nearby motel, Junior had pretty much decided on the location of the evening’s activities by scanning the Chronicle.s Real Estate section for quarter-and half-million-dollar properties. All that remained was to cross-check that location against the addresses of area synagogues and ritzy country clubs in the motel’s telephone directory—a match and they’d be on their way.

  While Junior and Bruce did their research in a Ramada Inn motel room, Tommy and Mickie went about their business; after years of working together, they had the operation down like clockwork. They first took a taxi to the nearest Avis car rental agency and signed for two mid-sized automobiles. Tommy drove one car back to the motel and immediately began installing the police scanners, walkie-talkies, and batteries he had brought with him from Philadelphia. Mickie took the second car to a nearby mall in search of a Sears or a large automotive shop. When she returned with three pairs of gloves and a collection of chisels, pliers, crowbars, flashlights, and short-handled sledgehammers, Tommy installed the same electronic gadgetry in the second car.

  Their assignments complete, the four Philadelphians decided to take a ride. It was their first trip to South Texas and they were interested in seeing some of the local sights, particularly an area called the Village which the Chronicle.eclared one of the most beautiful and affluent sections of Harris County. After a brief ride along Houston’s North Freeway, they turned off the highway, noticed the swift decline in office buildings, strip malls, and vehicular traffic, and began navigating through open country roads bordering expansive brown fields. Soon they were driving through quiet, attractive neighborhoods with stately homes surrounded by lush, green grass, well-tended shrubs, and the occasional gazebo and faux wishing well. Impressive, opulent mansions became more frequent, and Cadillacs, Lincolns, and sporty foreign models like Jaguars filled the driveways. The place reeked of money. Though no one mentioned it, each crew member focused on those homes displaying two items the average tourist would no doubt have overlooked: a small mezuzah and an equally small key-controlled alarm mechanism near the front door.

  “I think we did okay,” said Bruce to no one in particular. “This place looks like my kind of town.”

  “Yeah,” replied Junior, “I think we’re gonna be fat tonight.”

  After driving slowly through the area for another 10 minutes, they returned to their motel. Second story work wasn’t kid’s play. It was damn serious stuff, demanding more than a modicum of physical ability and nerves of steel. Though burglary was a year-round activity, those frigid January nights when fingers and toes went numb and noses and eyes ran uncontrollably were sheer hell for the Philly-based crew. At those painful times, Florida and the other Sunbelt states appeared decidedly more inviting. That was why they were now along the Texas Gulf Coast and not trudging through the snow in Newport, Greenwich, or Scarsdale. If things went well later that night, Houston might get placed right up there with their favorite winter haunts such as Miami, Tampa, and Saint Pete.

  Back at the Ramada Inn, they needed to kill a couple of hours while waiting for nightfall. Mickie luxuriated in a warm bubble bath while Junior and Tommy played a few hands of poker. Bruce contented himself with a crime novel he had swiped from an airport newsstand. Finally, anxious to go to work, Junior threw the playing cards into the trash and told the crew that it was time to get dressed. The three men were attired in their customary business suits; Mickie wore a gray pantsuit with contrasting white blouse and modest bow. As always, a black wig completed her costume. With Junior and Mickie in one car and Tommy and Bruce in the other, they drove to the closest restaurant and had a light meal. Other than Mickie’s comment on the number of people wearing Stetson hats and cowboy boots and Junior’s reminder to Tommy to go easy on the beer, conversation was practically nonexistent.

  Back in the cars, they promptly headed for the wealthy Houston suburb known as the Village. Once in the target area, they slowly traveled along Pine Forrest, Hunters Trail, and Country Squire Roads, all the while noting apparently unoccupied homes, particularly those adorned with a tiny red light by the front door. Junior finally decided that a spot along Coach Road would be the best place to park the second (or “drop”) vehicle. With the whole crew in the main car, they were now ready to strike.

