Final Confession

by Brian P. Wallace

  As Phil put it, “People think that robbing’s easy. But we worked hard every day at it, from morning until night. When we planned a hit, we left nothing to chance. There’s always the possibility that something will happen during job to make you change plans. The difference between a successful robber and a robber who goes to jail is planning for the unexpected.”

  By late 1964 they were still pulling small-time scores but always looking for the one score that would take them to the next level. Angelo and Tony were anxious for that big score, but Phil warned them not to force things. Their days of eating at the Ritz-Carlton would come, and in the meantime, they certainly weren’t starving.

  Phil said of those days, “I knew our break would come if we continued to work carefully and look for opportunities.”

  When planning a score Phil took everything into account, especially the weather. As he had with his parking meter theft and with the Kenmore Square heist, Phil continued to use the weather to his advantage. A case in point is the famous Quincy armored car robbery.

  In Phil’s words, “We were out clocking armored cars in Braintree one day in November, when we happened to see a guard come out of a supermarket carrying a moneybag. He walked straight to an unmarked station wagon, threw the moneybag in the backseat, and got into the front passenger seat. He nodded to the driver, who looked all around and then took off. But it was what they did next that really caught our attention.” Phil laughed when he related this story. “It seemed too good to be true,” he said. “Mistakes like that were what we lived for. We immediately dropped the other plans we had and began to put all our time and effort into casing that job.”

  The first day they spotted the guards was Saturday, November 14, 1964. The team watched them leave the Braintree supermarket, make two more stops, and then stop for coffee and lunch at the Wheel House Diner, at 453 Hancock Street in Quincy. Against all policy, they left the money in the car—untended.

  To make sure they broke policy consistently, Phil, Tony, and Angelo followed them in different cars for six more Saturdays. One week Phil drove. The next week Tony drove, and the next Angelo. The guards never looked around to see if they were being tailed, but it still paid to be safe. The team fine-tuned their plans en route. Finally, after seven freezing trips, the team decided it was time to take them down. They planned for January 2, 1965, but then Phil told Angelo and Tony to hold off.

  They were irritated. They reminded Phil how easy a mark this was. “Easy I like; perfect I like better,” Phil told them. “We need to wait for a little cooperation.” Tony and Angelo complained about waiting that week and the following Saturday too. But on Saturday, January 16, 1965, exactly nine weeks after they’d first spotted the guard in Braintree, Phil got his cooperation.

  It began snowing in the early morning hours, and while every other guy in Boston was thinking about the AFL all-star game in which Patriots linebacker Nick Buonoconti would run back a seventeen-yard fumble for a touchdown, Phil Cresta was thinking about two guards and a diner in Quincy.

  “It’s on,” he said to Angelo. Angelo just grinned. He knew exactly what he had to do, so he got the car. With a smiling Tony in the backseat, Phil got into the front. They drove to a parking lot in Quincy, where Phil picked the lock of a nondescript 1963 Buick.

  Phil drove Tony in the stolen Buick to the spot they had chosen, about thirty yards from the diner. They parked. Angelo drove the other car to their predetermined rendezvous point, a mile and a half from the diner. Phil and Tony watched people entering the diner from the front seat of the Buick. “There’s always nervous tension at a time like that,” Phil noted, “but we felt very good about the situation. We just weren’t sure of the take.” About twenty-five minutes later, the station wagon carrying the two guards pulled into the parking lot. Phil watched the guards lock the car and head inside for a hot cup of coffee and a lunch they would never forget.

  Phil got out of the driver’s seat. Tony slid over and picked up the binoculars, with which in a minute or two he would begin casing the area around the diner. Phil had a hat pulled almost completely over his face, a heavy coat, fake glasses, and winter gloves. To any person walking or riding by he looked as if he was just another guy trying to keep warm, to shield himself from the elements. As he got near the station wagon he quickly looked at the diner window where the two guards always sat. Though the window was ten feet from the station wagon, it was, as Phil had hoped, completely frosted over.

  Phil could have picked the lock in seconds, but he didn’t. Like an amateur, he simply broke the vent window and opened the front door. As he did, he spotted a cardboard box about the size of a case of beer on the front seat. He grabbed it and walked back down to the end of the driveway, where Tony was waiting. The robbery took less than thirty seconds.

