Confessions of a Second Story Man

by Allen M. Hornblum

  Other thieves were indifferent to the whole business. “By the time the books came along,” says one, “we were doing most of our work outside of Philly. They didn’t have any of the mug shot books, so we didn’t have to worry about it.”

  Despite such negative to apathetic reviews, the blue books gradually became a bestseller—especially among the more aggressive East Coast police departments. Desperate for information about the slick operators looting the homes of their most prominent citizens, law enforcement officials sought out the Philly handbook once they learned that it was the K&A Gang that had invaded their turf. Local and state authorities from Maine to Florida began sharing information on the gang’s members, tactics, and potential targets. Small-town law enforcement agencies basically conceded that they were facing a unique and unprecedented criminal onslaught. Though almost all eventually learned it was a resourceful and relentless gang of predominantly Irish thieves out of Philadelphia that was committing the crimes, they were in no position to tackle the perpetrators by themselves. Waltham, Westport, Saratoga Springs, Princeton, and Annapolis could not be expected to do the job alone. Gathering and sharing information, as well as the dissemination of Brophy’s blue books, were critical first steps in law enforcement’s counterattack. Within a short time, and for several decades thereafter, homemade versions of Philly’s Rogue’s Gallery would pop up in communities from Bar Harbor to Fort Lauderdale and as far west as Ohio, Missouri, and Texas.

  For example, one helpful Maryland state trooper sent a memo concerning information gathered by a high-ranking state trooper in Delaware to a third colleague in the New Jersey state police: “I am writing you in regards to... the K&A burglary gang. We experienced approximately a year and a half ago a series of eleven burglaries in two fashionable sections of Salisbury. They occurred between November 1968 and March 1969 on four separate weekends, usually on Saturday evenings, hitting two or three homes in the early evening hours. In each case culprits would gain entrance to the home by prying a sliding glass door apparently with a small screwdriver. Once inside someone would pull any curtains in the front of the house and turn a chair around facing out as a lookout. A side or rear window would be opened as an escape route and any firearms would be hidden as a precaution. General ransacking in the homes resulted in fine jewelry, silverware, coin collections, and furs taken. They would pass over the poor quality items and silver plate as well as older furs. In several cases liquor was taken and some food was consumed on the premises. It is felt in most cases they were dropped off and picked up by an additional member of the gang. On the evening of September 12, 1970 we experienced two identical burglaries in the same sections. The MO is alike in every detail and we have no doubt the same group is involved.”

  Such missives became commonplace in small-town law enforcement offices during the sixties and seventies, and woe to the police chief who was out of the loop or dismissive of the warnings. Most took the notices seriously—especially if they had been victimized in preceding years. A Greenwich, Connecticut, police official ordered “all detective division commanders in Fairfield County” to be on the lookout for the K&A Gang. He informed his people that the gang was composed of “approximately fifty persons[,]... operates out of Philadelphia[,]” and “was positively known to have been in Greenwich, Easton, and Wilton, Connecticut, and Rye, Harrison, Scarsdale, and New Rochelle, New York.”

  Police intelligence eventually became surprisingly accurate. After being hit so often, local law enforcement agencies not only learned the nuances of production work but also the names of its more aggressive practitioners. For example, one intelligence report describing the “K&A Gang’s method of operations” said “members of this gang operate in groups of three or four men. They leave Philadelphia, and if operating some distance from there, may be gone for several days. They stay in motels and during the summer season and will pick out one having a swimming pool, if available. They may or may not register under their correct names. Two cars are generally taken to the first location and one will return to Philadelphia with the loot immediately after the crime or if this is not done, furs and other identifiable objects will be sent to Philadelphia by other means.