  In a matter of minutes and with little debate, the foursome decided on a handsome three story colonial at 5927 Pine Forrest Road as the evening’s first piece of work. Junior was let out of the car, walked up the driveway, and rang the doorbell. After a few seconds he could be heard knocking on the front door, and a few seconds after that he was seen moving to the rear of the structure. When he returned to the front door, he gave his partners the thumbs-up sign, and Bruce and Tommy—the latter with walkie-talkie in hand—promptly joined him. Mickie took the wheel, turned on the communications equipment, and slowly drove off. The three men would be in the house less than 15 minutes, but it was a highly profitable 15 minutes.

  Among the items taken were 10 albums containing Graf Zeppelin and other early airmail stamps, as well as early plate locks; an enormous coin collection including full mint sets for a half-dozen different years and 10,000 pennies, many dating back to the Civil War; silver goblets; two diamond tie tacks; a Rolex watch; and several pieces of expensive jewelry. The owner, more than a little stunned that the thieves had gotten around his sophisticated alarm system, would later inform the FBI that the items taken were worth well over $50,000.

  After Mickie was notified that the job was complete, the goods were transferred to the drop car, and Mickie drove the trio to back to Pine Forrest Road, where they entered and cleaned out another home. They walked out with 12 demitasse and 12 silver bouillon spoons, a four-piece sterling silver Royal Danish serving set, 10 pairs of gold earrings, a platinum necklace topped off with a two-and-one-half carat diamond, a gold watch with six diamonds, two mink stoles, and more.

  After a quick trip back to the drop car, Mickie then took the men to 314 Hunters Trail, where they repeated the drill despite the state-of-the-art Westinghouse alarm system with a backup directly wired to the Village Police Department.

  The next stops were 1125 North Country Squire Road (cash, jewelry, silverware, and several mink coats) and 815 Creek Woodway (a heart-shaped platinum diamond band encrusted with five diamonds, a gold watch with 16 rubies and nine diamonds, a gold ring with two center diamonds, a pair of gold earrings inlaid with a diamond and pearl, and, for good measure, a tourmaline mink jacket and matching hat).

  The trunks of both cars were now filled with every imaginable expensive item, from Hummel figurines and silver candelabra to fine jewelry and mink coats, not to mention the two hundred pounds of coins that stressed the automobile’s suspension system. In a little less than two hours, Junior Kripplebauer, his wife, Mickie, Tommy Seher, and Bruce Agnew had broken into four homes, cleaned out at least a quarter-million dollars worth of goods, and administered a long-lasting trauma to the community’s psyche. For this K&A crew, it was just an average night’s work.

  Their work, of course, was production work, a home burglary system that had been perfected over two decades and was still pulverizing the nation well into the late 1970s.

  LOCAL AND STATE POLICE officials were pinballing between embarrassment, frustration, and annoyance. It was the summer of 1959, and communities in central Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region were being ravaged by an astute and crafty group of burglars who appeared out of thin air, entered homes and businesses at will, avoided detection, and left law enforcement authorities slack-jawed and mystified. Out of nowhere, it seemed, residents of Lycoming, Clinton, Berks, Union, and Columbia Counties were being besieged as if a plague of locusts had descended on them. From the homes of prominent doctors to commercial cattle dairies, citizens all over the region were caught in the undertow.

  Weeks went by before the first lea
d surfaced: a description of a suspicious automobile and unfamiliar, well-dressed men driving through the countryside. Finally, in early July, Pennsylvania state police made an arrest in a Williamsport motel room and confiscated several thousand dollars in cash, a rare coin collection, an assortment of expensive jewelry, and “a complete set of burglary tools.” But their catch was less impressive—at least numerically—than the army they had expected to find. Instead, it turned out to be a particularly industrious “road company of four Philadelphia criminals.”

  It was no ordinary road company, however. It was a crew of supremely gifted and accomplished burglars: Hughie Breslin, 28; Jimmy Laverty, 27; Harry Stocker, 36; and Effie Burkowski, 33. Though the distraught victims would probably have taken little solace from the fact even if they had known it at the time, their central Pennsylvania communities had been pillaged by the best. The four Kensington burglars were the equivalent of Ruth and Gehrig’s ’27 Yankees in the world of burglardom.

