“Joe just refused to work,” says Moran. “He tried it once or twice, but didn’t like it. He was quite bright though, and a good conversationalist. Everybody loved him, especially the burglars. If anybody got a score, they’d drop a note on him. But Joe Doc was spunky. Even though he was a skinny runt and not much more than a hundred pounds, he wouldn’t take shit from anybody. He once jumped off a bar stool and punched Charlie Devlin in the face. And if he thought he was getting stiffed, he’d let you know. He read the papers every day and saw what was supposed to have been stolen from various homes. If he thought the guys were going a little light in what they were giving him, he’d blow the hair out of his eyes, step up to the guys and tell ’em, ‘You know you can do better than that.’ Yeah, Joe Doc was a real character.”
Part III
The Life of a
K&A Burglar
10. Keys to the Kingdom
Me, Bruce Agnew, and Don Johnstone went up to Boston to do a job one time. Donny had gotten a tip about a jewelry salesman who lived up there. In fact, he had gotten quite a few tips. He had met a guy purely by accident at a restaurant in Northeast Philly and struck up a conversation with him. The guy turned out to be a jewelry salesman from Brooklyn who was selling his stuff downtown at Jewelers’ Row and a few places in the Northeast. Before long Donny has this guy drunk. They’re becoming buddies, and he soon has this guy smoking pot in his car and giving up the names and addresses of other jewelry salesmen working the East Coast. A deal is arranged where Donny will give him a 10 percent cut on everything we score from his tips. The crew did pretty good. They hit the homes of several of these jewelry salesmen in North Jersey, New York, and Connecticut and are bringing in something like $290,000 at a time. It was good work.
So now we’re up in Massachusetts looking at one of these guys that’s been fingered. The guy was supposed to be swimming in jewelry. It sounded real good. Me, Donny, and Bruce get a motel room for the three of us to stash our things, and then Bruce and I go to the guy’s house. But the place is occupied. The guy and his wife are home, so we figure we’ll wait around for a while and see what happens. Each time we check, we can see they’re both drinking pretty good, so we figure we’ll just wait them out and take the place when they’re asleep.
They finally fall asleep and we go in. We take the whole place. We took five bags of jewels, nice stuff. Everything is going great, but now we’re waiting for Don to come pick us up. We’re waiting and waiting. We keep looking out the window, but he doesn’t show. We’re wondering, did something go wrong? Did the cops pick him up? Now time is going by and we’re getting nervous. We know the salesman and his wife aren’t gonna sleep forever. And besides that, we’re strangers in the neighborhood. Hours go by. We’re fucking pissed. Bruce was tough on a score; he wouldn’t stop. He’s now swearing he’s gonna kill Johnstone if he ever sees him again.
Just as we feared, the salesman wakes up, and we then have to put a gun to his head and tell him to relax and go back to sleep. We tie the people up, and now we’ve gone from a simple burglary to an armed robbery. Johnstone still doesn’t show up. We’re both ready to kill him.
Finally, the sun is coming up and Bruce and I have to get out of there. It looks like Don ain’t ever gonna show, so we decide to take the jeweler’s car and drive back to the motel. When we get there, Johnstone’s asleep on the bed. Empty beer cans are lying all over the place. He was asleep all night while we’re waiting for his drunken ass. He got drunk in the motel room waiting for us to take the jeweler’s place, fell asleep, and while we’re in somebody else’s house, holding somebody else’s jewelry, and waiting for him to pick us up, he’s out drunk. Bruce was so pissed he wanted to shoot him right there. Fortunately for Don, he had given us a few big scores with his tips, or Bruce would have clipped him up there in Boston.
