Investigation established that this gun, together with another rusty revolver, had been found on February 4, 1950, by a group of boys who were playing on a sand bar at the edge of the Mystic River in Somerville. The money inside the cooler which was concealed in the wall of the Tremont Street office was wrapped in plastic and newspaper. A roll of waterproof adhesive tape used to gag and bind bank employees that was left at the scene of the crime. While the theft was originally intended to be a burglary, rather than an armed robbery, they could not find a way around the building's burglar alarm. At approximately 7:00 p.m. on January 17, 1950, members of the gang met in the Roxbury section of Boston and entered the rear of the Ford stake-body truck. Banfield was already dead. At the time of their arrest, Faherty and Richardson were rushing for three loaded revolvers that they had left on a chair in the bathroom of the apartment. Evidently resigned to long years in prison or a short life on the outside, OKeefe grew increasingly bitter toward his old associates. From interviews with the five employees whom the criminals had confronted, it was learned that between five and seven robbers had entered the building. Then the lock cylinders were replaced. Examination by the FBI Laboratory subsequently disclosed that the decomposition, discoloration, and matting together of the bills were due, at least in part, to the fact that all of the bills had been wet. Serious consideration originally had been given to robbing Brinks in 1947, when Brinks was located on Federal Street in Boston. Stanley Gusciora (pictured left), who had been transferred to Massachusetts from Pennsylvania to stand trial, was placed under medical care due to weakness, dizziness, and vomiting. The serial numbers of several of these bills were furnished to the FBI Office in Baltimore. They were held in lieu of bail which, for each man, amounted to more then $100,000. They moved with a studied precision which suggested that the crime had been carefully planned and rehearsed in the preceding months. In the end, the perfect crime had a perfect endingfor everyone but the robbers. OKeefe was sentenced on August 5, 1954, to serve 27 months in prison. During this operation, one of the employees had lost his glasses; they later could not be found on the Brinks premises. Before they left, however, approximately $380,000 was placed in a coal hamper and removed by Baker for security reasons. The hoodlum was taken to police headquarters where a search of his person disclosed he was carrying more than $1,000, including $860 in musty, worn bills. All of them wore Navy-type peacoats, gloves, and chauffeurs caps. From the size of the loot and the number of men involved, it was logical that the gang might have used a truck. After a period of hostility, he began to display a friendly attitude. One of these officers quickly grabbed the criminals hand, and a large roll of money fell from it. WebNahome was a "financer" and associate of the Adams family, who were also suspected of having been involved in the laundering of the Brink's-Mat gold. Any doubts that the Brinks gang had that the FBI was on the right track in its investigation were allayed when the federal grand jury began hearings in Boston on November 25, 1952, concerning this crime. As the truck drove past the Brinks offices, the robbers noted that the lights were out on the Prince Street side of the building. Investigation revealed that Geagan, a laborer, had not gone to work on January 17 or 18, 1950.). Ten of the persons who appeared before this grand jury breathed much more easily when they learned that no indictments had been returned. He arrived in Baltimore on the morning of June 3 and was picked up by the Baltimore Police Department that evening. OKeefe and Gusciora reportedly had worked together on a number of occasions. While OKeefe and Gusciora lingered in jail in Pennsylvania, Pino encountered difficulties of his own. On January 13, 1956, the Suffolk County grand jury returned indictments against the 11 members of the Brinks gang. The truck pieces were concealed in fiber bags when found. As a protective measure, he was incarcerated in the Hampden County jail at Springfield, Massachusetts, rather than the Suffolk County jail in Boston. WebThe Brinks Robbery The idea for the heist came from Joseph Big Joe McGinniss, but career criminal Anthony Fats Pino. On the night of January 17, 1952exactly two years after the crime occurredthe FBIs Boston Office received an anonymous telephone call from an individual who claimed he was sending a letter identifying the Brinks robbers. After weighing the arguments presented by the attorneys for the eight convicted criminals, the State Supreme Court turned down the appeals on July 1, 1959, in a 35-page decision written by the Chief Justice. As long as he was in prison, he could do no physical harm to his Boston criminal associates. Thus, when he and Gusciora were taken into custody by state authorities during the latter part of January 1950, OKeefe got word to McGinnis to recover his car and the $200,000 that it contained. Pino was