Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  At approximately 9:30 P.M. the first two FBI agents, Jack Kehoe and Leonard Frisoli, arrived at Brink’s and found the premises swarming with people and “totally chaotic,” saw that the robbery area had not been “preserved”—that the crowd inside was disturbing vital evidence, trampling money sacks to the point where cash lay exposed. Kehoe got an early indication the theft might fall under federal jurisdiction: He retrieved a paper money band from the Federal Reserve Bank.

  By 10 P.M. the entire eastern seaboard down to the Virginias had been alerted, and almost every primary and secondary highway in Massachusetts had been blocked. Cars, buses and trucks were being stopped, and “numbers” of license plates belonging to parolees and ex-convicts were being flashed. The increasing snowfall had all but shut down Logan Airport, but public and private airfields throughout the state were being checked, as were abandoned roadhouses and boarded-up summer camps. The Boston Harbor Patrol was cruising through heavy seas in order to frustrate an ocean getaway. And around Copps Hill police and feds worked independently, knocked on residents’ doors, trying to locate eyewitnesses to any part of the heist. Over at police headquarters the largest assemblage of brass since the tragic Cocoanut Grove fire was told by BPD Superintendent Edward W. Fallon that as much as $1,000,000 might have been stolen and that one eyewitness to the getaway had been located. He further stated something he absolutely could not have known at this early juncture—that seven costumed and masked armed robbers had perpetrated the crime.

  At 10:30 P.M., with commercial radio news bulletins announcing the first million-dollar cash stickup in American history, Jimmy Costa dropped in on Richardson and Baker and was told the tally to date was slightly over $1,000,000 in good usable bills with five and a half sisal sacks of loot still to be counted. Costa took $20,000 and left. Jazz Maffie showed up shortly after that, as per plan. Then, not according to plan, Gusciora and O’Keefe wandered in. None of the three wanted money. Banfield, who was expected, showed up with Joe McGinnis, who was unexpected. McGinnis announced the heat was so intense and so many cops had come to question him regarding Brink’s that he didn’t dare take the counted money for overnight safekeeping as was previously agreed. Rather than argue, Henry Baker said he knew a person who could “hold” part of the haul. A wire shopping basket containing $380,000 in counted bills was taken from the room. Before leaving with Baker and the basket, Richardson helped himself to $10,000. McGinnis eyed the sack containing some $60,000 in “bad money,” took Maffie aside and suggested maybe the bad money should not be destroyed as planned, perhaps it should be “laundered”—chemically processed to look old and used. Maffie responded sharply and negatively. Joe tried the idea on Gusciora and O’Keefe, was again rebuffed. Banfield and McGinnis departed. A few minutes after that, Maffie, Gusciora and O’Keefe turned off the light and left the loot—which they were certain exceeded $2,000,000 in usable money—alone.

  Jimmy Costa stopped by Pino’s apartment, gave his brother-in-law $10,000 in stolen money, departed immediately for home. Sandy Richardson dropped his $10,000 off at a friend’s house, got back in his car, opened the glove compartment, took out the bottle of whiskey and, as he drove, began drinking with a vengeance.

  By 11 P.M. the headquarters meeting was over and the BPD’s manhunt shifted into high gear. Word went down to SP every known criminal in the area. Word also went down not to bother with Pino and McGinnis. Lieutenant James V. Crowley had talked to both of them shortly after 7 P.M.—while the robbery was believed to be in progress. High on the Boston police list of parolees and ex-cons to be questioned were Mike Geagan, Henry Baker, Specs O’Keefe and Stanley Gusciora. Gusciora and Banfield were also on the “numbers” list of license plates being radioed by the state police.

  Sandy Richardson took a long swig from the bottle, poured the remaining whiskey on his jacket and shirt, walked from the car into his living room, stripped to an undershirt, plopped down in an armchair. When his wife returned from visiting her sister, he pretended to have passed out. He heard her mutter a few unsympathetic words and stride off to the bedroom. He heard his son entering the house. Sandy lit a cigarette. His son dawdled in the kitchen. Sandy puffed harder. He heard the youth starting for the living room. Sandy closed his eyes, lay back as far as he could, let the cigarette drop on his chest. The boy entered to see the cigarette burning through his father’s undershirt, burning the skin, and let out a shout. Wife and son poured water on the smoldering flesh, but still couldn’t wake Sandy, who they assumed was dead drunk, assumed had been dead drunk and sitting in the chair, all evening.