  Pennsylvania’s heartland was by no means the only recipient of the K&A Gang’s affection. As Jimmy Laverty says, “From the earliest days, we did jobs outside the city.” “Let’s go find some virgin territory” seems to have been a constant refrain of the gang members.

  Initially, says John McManus, the novice Irish burglars followed the Jewish businessmen of Kensington Avenue back to their homes in Northeast Philadelphia and suburban Cheltenham. “We’d see a guy get in his Cadillac after closing his shop and follow him back to his house. We didn’t have nothing against the Jews, but the Jews had a lot and we didn’t have anything.” The abundance of “gold, diamonds, and cash” discovered in Jewish residential targets would be the centerpiece of the gang’s livelihood for many years to come.

  It wasn’t long before affluent communities such as Chestnut Hill in Northwest Philadelphia, Elkins Park and Rydal north of the city, and Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Radnor along the well-to-do Main Line were also receiving the burglars’ attention. “I’ve probably been in every house in Chestnut Hill,” says Jackie Johnson matter-of-factly. Others had their own favorite hunting grounds. “La La (McQuoid) loved the Main Line,” recalls Johnson. “He didn’t like to travel too far.”

  Few others, however, had such reservations. “We’d go out on the road for a few days or a week,” says Ray Mann, “and do pretty damn well.” In fact, year after year more and more road companies were coming out of Kensington and traveling the new superhighways and the bucolic back roads of America, searching for “virgin territory” in some remote, pastoral corner of New England or, just a stone’s throw away, across the Delaware River. “New Jersey was made for burglars,” says Jimmy Laverty. “You could drive down the street of most neighborhoods and almost tell how the job would go and if it was worth it by how the houses were lit and the way the shrubs were cut.” Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, Moorestown, Princeton, and other Jersey bedroom communities soon became regular haunts of K&A gang members. Some crews ventured up into Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and beyond, visiting Bethlehem, Allentown, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, and Scranton, while others headed west along the Pennsy Turnpike to Lancaster, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh.

  During the 1950s, as Sears, Burke, Breslin, Laverty, McQuoid, Stocker, and company became more proficient in their chosen profession, their excursions stretched to distant locales as far west as Ohio and up and down the East Coast, from plush Connecticut suburbs to Virginia tidewater estates. But wealthy towns in North Jersey and Long Island became “favorite areas” for most Kensington crews. Jimmy Laverty, for example, was especially fond of the Oranges, Teaneck, and Tenafly in New Jersey and ritzy Long Island towns like Sag Harbor, Oyster Bay, and East Hampton.

  “We were doing good in Pennsylvania,” says Laverty, “but New York was a whole other story. There was little jewelry in Hazleton, Scranton, and Wilkes-Barre. It was mostly cash. How many opera houses do you have up there? Any woman up there with a nice ring probably never takes it off. In New York there’d be $15,000 in cash lying around a house, plus a safe with more cash and all sorts of fine jewelry, expensive artwork, and silverware. The New York bedroom communities were a wealth of stuff. We hit every town of consequence up there.” Laverty was not alone in his fondness for the area. “We really hit Long Island,” says Fancy Frank Mawhinney. “We’d look for a house that looked unoccupied and that was it.” Westchester, Scarsdale, the Hamptons, and many other affluent New York towns soon became the Promised Land for a growing number of K&A road companies.

  For Donnie Johnstone, a Kensington boy who learned the business in the fifties from the likes of Sears, Effie, and Jimmy Laverty, there was a comforting regimentation about the business. “We’d leave on a Wednesday and come back on Sunday,” says Johnstone. “First we’d find a motel to stash our stuff and then go out and do two or three houses in a row and then move to another neighborhood and do two or three more. You’d just keep driving until you found a nice neighborhood. That was production work. Usually we’d eat dinner at three in the afternoon and then start doing production work at 4:30. We were usually done and back at a bar by nine.”

  K&A burglary teams quickly learned to home in on elite neighborhoods, drawn by “well-known private country clubs that were usually surrounded by large, wealthy homes,” Johnstone recalls. Street smarts, experience, and a ruthless entrepreneurial spirit contributed to a sound and fruitful geographic targeting system. “We’d go into a town,” says Jimmy Laverty, “and look up the private country clubs in a phone book. Most of the homes around these fancy clubs belonged to doctors. And the doctors were predominantly Jewish. All of them had cash.”