—JUNIOR KRIPPLEBAUER
“WE WERE OUT ALMOST EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK,” says Junior Kripplebauer of his introduction to production work in the early sixties. “I was working with Billy Blew, Fleck, and Bloomie at least four and sometimes five nights a week. We’d travel up Routes 611 and 309 into Bucks and Montgomery Counties looking for places to rob. Houses, businesses, car dealerships, whatever looked good at the time. We’d do four, five houses a night, but if the residential stuff was tied up, we’d grab a commercial operation. It wasn’t unusual for us to be on the way back from a few scores at the end of the night and stop at a big car dealership along 611. We’d drive to the back of the place, and usually they’d have everything we’d need waiting for us: oxygen tanks, acetylene tanks, and all sorts of heavy tools. We’d then go to the office, break in, and start working on the safe. Sometimes we could punch it open and be out of there in a few minutes. Other times it would take a while, and we’d have to burn or rip the safe open.
“We once knocked off a Robert Hall clothing store in Bristol and got a whole load of men’s suits. We walked out of there with over 200 suits. For a while there I thought I was a haberdasher. We were selling jackets, pants, and men’s suits out of a garage in Kensington for weeks.
“Production work allowed you to make money, set your own hours, and have a little fun at the same time. If you were working and the first one or two houses you hit were a bust, you still had a shot that one of the others that night would bring in a wad of cash or a couple of diamond rings. Sometimes we’d make decent money. We’d whack up five, six, seven thousand dollars, so you might grab anywhere from a “G” to a couple thousand a night. If you could open safes, you could really do okay at commercial.
“Billy liked suburban Philadelphia neighborhoods like Bristol, Yardley, Ambler, Montgomeryville; he wasn’t too interested in going out of state. We never took a gun. It was forbidden. You could get spooked and do something you shouldn’t. Carrying a gun only caused problems and added to your sentence if you were caught.”
As with most other K&A crew members, Kripplebauer also learned that bigger was not always better in regard to residential targets. “I didn’t want to do the 30-room estates and mansions,” says Junior. “There were too many bedrooms. It took an hour to find the master bedroom. I liked three-bedroom houses, where it was easier to find the master bedroom. This way the jewelry and valuables were all within sight. I became a pretty good searcher. Good enough that I could find stuff somebody else had passed over or not seen.”
Junior quickly absorbed the craft’s nuances, maybe too quickly. He learned “to go to the library to check where synagogues were located” and to “check the phone book for Jewish names” in order to ascertain where large numbers of Jewish families resided. Since his crew had the keys to most alarm systems, he learned to look for homes sporting “red lights” and that “two or three alarmed houses next to each other” equaled “a home run.” And he learned the nuances of safe work, everything from “punch-dialing a niggerhead” (one of the old, large, black safes common in commercial establishments) to “burning” a twoton Mosler or Diebolt.
Gradually, however, Junior’s opportunistic, entrepreneurial spirit caused him to explore the workings of other Kensington crews and more distant geographic targets. More ominously, that edgy restlessness also propelled him to pick up a gun on occasion and explore more diverse, dangerous, and lucrative criminal endeavors.
The Randolph and Erie social clubs and the popular shot-and-beer joints like the Shamrock, Marty’s, and the Crescent—all heavily patronized by a cross-section of K&A burglars and other criminal types—were greenhouses for tricks, scams, swindles, zany ideas, and screwy tips. Crews shared information, personnel, and equipment such as alarm keys, cars, drills, burning rods, and acetylene tanks. By the mid-1960s, Kripplebauer was working with a variety of Kensington teams that took a more aggressive approach to earning money, crews that targeted the homes of prominent citizens and possessed a more expansive geographic portfolio. He started going out with crews that regularly crossed the river into Jersey to loot properties in Cherry Hill, Moorestown, and Princeton. Pretty soon North Jer
sey, Long Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and the fashionable neighborhoods of Squirrel Hill and Fox Chapel in Pittsburgh would become staples of Junior’s travel schedule. Eventually, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, and everything in between would be included in his domain. In short, Junior Kripplebauer quickly earned a reputation as a moneymaker and consummate criminal who was not only opportunistic but prepared to do just about anything for a decent score. Even a routine trip to the local supermarket for some groceries could turn into an exciting and profitable adventure.