  “Generally, only one car is driven to the scene of the crime. One man remains in the car and cruises around the area. The other two or three men enter the house, usually by the back door using a large screwdriver to force the door. Upon entering the house, blinds may or may not be drawn, closet lights are extinguished by breaking or unscrewing the bulb, and the refrigerator cord disconnected. One man acts as a lookout and the other men ransack the house, dumping bureau, dresser, and desk drawers. In many cases, pillowcases and sheets have been used to carry away the loot. The lookout man stations himself in the rear or front of the house, depending on the most advantageous position, and will drink beverages or eat food while so engaged. Upon completing the search, one man leaves the premises and signals the outside man, or if a radio is being used, this method is employed, who then returns and picks up the rest of the gang. If the outside man is stopped or followed by police, the other men will flee the house, steal a car, and meet at a prearranged location.”

  Occasionally, the police reports would veer dramatically off the mark, as did one stating that K&A gang members “are known to carry weapons and should be considered armed and dangerous.” Most experienced cops knew that the gang rarely, if ever, carried weapons. Generally, though, the intelligence gathered was accurate and perceptive, as in one report that observed: “subjects have been arrested many times and experience has revealed that questioning of these subjects is useless.”

  Information on individual gang members was equally on target. For example, one Connecticut intelligence report describes “James J. Dolan” as a “white male, 32, 5'10", 185 lbs. Hazel eyes, brown hair, medium build, 1345 E. Columbia Ave. Philadelphia, Pa. (Mother’s address). He has his vehicles listed at this address. He buys a new Eldorado Cadillac every year, Penna. Registration JJD-7. Presently has a 1969 Cadillac, turquoise. He had an apartment next to the Chapel-croft Apts. 9629 Bustleton Ave. Philadelphia, but is now living with a woman at Academy Road, Philadelphia, address unknown.”

  One state trooper who received and disseminated scores of reports on the K&A Gang over the years was Richard Richroath of the New Jersey state police. “They were quick and very efficient,” recalls Richroath, a 27-year veteran of the force. “They’d enter a house quickly, rake it, and be gone in three minutes. They would come in a community and knock off several houses in no time at all and seven or eight over the course of a weekend.” Richroath says the gang “picked on the more exclusive communities like Colt’s Neck that had many impressive horse farms and communities with estate type of homes.” The result was not unexpected. “Influential citizens became upset. They were really getting concerned and local politicians started to pressure us to provide better protection in those communities.” Though more manpower and resources were enlisted in the fight, Richroath regretfully admits that they “never had any success in shutting down the K&A Gang.” His only consolation was a general impression that Connecticut was being victimized even worse than New Jersey.

  Detective Jimmy Smith of the Greenwich, Connecticut, Police Department remembers the era and the K&A Gang well. “We had a lot of house burglaries in Greenwich back in the sixties and early seventies,” says Smith. “We were all getting hit a lot, all the cities and towns in New England and New York. We soon learned who was doing the jobs. It was the Irish Mob out of Philly. I think we slowed them down once we finally found out who they were and how they operated. We set up a task force in different towns and neighborhoods in New England and New York. We got to know what to look for, what type of communities they worked in and followed them around in unmarked cars to harass and keep track of them.” Smith said their efforts hindered the burglars, but it “never nailed or convicted any of them. The gang was too quick and experienced. They refused to talk even when we got hold of them.”

  D
espite what occasionally seemed like painfully slow progress, a number of East Coast communities were making some headway. The widespread distribution of blue books, improved intelligence gathering, and proactive policing had an impact. Not surprisingly, the burglars were some of the first to notice. “The blue books and some of the other things the cops did had an effect,” says Jimmy Dolan. “The cops weren’t dopes. They learned the routine. Cops would pull you over, look at our faces, and then turn to the blue books. All it now took was a car stop. You could be up in Connecticut or Massachusetts and your ID says Pennsylvania. You look legitimate; you’re well-dressed. But then the book comes out. After a while, extreme paranoia sets in. You wanted to go to a place where the books didn’t exist and the cops were unconscious. It was always a game of chess with those guys.”

  “THEY WERE CENTRAL CHARACTERS in our operations back then,” says John Lanzidelle, who joined the Philadelphia Police Department in the mid-1950s and worked Major Crimes as a detective during the sixties and seventies. “They did a hell of a lot of work and kept us busy. A lot of those K&A guys were pretty smart. They all knew one another and shared information. They learned from each other—such as how to use burning rods to open safes—and were usually more experienced than the other guys we had to deal with.”