known in the underworld as an excellent case man, and it was said that the casing of the Brinks offices bore his trademark.. In addition, McGinnis was named in two other complaints involving the receiving and concealing of the loot. other securities in the 1950 Brinks heist. While the officer and amusement arcade operator were talking to him, the hoodlum reached into his pocket, quickly withdrew his hand again and covered his hand with a raincoat he was carrying. Costa was associated with Pino in the operation of a motor terminal and a lottery in Boston. Interviewed again on December 28, 1955, he talked somewhat more freely, and it was obvious that the agents were gradually winning his respect and confidence. A t the time, the Brinks-Mat vault was thought to be one of the most secure facilities in the world. [14] Over a period of several months, the robbers removed each lock from the building and had a key made for it, before returning the lock. All identifying marks placed on currency and securities by the customers were noted, and appropriate stops were placed at banking institutions across the nation. Three years later, almost to the day, these ten men, together with another criminal, were to be indicted by a state grand jury in Boston for the Brinks robbery. Some of the bills were in pieces. He had been short changed $2,000. Except for $5,000 that he took before placing the loot in Maffies care, OKeefe angrily stated, he was never to see his share of the Brinks money again. Underworld sources described him as fully capable of planning and executing the Brinks robbery. On January 12, 1953, Pino was released on bail pending a deportation hearing. This is not the first time that Cuomo has commuted a sentence for someone involved in the Brink's robbery. Subsequently, OKeefe left his carand the $200,000in a garage on Blue Hill Avenue in Boston. Race tracks and gambling establishments also were covered in the hope of finding some of the loot in circulation. From their prison cells, they carefully followed the legal maneuvers aimed at gaining them freedom. Each man also was given a pistol and a Halloween-type mask. At 4:20 p.m. on January 6, 1956, OKeefe made the final decision. The mass of information gathered during the early weeks of the investigation was continuously sifted. This was a question which preyed heavily upon their minds. The roofs of buildings on Prince and Snow Hill Streets soon were alive with inconspicuous activity as the gang looked for the most advantageous sites from which to observe what transpired inside Brinks offices. Returning to Pennsylvania in February 1954 to stand trial, OKeefe was found guilty of burglary by the state court in McKean County on March 4, 1954. (McGinnis trial in March 1955 on the liquor charge resulted in a sentence to 30 days imprisonment and a fine of $1,000. This chauffeurs cap was left at the scene of the crime of the centurythe 1950 robbery of a Brink's bank branch in Massachusetts. While action to appeal the convictions was being taken on their behalf, the eight men were removed to the State prison at Walpole, Massachusetts. Prior to his murder, A detailed search for additional weapons was made at the Mystic River. Considerable thought was given to every detail. He was so cold and persistent in these dealings with his co-conspirators that the agents hoped he might be attempting to obtain a large sum of moneyperhaps his share of the Brinks loot. Following their arrests, a former bondsman in Boston made frequent trips to Towanda in an unsuccessful effort to secure their release on bail. Much of the money taken from the money changer appeared to have been stored a long time. In the fall of 1955, an upper court overruled the conviction on the grounds that the search and seizure of the still were illegal.). In the hours immediately following the robbery, the underworld began to feel the heat of the investigation. Through the interviews of persons in the vicinity of the Brinks offices on the evening of January 17, 1950, the FBI learned that a 1949 green Ford stake-body truck with a canvas top had been parked near the Prince Street door of Brinks at approximately the time of the robbery. Several hundred dollars were found hidden in the house but could not be identified as part of the loot. On August 30, he was taken into custody as a suspicious person. The At 10:25 p.m. on October 5, 1956, the jury retired to weigh the evidence. In the late summer of 1944, he was released from the state prison and was taken into custody by Immigration authorities. Continuous investigation, however, had linked him with the gang. The ninth man had long been a principal suspect. McAvoy wanted members of the Arif crime family, specialists in armed robbery, on the job. At the centre of The Gold are the detective Brian Boyce, played by Hugh Bonneville, and Kenneth Noye, played by Jack Lowden. Two members of the gang were quickly caught but the Robinson died in a London When OKeefe admitted his part in the Brinks robbery to FBI agents in January 1956, he told of his high regard for Gusciora. