Uncle John’s True Crime (34 page)

It would be the heist of a lifetime, and the gang spent the next two years preparing for it. Pino cased the Brinks building from nearby rooftops, and was amazed at how lax the security was. Still, they would
take no chances: They broke in after hours on several different occasions and took the lock cylinders from five doors, had keys made to fit them, and returned the cylinders. And while inside, they obtained the Brinks shipment schedules. It took discipline to not steal anything on those smaller break-ins, but they knew the real score would be on the big break-in, planned for a time when the day’s receipts were being counted and the vault was open. They were willing to wait.

DeBeers spends millions per week buying stolen diamonds back so they don’t flood the market
.

By December 1949, Costa, the lookout man, could tell exactly how many employees were in the building and what they were doing by observing which lights were on. After about a dozen dress rehearsals, the gang made their move. The job went down without a hitch.

THE LONG GOODBYE

The robbery was the easy part. Now each gang member had to keep quiet, not spend money like crazy, and lay low for six long years, after which the statute of limitations would run out. If they could do that, they would all be scot-free...and very rich.

A small portion of the loot was split up among the gang members, but most of it was hidden in various places. O’Keefe and Gusciora put their share ($100,000 each) in the trunk of O’Keefe’s car, parked in a garage on Blue Hill Avenue in Boston—with the agreement that the money was not to be touched until 1956.

Even though they were careful to destroy any physical evidence tying them to the crime, they were known criminals and couldn’t evade suspicion. Many were picked up and questioned by the FBI. All denied involvement; all provided alibis (though more than a few were shaky); and all of their homes and businesses turned up nothing in searches. Still, investigators knew there was something fishy going on. Their best approach would be to get one of the men to sing; they just had to watch closely and wait for someone to slip up.

SOMEONE SLIPS UP

Less than six months after the Brinks job, O’Keefe and Gusciora were nabbed for robbing an Army-Navy store in Pennsylvania. Police found a pile of cash in the car, but none of it could be tied to the Brinks job. O’Keefe was sentenced to three years in the Bradford County jail; Gusciora was sentenced to five years.

In 1658 the Virginia legislature passed a law outlawing lawyers
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O’Keefe wanted to appeal but had no money for legal bills, so he talked Banfield into retrieving his share of the money from the car. It was delivered a few weeks later (minus $2,000). But O’Keefe couldn’t keep it behind bars, so he sought out another gang member, the only one left on the outside that he thought he could trust—Jazz Maffie. Bad move: Maffie took O’Keefe’s money, disappeared, then reappeared claiming it had been stolen. Then Maffie said he had spent the money on O’Keefe’s legal bills. O’Keefe, meanwhile, was stuck in jail and getting angrier.

The Feds worked this angle, trying to create a wedge between O’Keefe and the rest of the gang. They told O’Keefe that the gang had ratted him out for the Brinks job. But O’Keefe stuck to his guns and kept denying any involvement.

THE TENSION MOUNTS

Prior to committing the robbery, the 11 men had agreed that if any one of them “muffed” (acted carelessly), he would be “taken care of” (killed). Sitting in jail, O’Keefe convinced himself that the other members of the gang had “muffed.” And he vowed he would get his share of the loot... one way or another.

After he was paroled in the spring of 1954, O’Keefe returned to Boston to ask McGinnis for enough money from the loot to hire a lawyer for his pending burglary charge. But McGinnis wouldn’t budge. So O’Keefe kidnapped McGinnis’s brother-in-law, Costa, demanding his share as ransom. He only got some of it but still released the hostage. Pino and McGinnis, in the meantime, decided that O’Keefe needed to be “taken care of.”

BULLET-PROOF

That June, O’Keefe was driving through Dorchester, Massachusetts, when a car pulled up next to him and sprayed his car with bullets. O’Keefe escaped unharmed. Days later, fellow gang member Henry Baker shot at him, but O’Keefe escaped again. Fearing retribution, Pino brought in a professional hit man named Elmer “Trigger” Burke. When Burke found his target and shot him in the chest and wrist with a machine gun, Specs O’Keefe lived up to his reputation as one of the toughest crooks in the Boston underworld by surviving. By this point, he was extremely angry.