  Over the years Lanzidelle worked everything from simple burglaries to homicides and met some of the most despised and celebrated people in the news. He refers to his time on the police force as his “college education,” but in a subject that few other schools of higher learning offered. “I had a ringside seat to the greatest show on earth,” he says of those exciting years. The K&A Gang played a prominent role in that long-running spectacle.

  “They were pretty personable guys. I never had a bad time with any of them,” says Lanzidelle. “They were good guys. You didn’t fall in love with them, but you wouldn’t mind having a drink with them. You could kid and joke with them. Most of them had a good sense of humor and knew what the score was. And they wouldn’t try to beat you over the head if you ran into them in a bar.” Not that Kensington crowd were a bunch of softies. “There were some bad freakin’ guys in that crowd,” he says. “Guys you wouldn’t want to mess with.” But, he admits, there was also a charming audacity about them that made the K&A crowd something truly special.

  Residential and commercial burglaries in Philadelphia during the fifties, sixties, and seventies weren’t the exclusive preserve of the K&A Gang, but there was a distinctive quality about their work. Their burglaries tended to be bolder in scope, more inventive in their planning, and far more numerous than those of the others practicing theft as a livelihood. In other words, they were more accomplished, more professional; in some cases their work approached true artistry, demonstrating a real flare for originality, critical thinking, and problem solving. Other efforts recalled the original amateur hour.

  John DelCarlino, a Philly police detective who worked Major Crimes through most of the sixties and seventies, spent 17 of his 27 years on the force chasing K&A’s industrious second story men. It didn’t take him long to become a grudging admirer of their work. “Those K&A guys were slick, sharp thieves,” says DelCarlino. “They had common sense, but many of them lived in a dream world. They’d hit homes after dusk, do the burglaries, and then live like kings for a week. They would party 24 hours a day with beautiful girls, buy all sorts of clothes, and booze it up pretty good. And then when they were broke again, they’d go back out and pull some more jobs.

  “They’d come up with fascinating, imaginative ways to get what they wanted. For example, they developed a really innovative scheme to get ahold of some of those expensive diamonds and gems down at Jewelers’ Row in center city Philadelphia. They’d send a couple guys down to Eighth and Sansom Streets and watch the jewelry salesmen go from store to store as they sold their stock of quality diamonds. They weren’t stickup men who were going to blast their way into a well-protected shop or shoot it out with policemen who patrolled the street. They were more sophisticated than that. They’d watch, listen, and learn who had what and who traveled where. In no time at all they came up with a pretty good plan. They took careful notice of the license plates of the cars these jewelry salesmen were driving and then called a crooked cop they had in their employ. They’d give the cop the tag numbers, and he’d give them the home addresses of the salesmen.

  “Later that evening they’d go to the salesman’s house and steal his car. They knew a lot of these guys didn’t even bother to take their stash of goods into the house with them at night. Most salesmen had their car trunks wired with alarms and felt comfortable leaving the inventory in the car. The K&A guys would hot-shot the car, drive it to a garage at Memphis and East Ontario Streets in Kensington, and then go to work on the car. They knew the trunk was wired, but the fender probably wasn’t, so they’d cut the metal fender, then reach in and take the sample jewelry cases. The K&A guys would then fence the stuff with reputedly legitimate jewelers. This went on dozens of times. They made a bundle using that can-opener trick, sometimes in the salesman’s own driveway.

  “It went on for over a year before one of our snitches gave us a call. That’s how we discovered the operation in the first place. An informant tipped us off. A rat that sometimes gave us information called up John Ryan, one of our detectives in Major Crimes, and told him about a stash of hot jewels that could be found down at Nick Sama’s place at 15th and Snyder Avenues in South Philadelphia. We hit Sama’s jewelry store and found a dozen cases of jewelry he said wasn’t his. We had a big press conference with all the jewelry laid out on a table. There were hundreds of rings, brooches, earrings, and bracelets. It was an incredible amount of stuff. We estimated there were 35 jewelry salesmen in Philadelphia alone that were knocked off in this fashion in just one year. They had a pretty good run until we shut ’em down.”