“One day I’m on the way home,” recalls Junior, “and I stop at the local Food Fair in Kensington at “M” and Luzerne Streets to pick up a few things. I decide to give Sammie [girlfriend Sammie Baich] a call and tell her I’m right around the corner at the supermarket and I’ll be home in a few minutes. Well, while I’m on the phone with her the store manager walks right by me, and he’s carrying two bricks of cash. Big ones. Each must have been four, five inches high and packed with twenties and fifties. I figure there’s gotta be a hundred grand there. I’m tempted to stick him up right there and make a break for the door, but there was extra security at the time because they were doing construction work on the store and had brought in extra people to keep an eye on the construction workers. I watched the manager open the safe right near where I’m standing. It’s close to the store’s front window so you can see it from the parking lot. In those days, big food stores like Penn Fruit and Food Fair kept their safes by the front window. They thought if it could be seen from the street, they were protecting themselves against a robbery or burglary. But I’m thinking to myself, if I got any luck at all I’m gonna be fat with cash tonight.
“Soon as I see the manager lock the money in the safe, I call Petie Masone and tell him to bring the hardware; we got a score. I tell him I just saw a hundred grand put in the store’s safe. I then went out in the parking lot and sat in my car to make sure the manager, or anybody else for that matter, didn’t come along and take the money out of the safe. I wasn’t leaving that baby for a second.
“When Petie shows up we sat in my car and talked it over. The safe was pretty big—probably 5,000 pounds—so we can’t just pick the damn thing up and carry it out. And it had round doors, which were usually tougher than the square ones to tear open. It would’ve taken too long to peel open and you’re right out in the open by the store’s front window. We talked about it for a couple hours and came up with a plan. We called Tony to come and keep an eye on the safe while Petie and I went over to see Bloomie, who worked at a garage next to Marty’s Bar at Germantown and Allegheny. We got a set of tanks from him and went next door to a truck rental agency and picked up a good-sized truck with a lift on the back. We then got an eight-foot Johnson bar that’s used by railroad workers to clear train wrecks.
“We sat in the parking lot till long after the store closed. It must’ve been two in the morning when we made our move. We go to the back door, break in, and use a hand-truck and the Johnson bar to haul the safe to the rear loading dock. We get the safe onto the truck and take it over to a garage, where I must have spent a good two hours burning that sucker open. Then we started counting. I sort of lost count when we hit $87,000.
“But now it’s getting close to sunrise and we got all this wet money. I had to flood the safe to make sure I didn’t burn any of the cash. We take all the cash over to my place and hang it in the basement like it’s the weekly laundry. Bed sheets and washrags all over the place. We had to dry it out. It’s all over the house, on lines, on the steps, over chairs, tables, and wall pictures. I took a photograph of it, ’cause it looked so damn funny.
“Two days later, Captain Ferguson, Herb Rhodes, Tony Cristelli, and the Special Investigations Squad are at my front door with a warrant to search the house. Sammie is the only one home. They arrest her and take almost $18,000 they find in the house. It was my share of the job.
“When Sammie’s hearing comes up at the House of Correction, I go there with Steve LaCheen, my attorney, and as soon as they see me they arrest me and hit me with a $50,000 bail. Now Sammie, who’s just out on bail, has to bring money up for my hearing. And what do those fuckers do when they see her? They arrest her again. It went on that way four times, re-arresting us each time we were making bail for the other. They really wanted me bad. I told Herbie Rhodes, “You can break my balls, but you don’t have to break hers.” But Fergie was mad as a motherfucker ’cause he knew I did that job and he wanted that money.
“He never got it, though. Eventually Food Fair sued me in court for over $100,000, but they never got it either. Steve represented me in that case too. We won and I kept the money. Actually, Steve kept it. I had to pay him for representing me.”
Junior’s larcenous and industrious heart never skipped a beat. As long as he wasn’t on ice behind bars somewhere, he was working. By quickly digesting the rudiments of production work and displaying a naturally bold, standup demeanor, Junior became a hot property. Both second story men and gunmen wanted to work with him. He was loyal, dependable, and apparently fearless. In addition, he was a moneymaker; he always seemed to have cash. Every day he listened to hot tips from prospective partners.