  At 11:15 P.M. Jazz Maffie slipped unnoticed into Jimmy O’Keefe’s busy restaurant for a second time since the robbery, glanced into the dining room and saw his wife still chatting to the off-duty waitress she had been chatting with when he had excused himself fifty minutes earlier, headed into the bar. Jimmy Costa opened the basement closet, which had held Tony’s tools and tumblers at 3 Fuller Street, reached up on a top shelf, opened a Monopoly set, placed his $10,000 of stolen money in with the printed bills of the game. Specs O’Keefe discovered the lobby of the Copley Square Hotel was teeming with cops, walked over to the house phone, called upstairs to his room, heard someone pick up, heard a muffled male voice in the background saying, “Answer,” heard his girl say hello, hung up and left undetected.

  Edward Souci, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston field office, arrived home from a speaking engagement in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, answered the ringing phone and was told by his old chum, commissioner of the Boston Police Department, Thomas A. “Colonel Tom” Sullivan, “There’s been a big loot at Brink’s.” Souci showered and got to Brink’s shortly before midnight, found the premises as jammed and disorderly as when his subordinates had entered more than two and a half hours before. From the the moment he walked in, Souci wanted the case for the FBI but wasn’t certain what if any federal statute had been broken. He ordered his operatives to continue doing what they had been doing—investigate to see if the bureau had a legal right to investigate. Souci didn’t have to mention that the special agents should keep out of the police’s way. There had been bad blood between the FBI and BPD for quite some time. Souci’s friendship with Commissioner Sullivan didn’t help. Rank-and-file cops disliked Colonel Tom almost as much as they disliked the bureau.

  Tony Pino waited until he was certain Mary was asleep, got out of bed and went into the bathroom to check the ten grand Costa had given him. He saw that $1,600 was in “new bills” with consecutive serial numbers and almost tearfully flushed all $1,600 down the toilet, not realizing the money was absolutely good, wasn’t recorded anywhere.

  It was past midnight and snowing heavily when Stanley Gusciora, who was being sought for questioning by both BPD and state troopers, slammed on his brakes and skidded into the rear of a car already at a red light. A Boston police cruiser pulled up, assessed the damage as light, checked the licenses and registrations of both drivers, sent Gusciora on his way with a warning to be more cautious.

  Specs O’Keefe sneaked up to his hotel room. Maffie and his wife left Jimmy O’Keefe’s restaurant and drove home. By two o’clock all robbers and abettors were asleep in beds of their own choosing—including Jimma Faherty, who was snoring away in a jail cell.

  During a 2:15 A.M. news conference at Brink’s, BPD Superintendent Fallon stated that the robbers had made off with $1,000,000 in cash and $500,000 in securities and went on to itemize the money left behind: $50,000 in coins, an $880,000 payroll for General Electric and $120,000 in receipts from Filene’s department store—$1,050,000 in all. Fallon had no doubt it was an inside job and probably “planned for weeks with blueprints and rehearsals.” The thieves obviously had had keys to the premises, inasmuch as the company reported no keys missing, and must have had copies made.

  According to Fallon, the heist was so perfectly conceived “they could have marched fifty men in there and cleaned out the whole place, including the one million dollars left behind because they couldn�
�t carry, it.”

  Like the press, Fallon became accusatory of Brink’s, wanted to know why no burglar alarm had sounded, why there was so little premises security, why the company never asked for police protection.

  Fallon pledged the greatest manhunt in Boston’s history but admitted “his department had little or nothing to work on. Witnesses don’t agree on the description of the men, and the only voice they heard was that of the leader which was mumbled and muffled through the mask he wore.