  Not all of the Kensington burglars Lanzidelle and DelCarlino arrested were as inventive and elusive as those who made life miserable for the diamond merchants on Jewelers’ Row. Some thieves could be downright infantile in their approach; others substituted mindless bravado for brains. The results could be disastrous for all concerned. One infamous heist, for example, cost two people their lives, one of them a Philadelphia police officer.

  “We were sitting down at our office at the Roundhouse [Police Administration Building] at Eighth and Race when Captain Bartley came in around mid-morning,” recalled DelCarlino of the 1968 felony-homicide. “Every morning he’d hand us a slew of jobs from the night before that we had to check out. K&A guys had usually done more than their fair share of them. This time Bartley ordered us to ‘get up to the Northeast. It’s a bad one.’

  “When we finally got up to Verree and Welsh Road, the place was crawling with cops. Homicide was there. Stakeout was there. High-ranking police officials were there. Even a few of our guys in Major Crimes were already there. Within a short time the police commissioner, district attorney, and the media would be there too. It was intense. It always is when a cop is killed on duty.

  “A patrolman, William Lackman, responding to a burglary-in-progress call, was shot in the throat as he entered the home of Dr. Frank Washick. The shooter, John Seeley, was then gunned down by police as he tried to flee the doctor’s home. The perps had just been taken away when we got there. Seeley’s body, though, still lay strewn on the front lawn. But they missed one of the burglars. My partner found him hiding in the second floor closet as we went through the house. The guy had crapped his pants he was so scared. We were up there all day and then sent out to interview the neighbors, look up associates of the perpetrators, and find out anything we could about what had just gone down. We went to Kensington and started tracking down all the K&A guys. They all knew each other. It was a lot of legwork, but there was nothing of value.”

  Officer Lackman, an 11-year veteran of the force, was known as “a good hearted” soul who was “full of life” and “never had a nasty word for anybody,” according to the newspaper reports. H
e left a young wife and a four-year-old daughter. His killer, John Seeley, 31, was out on bail for killing another policeman a year earlier. As a troubled youth, Seeley had been declared a “slow learner” and sent to a special school, preventing him from going on to high school, where he had dreamed of playing varsity football. Disillusioned and resentful, he turned to crime, building a record of nine arrests dating back to 1953. The most serious charge, the murder of a policeman, had occurred just 14 months earlier on August 6, 1967, when Seeley arrived at the home of his estranged wife and found Officer Herman J. Dietrich asleep in her bed. He killed the young officer, pistol-whipped his wife, forced her to help him dump the patrolman’s naked body in an empty lot, and was nevertheless allowed to go free on $15,000 bail.

  The highly publicized murder of a policeman during a burglary gone bad gave further adverse publicity to K&A burglars, but it was a misnomer. Some of the burglars involved in the Washick bust may have been from Kensington, but they weren’t K&A burglars, at least according to actual K&A gang members. “Seeley was a rogue, a dangerous mutt,” says one burglar. “He had a bad reputation. I seen him around once or twice in bars we hung at. He’d come in lookin’ for work with any of the crews, but none of our guys would have ever picked him up. He might have done a few burglaries, but he wasn’t really a burglar. He was trouble.”

  When pressed, even the police acknowledge that Seeley’s crew were K&A imposters, impersonating their more sophisticated elders in the hopes of nailing an easy score and building a reputation. They had received a tip that Dr. Washick owned a $50,000 coin collection, but they were amateur screwups posing as veteran highwaymen. “They were Kensington wannabes,” says DelCarlino. “They weren’t the real deal.” There is little doubt in the minds of experienced officers like DelCarlino that if serious second story men out of Kensington had done the job, there would have been no weapons, no deaths, and no coin collection. They would have picked the place clean.