“More than most of the K&A guys, I went back and forth between burglaries and the occasional stickup,” says Kripplebauer. “I’d usually decide as the opportunity presented itself. I made more money on those rare occasions with a gun doing robberies and walk-ins, but I liked burglaries better because it was safer. There was less chance of hurting anybody and a smaller chance of getting a big sentence if you were caught.
“If it sounded good, I’d do it. For example, in the spring of ’67, Fleck [Billy Blew’s half-brother, Jackie Fleckenstine] comes up to me and says he’s got a great tip. It’s a gigantic estate along the Delaware River in Bucks County. It’s a mansion owned by the Biddle family, one of the most historic and socially prominent families in America. He said there was five million dollars in jewelry up there along the river just waiting for us to grab.
“Fleck always had a hot tip. He always had big plans, big ideas. The guy exaggerated everything. Everything he came up with always included five million in jewelry. Whatever the house, business, or institution, it always included five million in jewelry. Fleck was a bullshit artist, but I loved him. He was a tall, good-looking guy with piercing blue eyes, and he always wore a black suit and sparkling white shirt. The girls just loved him. I was always skeptical of his claims, but this Biddle thing sounded good, too good to pass up, so we put a crew together. It was me, Fleck, Mitchell, and Three-Fingers Hurst. It was gonna be a straight burglary; no one was supposed to be carrying anything that could get us in trouble.
“Once we got up there and took a look at the place, we were all pretty impressed. The house was so imposing. It had these huge Roman columns in front. It was immense. Once you saw the house, you figured there’s gotta be something in there. It had money written all over it. We turn off the alarm, make sure as best we can that no one’s home, and then enter the place. It’s big, real big. We’re searching all over, checking out all the bedrooms, but we’re not finding anything. Yeah, there were fancy tea sets and silverware, but we were expecting to find cash and jewelry. And we were expecting lots of it. I jumped all over Fleck ’cause there wasn’t any money and only a little bit of jewelry. I figure once again he’s given me a bum steer.
“At one point I’m even up in the attic wandering around looking for something of value. It’s then that I come upon an old colonial uniform from the Revolutionary War. Something Washington would have worn. It had epaulets, brace buttons, and lots of fancy gold trim. There was even a real three-cornered hat and an officer’s sword to go with it. Just for the hell of it I put on the jacket and hat and march downstairs with sword in hand and yell out to the guys, ‘Good evening, gentlemen. May I introduce myself? I’m General Nicholas Biddle of the Continental Army and I’d like to inform you that this is my personal residence you’re standing in and you’re all under arrest.’
>
“After being momentarily startled, the guys fell over laughing. They got a big kick out of it. All of them at some time or other had been surprised by a homeowner returning early while pulling a job, but never had they been surprised by anyone in the getup I was wearing. They wanted to try on the hat and coat. Fleck takes the sword from me and starts swinging it all over the place. He must have seen too many Errol Flynn movies. He thinks he’s a soldier in Washington’s army fighting the Prussians or something and starts stabbing things including a few lamps, sofa pillows, and a couple paintings on the wall. This was still in the sixties, before we realized there was money in old paintings. He thought it was funny, but I told him to cut it out. I was still pissed about the absence of any decent money and jewelry in the place. I told him to take the sword and a few nice looking shotguns we found and go kill that fucking tipper of his. The mansion was a blank. It looked great, but there wasn’t much of anything in there.
“The next morning while I’m driving over to Fleck’s place, I hear on the radio the report about the Biddle estate in Andalusia being robbed. They’re making a big deal about it ’cause it’s one of the biggest mansions in the area and was once the home of Nicholas Biddle, the founder of the Second Bank of the United States. According to the report the burglars walked off with a rare collection of hand-tooled English shotguns worth over $10,000. Now I’m starting to feel a little bit better. Maybe we’ll make a couple bucks out of it after all. But when I get to Fleck’s, I can’t believe he’s down in the basement sawing the barrels off the guns.
Confessions of a Second Story Man Page 20
