The Great Robbery

After a solid week of blazing frantic headlines, Boston police discovered that they had nothing new to tell reporters working on the fantastic $1,20,000 Brink's stick-up. The head of the Criminal Investigation Bureau summoned reporters into his office, unhappily broke the fact that there was no news. The police were stymied. But he did have a parting word: the psychological effect of such a sum of money on the robbers would be too great on at least one of them. "Some day if his mind doesn't crack he may walk in here and tell me the truth, because whatever the payoff, he knows now it wasn't worth it."

The detective was wrong. The participants in the biggest cash robbery in U.S. history have kept amazingly silent for the last three years, and even with the added pressure of Federal grand jury proceedings no one seems over-eager to break down. Today the robbers are apparently as well disciplined as they were the night of January 27, 1950.

It was a dampish, cold evening. Around supper time, a passerby noticed a green Ford truck coasting down a North End hill; at the bottom the truck swung sharply into the Brink's Incorporated garage. There was nothing unusual in this. Trucks customarily went in and out, day and night. But this one had no ordinary cargo: in the rear were six armed, masked men.

Upstairs Brink's employees were dragging heavy canvas bags into the vaults. It was six-thirty, and the five Brink's men were in a hurry to get home to supper. Suddenly one stopped short, threw up his hands; the other four, all armed, whirled around and did likewise. Standing around them were six medium-sized men, all wearing pea jackets, chauffeur's caps, rubbers on their shoes, and grotesque, old-manish, halloween masks over their heads. Each Brink's man found a 38 trained on him.

The robbers were like automatons. Each knew his purpose. One disconnected the the alarm system, another ripped out of the ledger the record of the day's receipts, the other disarmed the befuddled and disbelieving Brink's men, then tied their hands and feet with 38 strips of sash cord, gagged them with adhesive tape.

Knowingly, they seized huge canvas bags, dragged them out to the truck. Some of the bags contained bonds, but most were filled with 20, 10, 5, 2, and 1 dollar bills; they scooped coin from the safe. Police estimate their loot weighed 1225 pounds, taking more than 20 minutes to load into the truck. About 7:10 p.m. the truck roared off, and one of the employees managed to sound an alarm. Then started the largest police mobilization in Boston history; every bridge leading in and out of Boston was closed, F.B.I. men checked plane schedules, state police road-blocked all major highways. It was all in vain. There was no trace of the robbers.

In the next two months there occurred two major breaks: some frolicking children found at water's edge a gun stolen the night of the robbery from Brink's and in a dump 20 miles from Boston, a caretaker discovered a green Ford truck, neatly cut up with an acetylene torch. In both cases the crooks had been clever, but not clever enough. They buried the gun in a low-tide mud-flat, but the children decided this was just the mud-flat they wanted to build sand-castles in. It was "clean-up, paint-up" day in the town which used the dump, and the very day in the town which used the dump, and the very day the dismembered truck appeared, the dump should have been unusually busy; debris would have covered the parts in no time. But the caretaker came early that morning, long before the dump trucks had started discharging.

From the start police had suspects. They rounded up all known stick-up artists, and after intensive interrogation released all. For three years they continued watching some. Police knew the serial numbers of $98,000 of the loot and bank officials checked every dollar bill. But evidently the robbers were disciplined enough to destroy the known money for none came into circulation.

In the meantime, an uncanny and still unexplained occurrence took place. Alfred Gagnon, a Rhode Island crook, known to police the nation over as a "congenital liar," announced one day that he knew the three planners of the Brink's hold-up. To Massachusetts authorities, he was still a liar. But the Rhode Island Attorney General believed his story, insisted that police here interrogate Gagnon. One of the three masterminds, Gagnon maintained, was a roadhouse proprietor named Carlton O'Brien. Massachusetts officials still scoffed at Gagnon's story. Fifty-six hours later, they found O'Brien--riddled with bullets. The other two suspects were non-productive, had many alibis.

On January 27, 1953, the statute of limitation on a Federal robbery will have run out, and unless indictments are returned by then or a grand jury has convened, the Brink's bandits can never be tried for their crime of robbery. Once the grand jury has convened, however, it can return indictments any time, even after the expiration of the statute of limitations. In December, the government called the Grand Jury to session.

So far all of the suspects summoned to testify are well-known to detectives who have been working on the case. One of them, "Speck" O'Keefe, an efficient hold-up man, was among the first batch of police record holders taken into custody in 1950, questioned and released. When O'Keefe indicated he had little to tell the grand jury, the judge cited him for contempt; another witness, a Boston bookie, received 18 months in jail on the same change, and three others were similarly charged. All are contesting.

At present, O'Keefe and his sister, Mrs. Mary Hooley, are the two key witnesses. O'Keefe because police suspect he had a part in the robbery. Mrs. Hooley because police believe that $70,000 of the stolen money was stashed away in her Roxbury home. To save his sister from a jail sentence, O'Keefe indicates he is ready to talk; how much he has to offer is another matter. But police fervently hope that O'Keefe will be like the first domino by pushing him down all the rest will humble behind him.