Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (50 page)

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• A custom furniture maker in Lipan, Texas, erected a 26-foot rocking chair in 2001.

• Anniston, Alabama, has a 33-foot office chair in the vacant lot next to Miller Office Supply. A spiral staircase leads to the seat of the chair, which was constructed from 10 tons of steel.

• Still after a “World’s Largest” title, Bassett Furniture built a 20-foot, 3-inch Mission chair. They sent it on tour to Bassett stores across the United States, calling it the “World’s Largest Chair,” until Anniston, Alabama, publicly refuted their claim. Now they call it the “World’s Largest Chair on Tour.”

• But the winner in the battle of the giant chairs is Promosedia in the province of Udine, Italy. Equivalent in size to a 7-story building, it was constructed in 1995 to advertise the chair-building region, known as the “Chair Triangle.” Their 65-foot chair is indisputably the largest in the world. (So far.)

Pull up a stone: The chair was invented in about 2500 B.C.

THE GREAT BRINKS ROBBERY

It was the perfect crime—so well planned and executed that all the gang members needed to do to was lie low until the heat cooled down. But could they?

I
N AND OUT

The year was 1950. It was a cold January in Boston. At around 7 p.m. on the 17th, a green 1949 Ford truck pulled up in front of the Prince Street entrance of the Brinks Armored Car garage. Millions of dollars in cash, checks, and money orders were stored inside the building. Seven men emerged from the back of the Ford and walked swiftly to the front door. Each man wore a Navy peacoat, gloves, rubber-soled shoes, and a chauffeur’s cap.

After a series of blinking flashlight signals from a nearby rooftop, one of the men pulled out a key and unlocked the front door. Once inside, each man donned a Captain Marvel Halloween mask and went to work. They walked up the stairs and encountered a second locked door. Another key was produced, and they entered a room where five surprised Brinks employees were counting money. The gang pulled out handguns and quickly subdued the stunned Brinks men. Once their captives were bound and gagged, the masked men began collecting the loot.

With clockwork precision and very little talking, the gang filled their bags with money. Fifteen minutes after their arrival, the robbers—each carrying two full bags—left the building. Six of them got back into the truck and one got into a Ford sedan parked nearby. As they made their getaway, the employees managed to free themselves and call the police. When it was over, $1.2 million in cash and $1.5 million in checks, money orders, and securities were missing. It was the single largest robbery in U.S. history.

URBAN HEROES

The daring crime made front-page news all over the country. And the public was sympathetic with the robbers almost as soon as they heard about it. Their nonviolent methods and their audacity to take on a company as huge as Brinks made them cult heroes. Comedians and cartoonists joked about it, mocking the huge security company’s apparent lack of security. On his weekly TV variety show, Ed Sullivan announced that he had some very special guests: the Brinks robbers themselves. Seven men wearing Captain Marvel masks walked onstage to thunderous applause. It became more than a passing fad—the press dubbed it the “Crime of the Century.”

The average person’s skeleton accounts for about 20% of their body weight.

COPS…

The Boston police and Brinks were humiliated. How could seven men so easily walk off with more than $2.7 million? The FBI took over the case and immediately found some good news: word on the street was that the caper had been in the works for months, and informants were naming names. Among the prime suspects: some of Boston’s most notorious petty criminals, such as Anthony Pino, Joseph McGinnis, Stanley Gusciora, and “Specs” O’Keefe—all men known for pulling off similar crimes, although nothing nearly as big. The bad news: they all had alibis. But when a green Ford truck matching witnesses’ descriptions was found in pieces at a dump near where O’Keefe and Gusciora lived, the investigators knew they were hot on the trail. They just needed proof.

…AND ROBBERS

The Feds’ instincts were correct: O’Keefe and Gusciora
were
two of the key men behind the Brinks job. But what they didn’t know was that it was Anthony Pino, an illegal alien from Italy, who first came up with the idea…back in 1947.

Pino had the savvy to do the job, but he couldn’t do it alone. So he’d called a meeting of some members of the Boston underworld and put together a gang. By the time they were ready to go, there were 11 members: Pino; his associate, liquor store owner Joseph McGinnis; strong-arms O’Keefe and Gusciora, both experienced criminals with reputations for keeping their cool and handling weapons; Pino’s brother-in-law, Vincent Costa, the lookout; Adolph “Jazz” Maffie; Henry Baker; Michael Vincent Geagan; Thomas “Sandy” Richardson; James Faherty; and Joseph Banfield.

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.

Scientists say: The color combination with the most visual impact is black on yellow.

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 GOOD-BYE

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.

Flying fish “fly” at 40 mph.

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.

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.

Only 3.8% of the U.S. is officially designated wilderness.

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 2% of the loot—$51,906—was recovered. What happened to the remaining 98% is a mystery.