  “No one knows how the men drove up to the place or where they parked. We have witnesses who believe that one man was left in each of two cars and a third served as lookout.”

  A 3:30 A.M. Division 1 BPD journal entry—the official summary of the crime and police knowledge—set the time of perpetration at 7:10 P.M., stated that seven armed men—all between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age and standing five seven or five eight and weighing 160 to 170 pounds—entered the premises with keys, approached the “checking cage,” held up the five employees, then filled two large bags with packages of money. Also stolen were four handguns belonging to Brink’s. Left behind as evidence were six pieces of adhesive tape, a quantity of awning rope and a chauffeur’s cap. The robbers left “by the front of the building.” All seven of the holdup men wore pea coats, dark trousers and hooded masks. Six had worn rubbers, and one had on brown shoes. Six had on chauffeur’s caps, a seventh a tweed cap. An eighth man had remained outside in a large black sedan during the robbery. He was described as being fifty years of age, five feet eight inches tall, weighing 180 pounds and wearing a dark overcoat with a light-brown soft hat.

  By the morning of January 18, 1950, Boston papers and those around the world were bannering the “biggest” robbery in U.S. history, were extolling the thieves with such phrases as the “cream of the crime world.” In the days and years to come Brink’s would become the most publicized holdup in modern times, would be lauded by the FBI itself as the “crime of the century” and the “perfect crime” and “fabulous robbery.”

  By the morning of January 18 America from coast to coast was witnessing the largest manhunt in history. In the days and years to come the Brink’s investigation would grow far larger, would become the most wide-spread and expensive criminal search ever launched in America (approximately $29,000,000).

  By the morning of January 18, nowhere was the heat more intense than in Boston. Nowhere was the behind-the-scene politicking more intense as well. The anti-FBI, anti-Commissioner Sullivan members of BPD, who were the overwhelming majority, wanted the investigation for themselves, felt the bureau had no legal ground on which to enter the case. The boss of the Massachusetts state troopers intended to go along with them, in sympathy at least. Ed Souci and the special agents of the Boston field office did want the case, but many feared the police were right, that they didn’t have legal jurisdiction, that no federal law had been broken. What mattered was that J. Edgar Hoover had made up his mind the robbery was a matter for the bureau. In those days J. Edgar was a monumental power. In those days “Mr. Director” got what he wanted.

  At approximately 7:30 A.M., January 18, Tony Pino sat in his kitchen munching a bowl of cornflakes, listening to a radio news account of the manhunt. He heard what many of the newspapers had already printed—that the modus operandi of the crooks who pulled Brink’s was similar, if not identical, to that employed in the Sturtevant robbery of 1947. Tony deduced he could not avoid being SP’d and possibly forced to strip. He rushed into the bedroom, could not find a presentable pair of underdrawers, drove across a city that was enduring the most massive dragnet ever, reached Filene’s Department Store, waited on the sidewalk for the door to be opened, entered with the first wave of early-bird shoppers and boosted two pair of jockey shorts. He noticed that black socks were on sale, so he snitched a dozen of them for good measure.

  AFTERMATH

  The United States Attorney granted the FBI final jurisdiction to investigate the armed robbery at Brink’s under a federal statute relating to the theft of government property, which stipulated that a minimum of $100 in cash be taken, on the specific assumption that checks belonging to the Veterans Administration had been stolen from the vault room and that among the checks were at least $100 in cash. The thieves, who went through the sacks of veterans’ checks, say there was no currency whatever inside. The bureau synthesized its file title for the case to Robink—Robbery-Brink’s. Rather than code it 47, the designated number for theft of government property, all material received a 91 prefix—federal bank robbery. Robink 91-5535, the five thousand and thirty-fifth crime to be investigated since the Federal Bank Act of 1934 had been legislated.