  “Jewish neighborhoods were good,” says Jimmy Dolan. “Jewish women had to have jewelry. They loved to show their jewelry off.” For many years, according to Dolan, “jewelry was the meat of the game.”

  Whether the goal was cash, jewelry, coin collections, or artwork, Jewish residences were considered a bonus. An impressive home with a manicured lawn and well-tended shrubs situated in an upscale neighborhood was always inviting. Add a mezuzah on the doorframe, and the Philly crews found it irresistible. “My eyes would light up and my heart would beat a little faster when I went up to the house to see if anybody was home and saw that mezuzah on the door,” says Johnny Boggs. He’d curl his index finger in the crude shape of a hooked nose to signal to his partners in the car that the house belonged to Jews.

  To a man, however, the gang members insist that their voracious appetite for burglarizing Jewish households had less to do with anti-Semitism than with practical financial concerns. They viewed themselves as businessmen looking for the best return on their labor. “That’s where the money was,” as con man and prison escape artist Willie Sutton is said to have replied when asked why he robbed banks. For the K&A burglars, Jewish homes contained the cash, jewelry, furs, expensive silverware, and other items of value they were looking for. Years of persistent, dedicated effort across large swathes of the nation had confirmed who had the goods.

  “The worst thing we could see when we entered a home,” says 80-year-old Billy McClurg, “was a crucifix on the wall. We immediately knew there wouldn’t be anything of value to steal. The worst thing you could smell upon entering a house was wine. Italians may have money, but many of them don’t keep it in the house.” Known as “Billy Blew” to all his confederates, McClurg says the crews he worked with targeted “Jewish neighborhoods” almost exclusively. “We’d drive up to a town like Scranton or someplace in upstate New York and look in the phone book for Jewish synagogues. Those were the neighborhoods we wanted. That’s where the money was.”

  In fact, some gang members sound like demographers or sociologists. German families,” according to Jimmy Laverty, “had beautiful homes and substantial bank statements, but they weren’t flashy and had little jewelry. They never left money lying around the house. You’ll never get 10 cents out of a German’s house.” The homes of “gentiles” in general were less attractive to the burglary community. “She’s got a diamond she’s never tak
en off and the guy gets paid by check,” says Laverty bluntly. Lawyers, surprisingly, were equally unappealing. They had all their “money invested. It was never in their house.” For Laverty, as well as most of his accomplices, the homes of Jews and some Italians were the most rewarding. “They’re flashy people and love jewelry. They had the money.”

  “Most gentiles didn’t have too much,” adds Donnie Johnstone. “But when you saw a mezuzah on a door, it meant a half a score at least and possibly a home run.” Most of the old Kensington burglars flatly admit that Jewish homes were the core of their business, and some claim mezuzah-adorned properties represented 90 percent of their trade. “Hell, we’d cross over into Jersey,” says Donnie Abrams, “get a phone book and look up the fucking Jews. And that’s where we went. We’d look up all the Jews, see a mezuzah on the door, and hit ’em.”

  WITH THE EXCEPTION of carpenters and mechanics accustomed to working on heavy machinery, most people encountering a #9714 screwdriver might mistake it for a simple household implement bulked up by steroids. In actuality, they have come upon one of the most valuable pieces—arguably the centerpiece—of a Kensington burglar’s weighty arsenal. The sturdy steel screwdriver, three feet long, three-quarters of an inch thick, was as indispensable to the Kensington burglar as a typewriter was to an author or a calculator to an accountant. Nicknamed “the brute,” the hefty crowbar-like hunk of metal was an all-purpose device that could, for starters, shatter a well-built door lock (assuming that the burglars didn’t already have the keys to it).

  “It was the basic tool of a burglar,” says Jimmy Dolan, “and one store owner got rich selling them.” “We used to buy five or 10 at a time,” recalls Jackie Johnson. “That was a key piece of the equipment,” adds Donnie Johnstone. “Not many doors could stand up to it.”