The term “serial killer” was coined by FBI agent Robert Ressler in the 1970s
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O’Keefe immediately went to the cops and fingered Burke, who was arrested and convicted for attempted murder. But the plan backfired. While he was talking to police, they discovered that O’Keefe was carrying a concealed weapon, a violation of his parole. He was arrested and sentenced to 27 months in prison. Knowing that there was a contract on O’Keefe’s life, the FBI stepped up their interrogations. But he still wouldn’t confess.

THE HEAT IS ON

Time was starting to run out. It had been more than five years since the crime, and the deadline for the statute of limitations was getting closer and closer. Thousands of hours had gone into identifying the suspects, but the FBI still had no hard evidence. As the case remained in the public eye, each passing day without an arrest was an embarrassment.

Through all of it, the Feds knew that O’Keefe was the key, so they kept chipping away at him. When they informed him that a huge portion of the loot had been recovered, he finally gave in. On January 6, 1956, Specs O’Keefe called a meeting with the Feds and said, “All right, what do you want to know?” It was 11 days before the six-year statute of limitations would take effect.

O’Keefe spelled out every detail to the police—except where the rest of the money was hidden. He had no idea. (Neither did the police—they had exaggerated the loot-recovery story as a ruse to get O’Keefe to talk.)

TRIED AND CONVICTED

Police rounded up all of the remaining members. They were arrested and tried amid a media circus. More than 1,000 prospective jurors had to be excused because they admitted they were sympathetic to the robbers. In the end, a jury found all of them guilty. Each man was sentenced to life in prison. Some died there—others were later released on parole.

For turning state’s evidence, O’Keefe was given a reduced sentence. After prison, he changed his name, moved to California, and reportedly worked as Cary Grant’s chauffeur.

The Brinks gang stole $2.7 million in cash and securities. The government spent
$29 million
trying to catch them and bring them to justice. But in the end, only 0.2% of the loot—$51,906—was recovered. What happened to the remaining 99.8% is a mystery.

Police-issued TASERS have a 5-second recharge time; civilian ones take 30 seconds to recharge
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“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
—
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
(1962)

F
OXY LADY

The Wild West had its share of lawless legends, but the overwhelming majority of them were men. Perhaps that’s why in 1889—shortly after her death—tales of Belle Starr and her outlaw ways entranced the nation. Reporter Richard Fox published
Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James
, which chronicled the gunslingin’, horse-rustlin’, man-eatin’ adventures of the roughest, toughest, shootingest lady that ever did live!

One problem: Fox made most of it up. Yes, there was a Belle Starr, and yes, she did spend some time on the shady side of the law. She even served nine months in prison for rustling horses. But when it comes right down to it, most of her adventures—from saloon shootouts to bank robberies to all the men she was supposed to have “known”—were nothing more than the inventions of a pulp writer looking to thrill his readers.

So which parts of the Belle Starr legend are true, and which are false?

SHIRLEY YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS

Before she called herself Belle, she was born Myra Maybelle Shirley in 1848 to well-to-do parents in Missouri. They tried to raise her as a proper young woman, but Belle’s biggest influence was her older brother Bud, who showed her how to ride a horse and shoot a gun. During the Civil War, the Shirleys sided with the Confederacy. Bud partnered up with a band of young guns, including future outlaws Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger. Belle passed on information collected at social gatherings to her brother during these times. Bud was killed by Union troops in 1864, and sme accounts have Belle taking to her guns to avenge Bud’s death. Historians find that unlikely.

Another part of the legend pairs Belle with Cole Younger. Not only were the two an item, she had his love child. Younger denied this; he did meet Belle in 1864 but didn’t see her see her again for four years. By then she’d married another man and was pregnant with
his
child.

The Stopwatch Gang (active in the 1980s) could rob a bank in under 5 minutes, and once robbed two banks in one day
.

REED BETWEEN THE LINES

Which is the truth? Historians speculate that after the Civil War, the Shirleys had moved to Texas, where Belle met her first husband, Jim Reed. Legend has it that Belle’s parents objected to their pairing, so the lovebirds ran away and got married on horseback, with the rites performed by a member of Reed’s gang. In reality, the elder Shirleys were fine with the match and the couple had normal nuptials.