  The statute of limitations for federal investigations ran only three years at that time. Every FBI field office in the country participated in Robink 91-5535. The crux of activity was in Boston. The bureau’s top troubleshooter went to the city and headed the investigation. Extra agents and equipment were sent in. Extra office space and secretaries were added. From the beginning cooperation with the Boston Police Department was one-sided; the FBI took what it needed from the BPD and gave little in return. During the short period that the investigation concentrated on specialized felons such as bank robbers and jewel thieves, not all that much was needed. As the search expanded to include most every criminal in Boston, police assistance was vital. The FBI, throughout the country, had had few dealings with workaday crooks, common street crooks. From the beginning, the bureau ran afoul of many influential people and institutions in Boston and Massachusetts. The FBI rebuffed attempts by the state’s attorney general to grant amnesty to any of the actual robbers who would come forth and identify his confederates. This would come back to plague them.

  The bureau’s “no comment” policy unless Washington approved received a generally hostile reaction from the news media, and the news media would give more space to Brink’s than had ever been given a nonpolitical crime. This was ironic. One of the reasons J. Edgar Hoover wanted the case was the publicity the robbery received. When the FBI did release statements, they were matter-of-fact, bland, often bore an ominous reminder of how imperiled the nation was with the perpetrators still at large. This was counterproductive to bureau image, often exposed the FBI to ridicule. The robbers hadn’t harmed any of the holdup victims. The public and—media found a great deal of humor and ingenuity in seven men, who, wearing full-faced funny rubber masks, walked big as life into Brink’s vault room and for the first time in memory took more money than had ever been taken before and disappeared without a trace, befuddling law enforcement officers and seeming to get away with it.

  Ed Sullivan trotted a team of masked and pea-coated and chauffeur-capped gun-carrying men out before his television cameras and introduced them as the Brink’s robbers—to hearty applause and laughter and one or two cheers. Fred Allen’s Oriental Dick Tracy, One Long Pan, sipped a cup of ten-cent coffee and over America’s airwaves spit up and announced, “Biggest robbery since Brink’s.” When, on posting a $100,000 reward, the president of Brink’s said he’d rather the crooks be brought in dead than alive, local papers got a rash of letters and calls wishing the robbers well and damning the victimized company.

  None of the rubber masks or rubbers or laundry bags would ever be found. With the exception of the one chauffeur’s cap left behind in the vault room, none of the costumes would be found. Jimmy Costa burned them to ashes in the furnace at 3 Fuller Street a week after the holdup. None of the guns Costa had disassembled and tossed into the Charles River or the weapons Banfield had thrown from the bridge would ever be recovered. One of the two revolvers Barney had hurled into the Mystic River from the Somerville shoreline was discovered and identified as being taken from a Brink’s vault room employee the night of the robbery—which caused Geagan, whose mother-in-law lived a block from the recovery site, to blow up at Joe McGinnis. Edwin Coffin did point out for special agents a truck similar to the one that he had seen on Prince Street, and it was learned that a truck of this descri
ption had been stolen from Lalime and Partridge, but this didn’t bring the FBI any closer to identifying the masked crooks or knowing where they had gone once they were beyond narrow Lafayette Street. Other neighbors who had seen men in the area of Brink’s at the time were found, but they didn’t add anything of relevance. And none of the physical evidence—the gun found in Somerville or the GE box and strands of rope and chauffeur’s cap and pieces of tape and samplings of vault room receipt forms—bore latent fingerprints or other identifying marks indicating who the marked robbers were.

  The five employees who had been held up by the masked gunmen were investigated and repeatedly re-interviewed by special agents, as was the garage attendant who had rung the buzzer while the robbery was in progress. All would be forced by Brink’s officials to take lie detector tests. All would remain under suspicion of complicity in various newspapers and among certain law officials. Five of the six would have nervous breakdowns.

  Every past and present Boston Brink’s employee and customer was checked, as well as everyone who had used or had access to the garage building. Anyone who as much as had replaced a spark plug or pumped a gallon of gas into a Brink’s truck was checked. Every place pea coats and rubbers and chauffeur’s caps and rope and tape could be had was checked. Most every garage and parking lot in Boston was checked to see if the getaway truck or follow car had been there. Sewers and warehouses in the area were checked to see if the loot had been stashed, and to this purpose, a grave in Copps Hill burying ground was opened. And from it all, nothing was found or learned.