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. During his brief stay in Boston, he was observed to contact other members of the robbery gang. Immediately upon leaving, the gang loaded the loot into the truck that was parked on Prince Street near the door. Within minutes, theyd stolen more than $1.2 million in cash and another $1.5 million in checks and other securities, making it the largest robbery in the U.S. at the time. Other information provided by OKeefe helped to fill the gaps which still existed. Burlap money bags recovered in a Boston junk yard from the robbery, Some of the recovered money from the robbery. After a couple of attempts he hired underworld hitman Elmer "Trigger" Burke to kill O'Keefe. The police officer said he had been talking to McGinnis first, and Pino arrived later to join them. Underworld figures in Boston have generally speculated that the racketeer was killed because of his association with OKeefe. Apparently in need of money he kidnapped Vincent Costa and demanded his part of the loot for ransom. WebMore than 6,000 gold bars were stolen in the robbery from a warehouse on the outskirts of Heathrow on 26 November, 1983. Andrew Cuomo commuted her 75-year-to-life sentence to time served and made her eligible for parole for the three slayings in the Instead, they said the trailer was targeted near Frazier Park in the mountains along I-5. Both had served prison sentences, and both were well known to underworld figures on the East Coast. Rumors from the underworld pointed suspicion at several criminal gangs. A few weeks later, OKeefe retrieved his share of the loot. On November 16, 1959, the United States Supreme Court denied a request of the defense counsel for a writ of certiorari. Allegedly, he pulled a gun on OKeefe; several shots were exchanged by the two men, but none of the bullets found their mark. Because the money in the cooler was in various stages of decomposition, an accurate count proved most difficult to make. Then, there was the fact that so much dead wood was includedMcGinnis, Banfield, Costa, and Pino were not in the building when the robbery took place. Despite the arrests and indictments in January 1956, more than $2,775,000, including $1,218,211.29 in cash, was still missing. In the succeeding two weeks, nearly 1,200 prospective jurors were eliminated as the defense counsel used their 262 peremptory challenges. On June 5 and June 7, the Suffolk County grand jury returned indictments against the three mencharging them with several state offenses involving their possessing money obtained in the Brinks robbery. As the robbers sped from the scene, a Brinks employee telephoned the Boston Police Department. Their success in evading arrest ended abruptly on May 16, 1956, when FBI agents raided the apartment in which they were hiding in Dorchester, Massachusetts. [21] Any information police could get from their informers initially proved useless. According to the criminal who was arrested in Baltimore, Fat John subsequently told him that the money was part of the Brinks loot and offered him $5,000 if he would pass $30,000 of the bills. Shortly after these two guns were found, one of them was placed in a trash barrel and was taken to the city dump. All efforts to identify the gang members through the chauffeurs hat, the rope, and the adhesive tape which had been left in Brinks proved unsuccessful. Neither had too convincing an alibi. She also covered the 1950s Brinks robbery and was a medical reporter for the Boston Herald. Brian The Colonel Robinson, 78, was cheated out of his share of the record haul. WebThe robberys mastermind was Anthony Fats Pino, a career criminal who recruited a group of 10 other men to stake out the depot for 18 months to figure out when it held the This man subsequently identified locks from doors which the Brinks gang had entered as being similar to the locks which Pino had brought him. WebGordon John Parry, Brian Perry, Patrick Clark, and Jean Savage were all convicted at the Old Bailey. Two of the participants in the Brinks robbery lived in the Stoughton area. He claimed there was a large roll of bills in his hotel roomand that he had found that money, too. WebSix armed men broke into the Brinks-Mat security depot near Londons Heathrow airport and inadvertently stumbled across gold bullion worth 26m. The other gun was picked up by the officer and identified as having been taken during the Brinks robbery. Captain Marvel mask used as a disguise in the robbery. His records showed that he had worked on the offices early in April 1956 under instructions of Fat John. The loot could not have been hidden behind the wall panel prior to that time. The Great Brink's Robbery was an armed robbery of the Brink's building in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1950. In December 1948, Brinks moved from Federal Street to 165 Prince Street in Boston. Shortly thereafterduring the first week of Novembera 1949 green Ford stake-body truck was reported missing by a car dealer in Boston. That same afternoon (following the admission that Fat John had produced the money and had described it as proceeds from the Brinks robbery), a search warrant was executed in Boston