But their lives didn’t stay normal. Reed tried farming. He didn’t like that. He wasn’t much of a salesman, either, so he took to thieving. Reed hooked up with the gang of Tom Starr, a Cherokee outlaw of some infamy. During this spell with Starr, Reed shot a man and then took Belle and their daughter Pearl to California in 1869 until things cooled off in Texas.

But Reed ran into trouble in California for counterfeiting. With the law hot on his tail, he moved his family back to Texas after the birth of their son in 1871. Reed continued his life of crime, but there’s little record that Belle was interested in joining him. She left Reed, who died in 1874, shot while trying to escape arrest.

A STARR IS BORN

Not much is known about the six years between Reed’s death and Belle’s second marriage in 1880. Hence, this is the period where Belle’s “biographers” peppered her history with wild tales of her life of crime. She burned down buildings, eloped with a deputy in order to spring herself from jail, busted up poker games with gunplay, and rewarded members of her gang with her...favors. The real explanation is probably much more pedestrian; she more likely spent time with her mother and the Reed family in Texas.

In 1880 Belle married Tom Starr’s son Sam, who was nearly a decade younger than Belle. The couple settled in the Indian Territory near Arkansas in a place they called Younger’s Bend.

HORSEPLAY

One of Belle’s first verified events of lawful malfeasance occurred in 1882 when she and Sam were both charged with larceny for stealing horses. They were convicted and sentenced to a year in the pokey. The two were out in nine months, partially due to Belle’s “good behavior” with the warden. Another legend? Perhaps not.

Over the next few years, Belle and Sam were suspected in a string of horse thefts and other robberies, but Belle usually managed to beat the rap. Sam Starr started spending a lot of time away from home. Lucky for Belle, she met John Middleton, with whom it is very likely she had an affair. Middleton died not long after Belle purchased a horse for him—which, it turned out—had been stolen. Belle was charged with larceny again, but the evidence wasn’t strong enough to convict her.

FOR WHOM THE BELLE TOLLS

Legends aside, the real story of Belle Starr was tragic. She lost Sam at a Christmas party in 1886 after he drew a gun on an old enemy and was shot to death. Still grieving, Belle had a brief dalliance with an outlaw named Jack Spaniard, who would soon be swinging from a gallows. Belle married her third and last husband: Bill July, the adopted son of Tom Starr and thereby, her late second husband’s brother. This marriage was not especially happy; rumor had it that Belle’s new husband had found a young Cherokee woman on the side.

Belle’s children were none too fond of her, either. Her daughter Pearl became pregnant out of wedlock, causing Belle to boot her out of the house and break up her romance. Belle’s son Ed hated Bill July. Belle also wasn’t making friends with neighbors—she reneged on an agreement to let Edgar Watson rent her land for farming. She made the mistake of slipping into their conversation that she knew Watson was wanted for murder in Florida and chided him about what a shame it would be if the authorities found out.

In 1889, while she was riding her horse home after visiting some friends, a shotgun blast rang out. Belle Starr was killed. Implicated in the murder were Watson, Bill July, and even her own son and daughter. The prime suspect was Watson, who had motive and opportunity (the shooting occurred near his home) and had done this sort of thing before. But officially the murder was never solved.

In the end, there was no denying that Starr’s life was eventful, just not as eventful as the pulp writers made it sound. Given the choice, which life would Belle Starr have preferred to live? A quote she once made pretty much answers that question: “I am a friend to any brave and gallant outlaw.”

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Ice-T pioneered the genre of gangsta rap—graphically violent and politically charged songs about life in the ghetto. But one of his songs in particular has become synonymous with controversy
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O
RIGINAL GANGSTER

Ice-T (real name: Tracy Marrow) grew up in the tough South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles, was a member of the notorious Crips gang as a teenager, and even worked as a pimp. In 1984 he decided to channel his stories of street life into music. Albums like
6 in the Morning
(1987) and
O.G.: Original Gangster
(1991) made him one of the bestselling and best known West Coast rappers.