  Once in the car, Phil had a hard time containing his excitement. He knew by the number of bags and manila envelopes in the cardboard box that this score was going to be profitable. “How’d we do, how’d we do?” Tony kept asking as he drove them away. Phil didn’t reply. The two met up with Angelo and ditched the stolen Buick.

  Meanwhile, the two guards, laughing, left the diner and headed for their station wagon. They quickly froze in their tracks—and not because of the weather. Then they ran back into the diner screaming, “Call the police! Somebody stole our deposits!”

  Within minutes, the Norfolk Downs section of Quincy was awash with police cars. Quincy Police, working with FBI agents from the Boston bureau, told the press that the actual amount of money stolen was $119,047.19. Guards Joseph Whitfield and James E. Carroll of the Skelly Detective Agency had just been “Crested.”

  AS PHIL, TONY, AND ANGELO drove along Route 3 to Cape Cod, Angelo asked, “Any problems, Phil?”

  “Naw, piece of cake,” Phil responded, laughing. He had finished looking over the take.

  “Speaking of cake, I’m kinda hungry,” Tony said.

  Angelo and Phil just shook their heads, amazed at how anyone could be hungry at a time like this.

  “How much?” Angelo anxiously inquired.

  “Over a hundred large.” Phil waited for a reaction.

  “Wow! I thought these guys were small-time.” Angelo reached over to look in the bag. “I would’ve been happy with twenty or twenty-five large.”

  Phil slapped his hand. “Take it easy, we’ll count it more closely when we get to the Cape.”

  Angelo was quiet for a few minutes, but as they were passing Norwell he asked, “Did you pick it okay?”

  “I didn’t use a pick,” Phil shot back.

  “How’d ya open it up?”

  “The old-fashioned way.” Phil, the best lock man on the East Coast, smiled. “I broke the fucking window.”

  Phil could tell from the looks on their faces that they needed an explanation. “I knew the guards couldn’t see shit because the window was frozen over and the snow was coming down pretty good. Ya with me?”

  They both nodded like students at Christopher Columbus High in the North End.

  “I didn’t want to give the cops nothing to go on—no MO—especially with Tilley still out there. Okay so far?”

  Again they both nodded. They knew how angry Tilley still was that Phil had “stolen” his gang. Keeping Tilley thinking the Cresta team wasn’t making a lot of money was wise.

  Professor Phil went on slowly. “I wanted them to think this was a small-time hood who got lucky, so I decided to bust the window and open the door just like we did when we were kids on Hanover Street.”

  Angelo was shaking his head in admiration.

  Tony said, “Yeah, Phil, but we never scored no hundred large on Hanover Street.”

  Then all three sat back, lesson over, and drove in silence until Plymouth, where Tony announced, “Now I get it! That’s why you waited two extra weeks? You were waiting for the snow?”

  “Light dawns on Marblehead,” Phil responded, and he and Angelo laughed the rest of the way to the Bourne Bridge and Cape Cod.

 
7

  Holiday Weekend Activity

  BY THE TIME 1965 rolled around, the Cresta crew was on the edge of “living large.” Besides the Quincy armored car heist, they had hit another Kenmore Square bank for $40,000, working on a tip from a woman employed in the bank, who was dating Angelo. As with the bank guard, she never knew that she had given out crucial information to her boyfriend, who was just a plain mechanic—or so she thought. It got to the point where Phil’s crew was getting too many leads, and as a result, they were able to choose their jobs.

  “We were sitting pretty good in the mid-sixties. We had a lot of money stored away, and the word on the street was that we were stand-up guys who could be trusted. I always worried about Angiulo, because we weren’t giving him a dime, which pissed him off. But he never bothered us,” Phil said. “For a guy in my business, it’s always important to be dealing from strength. We were on top in the sixties and everyone knew it. We had juice even though we weren’t made men. You always rob from strength; never rob when you’re down, that’s when you get caught. We paid what we had to pay for information, and we never got burned. You do what you have to do, you pay what you have to pay, and you go on to the next job. Simple as that.”