covering the Tremont Street offices occupied by the three men. Well-known Boston hoodlums were picked up and questioned by police. Seven months later, however, he was again paroled. WebHere is what we know of those involved in the robbery. A Secret Service agent, who had been summoned by the Baltimore officers, arrived while the criminal was being questioned at the police headquarters, and after examining the money found in the bill changers possession, he certified that it was not counterfeit. On August 29, 1954, the officers suspicions were aroused by an automobile that circled the general vicinity of the abandoned car on five occasions. Before the robbers could take him prisoner, the garage attendant walked away. WebNext year January 2023 to be precise will mark 30 years since the Brink's depot in Rochester was looted for $7.4 million, then the fifth largest armored car company heist in Both OKeefe and Gusciora had been interviewed on several occasions concerning the Brinks robbery, but they had claimed complete ignorance. Pino had been at his home in the Roxbury Section of Boston until approximately 7:00 p.m.; then he walked to the nearby liquor store of Joseph McGinnis. He was not able to provide a specific account, claiming that he became drunk on New Years Eve and remained intoxicated through the entire month of January. Of the hundreds of New England hoodlums contacted by FBI agents in the weeks immediately following the robbery, few were willing to be interviewed. It was positively concluded that the packages of currency had been damaged prior to the time they were wrapped in the pieces of newspaper; and there were indications that the bills previously had been in a canvas container which was buried in ground consisting of sand and ashes. An immediate effort also was made to obtain descriptive data concerning the missing cash and securities. McGinnis previously had discussed sending a man to the United States Patent Office in Washington, D.C., to inspect the patents on the protective alarms used in the Brinks building. During the period in which Pinos deportation troubles were mounting, OKeefe completed his sentence at Towanda, Pennsylvania. If Baker heard these rumors, he did not wait around very long to see whether they were true. Adolph Maffie was convicted and sentenced to nine months for income tax evasion. As of 2004, it was Pino also During these approaches, Costaequipped with a flashlight for signaling the other men was stationed on the roof of a tenement building on Prince Street overlooking Brinks. Another week passedand approximately 500 more citizens were consideredbefore the 14-member jury was assembled. Born in Italy in 1907, Pino was a young child when he entered the United States, but he never became a naturalized citizen. The Boston hoodlum told FBI agents in Baltimore that he accepted six of the packages of money from Fat John. The following day (June 2, 1956), he left Massachusetts with $4,750 of these bills and began passing them. There were the rope and adhesive tape used to bind and gag the employees and a chauffeurs cap that one of the robbers had left at the crime scene. What happened in the Brinks-Matt robbery? Fat John and the business associate of the man arrested in Baltimore were located and interviewed on the morning of June 4, 1956. Approximately one and one-half hours later, Banfield returned with McGinnis. A second shooting incident occurred on the morning of June 14, 1954, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, when OKeefe and his racketeer friend paid a visit to Baker. All were paroled by 1971 except McGinnis, who died in prison. The conviction for burglary in McKean County, Pennsylvania, still hung over his head, and legal fees remained to be paid. Banfield drove the truck to the house of Maffies parents in Roxbury. This phase of the investigation greatly disturbed many gamblers. Almost immediately, the gang began laying new plans. Inside the building, the gang members carefully studied all available information concerning Brinks schedules and shipments. Gusciora also claimed to have been drinking that evening. Within a week, six of the Brinks suspects Costa, Anthony Pino, Henry Baker, Michael Vincent Geagan, Adolph Jazz Maffie, and Joseph McGinnis were arrested by FBI agents. At approximately 7:30 p.m. on June 3, 1956, an officer of the Baltimore, Maryland, Police Department was approached by the operator of an amusement arcade. The families of OKeefe and Gusciora resided in the vicinity of Stoughton, Massachusetts. One of his former girl friends who recalled having seen him on the night of the robbery stated that he definitely was not drunk. Thorough inquiries were made concerning the disposition of the bags after their receipt by the Massachusetts firm. Extensive efforts were made to detect pencil markings and other notations on the currency that the criminals thought might be traceable to Brinks. The pardon meant that his record no longer contained the second conviction; thus, the Immigration and Naturalization Service no longer had grounds to deport him.

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