  The barbershop where Phil hung out is located on the bottom floor of a five-story apartment building on Commonwealth Avenue. Phil was in the shop one day in April 1965 when a well-dressed man entered and asked Phil if he was next. Phil shook his head. The well-dressed man got in the chair and gave the barber precise instructions on how to cut his hair. When he left, Phil asked his barber friend, Frank, who the rich guy was. His name was Percy Rideout, Frank said, and he was a coin and stamp collector. “What’s he doing here?” Phil asked, his curiosity piqued. “He lives upstairs, on the third floor,” Frank replied. “How often does he come in for a haircut?” Phil asked. “Too friggin often,” the barber replied, not hiding his disdain. “He says the same friggin thing every time he comes in this friggin place. I guess he thinks I’m retarded or something. Those rich people, they’re all assholes.”

  “Do you get a lot of rich people in here?” Phil asked.

  “Naw, thank God. He’s about the only one.”

  Phil left the barbershop and walked down Commonwealth Avenue to Copley Square. He went into the public library there, to do a little research on this Mr. Percy Rideout. What he found started his juices flowing.

  “This guy Rideout was the real deal,” Phil said. “Just about every publication on stamps, coins, or rare documents had a quote from this guy or at least used his name somewhere in the article.”

  Phil left the library, called Tony and Angelo, and asked them to meet him at McGrail’s. He told them about his run-in with Rideout and about his research at the library. They both listened intently. “What do you think?” Phil asked. “Let’s go for it,” Angelo said. Tony, a little hesitant, said, “Honestly, Phil, it seems like a lot of work just to get some stamps. Can’t we just buy them at the post office?” After they explained to Tony that they weren’t going to steal current postage stamps, he felt a lot better. From that night on, Percy Rideout’s habits were under intense scrutiny, although Rideout never had a clue.

  “There was no way of knowing exactly what Rideout had in his apartment and his office, which were on the second and third floors of the building,” Phil explained. “Though Rideout was clearly one of the top collectors of stamps, coins, and historical documents in the United States, nobody had ever estimated how much he or his collection was worth. We didn’t know if we were looking at two mil or only a hundred thousand dollars,” Phil said, “but we knew it was big.”

  Phil, Angelo, and Tony tailed Rideout for over a month. They learned his habits, his hangouts, his friends—and when he got his weekly haircut, which ultimately proved to be more important than all the other tips combined. Rideout was a creature of habit, and every Wednesday at one o’clock he sat in that barber’s chair and issued the same instructions to Frank. “Not too much off the top, just even the sides and trim the back.” Cresta and his partners took turns being in the barbershop when Rideout came in so that he wouldn’t recognize them. “But,” as Phil observed, “that guy was so caught up in himself, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Roger Maris could all have been sitting there for a haircut and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

  One Wednesday afternoon Phil took a call from an excited Angelo. “I just left the barbershop,” he sputtered. “Rideout told Frank he wouldn’t be in next week because he’s going to Maine on a fishing trip.” The break they’d sought had finally come. They put everything into motion for the Memorial Day weekend, just a few days away.

  Rideout’s building had two elevators, one for residents, the other a service elevator for deliveries. On Saturday, May 29, Phil placed an Out of Order sign on the service elevator. Phil, Angelo, and Tony were dressed as painters, complete with those white masks for keeping out dust and fumes—and for preventing curious residents from getting a good look at their faces. Their white uniforms had even been painstakingly soiled with three different paint colors. Phil was again acting on his observation that normal people didn’t pay much attention to workmen going about their duties; they had their own problems to think about. Rich people paid absolutely no attention whatsoever, as long as the workmen seemed ordinary.

  “The place was deserted as we put the sign on the elevator and headed up to Rideout’s apartment. We even had a work order with Rideout’s forged signature, in case anyone questioned us,” Phil explained.

  Phil picked the lock easily, and they entered the apartment. They were stunned by the size of the safes.

  “There were two huge safes in one room and another one in the downstairs room,” Phil said. “Anyone with that many huge safes has a lot of stuff he doesn’t want other people to get their hands on. From the minute we saw those safes I knew this was going to be a good score.” But Phil’s exuberance was dampened when he got a close look at the top-of-the-line locks on Rideout’s safes: he’d never seen any locks like them. “We’ve got trouble, Ange,” Phil said. “These boxes won’t be easy.”

  Phil spent the next two hours trying to crack the safes. Nothing worked. Angelo and Tony were downstairs in Rideout’s office. When they came back, Phil told them it was no-go. “Let’s blow ’em,” Angelo suggested. “What, are you, crazy?” Tony responded. “We’re in an apartment building in the middle of Kenmore Square and you want to blow three safes?” Angelo shot back, “I’m not walking out of here empty-handed.” “Let’s think this thing over,” Phil said, trying to calm them down. After discussing alternatives, they decided to blow the upstairs safes.

  They brought four mattresses from Rideout’s bedroom and put them next to the larger safe, which was six feet high and four feet wide, and brand-new. Phil told Angelo and Tony to go downstairs and wait, with the truck ready, in case it was needed for a quick escape. Then he measured the charge, attached a long fuse, and taped it to the top two hinges. The charge had to be perfect—if too little, nothing would happen; if too much, the police and firemen would be all over the place. Phil taped the four mattresses around the safe. Then he waited until he heard the truck being started. He lit the fuse, ran into the bathroom, jumped into the bathtub, and waited. In case the blast turned out to be bigger than expected, he didn’t want to be too close. “The wait seemed to take forever,” Phil remembered.

  Finally there was the sound of a mild explosion. Phil went into the den to see if it had worked, for he’d been expecting a much louder blow. The four mattresses had cushioned the sound.

  “Those mattresses were pretty well shot, but they’d done the job. I waited for about ten minutes. No cavalry came, so I looked out the back window and told Angelo and Tony to come up,” Phil said. “When ya gonna blow it?” Tony asked. Phil smiled and led them into the den, where the two safes were. “Holy shit, Phil, that was good. We didn’t even hear nothing,” Tony commented. “Cut those hinges like butter,” Angelo marveled, as he examined Phil’s work.

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p; They emptied out the contents of the large safe, and Tony seemed disappointed. “What’s wrong?” Phil asked. “Phil, are you sure this stuff is worth money? It all looks pretty old, if you ask me.” “That’s the whole point, numbskull,” Angelo piped up. “This stuff is valuable because it’s so old.” “I don’t get it,” Tony replied, frowning, but he continued to take box after box out of the huge safe.

  The stuff that baffled Tony sat in more than 250 boxes, each about eighteen inches by four inches, containing valuable coins. There were also 130 albums of rare stamps taken out of the smaller safe, which Phil blew later that day. They had never done a job like this before. The coins weighed more than half a ton, and it took six trips on the service elevator to get everything into the U-Haul truck they’d painted on both sides to say CARDOZZA & SONS PAINTING.

  It took them all day and half the night to empty the two safes and transport the contents to a garage in Everett. Two days later, Monday, May 31, the building superintendent discovered the break-in, but it wasn’t until June 2, when Rideout returned, that the robbery was reported to the Boston Police. The Boston Globe’s front-page headline on Friday, June 4, 1965, read: FAMED COIN COLLECTION LOOTED HERE. The Globe reported that the Back Bay collection of Percy Rideout was considered one of the most prized in the world. The Herald stated that Rideout thought the robbery similar to ones pulled by some thieves who had been hitting the largest coin collectors across Europe. After Rideout inventoried his collection it was announced that the Memorial Day robbery was the largest of its kind in history. The Herald Traveler’s front page that same day was headlined: rare COIN COLLECTION VALUED AT $200,000 WIPED OUT. Rideout told police that the thieves’ only mistake was that they’d overlooked albums of early American historical material valued at between $100,000 and $150,000. They had been sitting under two photo albums.

  Boston policemen assigned to the crime could find no marks indicating that the apartment door had been forced. So, the Globe reported, authorities believed the thieves had been well acquainted with Rideout’s movements and had used a master key to enter both the second- and third-floor apartments. Authorities were correct about the gang’s careful clocking of Rideout, but wrong about their means of entry. Phil’s excellent lock picking left little trace of his work.