NF (1998) The Napoleon of Crime

by Ben MacIntyre

  As one historian has remarked, William had an “instinctive altruism” sharply at odds with his public image as a pitiless lawman compounded of rawhide and scar tissue. He might speak of crooks as vermin, but in a way that was extraordinary for the time, he tended to treat them as human beings. He had no objection to hurting criminals but tried to avoid hurting their feelings. This was not always to their advantage.

  In 1871, the Pinkertons had collared the notorious train-robbery gang led by Hillary and Levi Farrington, after a series of gun battles in which William was shot in the side before clubbing the gang into submission with a pistol butt. Hillary Farrington, an enormous backwoods outlaw whose mother appeared to have mated with a grizzly bear, was restrained in a pair of custom-forged manacles and loaded onto the paddle steamer Illinois, headed for Columbus, Kentucky. On the way Pinkerton offered to buy his prisoner a drink in the bar. Farrington readily accepted, but asked to be taken through the back door to the boat’s saloon, via the deck, because he was embarrassed by the handcuffs and “didn’t like to be seen under the circumstances.” The sensitive Pinkerton agreed, but no sooner had they reached the deck than Farrington attacked him. They wrestled for Pinkerton’s gun, which went off, sending a bullet across the detective’s scalp and tipping the massive Farrington over the rail and under the churning paddle wheels, where he was diced into a number of very small pieces, none of which was ever found.

  It was one of the few occasions when Pinkerton’s kindness had gone awry, but he continued to treat his prey with a mixture of sympathy and severity. Some years later, when a group of criminals was pardoned and released, it was suggested that William Pinkerton, the felon’s friend, should give a party in their honor at the “Crooks Club.” It was a mocking dig, but Pinkerton would probably have enjoyed nothing more, for such men were by now his closest acquaintances.

  The criminal world had become markedly smaller and more unpredictable since the days of Worth’s apprenticeship in New York. One commentator noted in 1888 that “the Canadian government looks to the Agency entirely, and there is constant correspondence between Robt. A. Pinkerton at the New York office and the police authorities of London, Paris, Berlin and other great European cities.” Rogues’ galleries depicting criminals were common in police stations throughout the United States and Europe, information flowed internationally with increasing ease, and Inspector Byrnes’s best-selling and self-flattering Criminals of America had made life distinctly uncomfortable for many of those named and pictured therein.

  The invention of the Bertillion method of criminal identification was another breakthrough. In 1883, Alphonse Bertillion concluded that certain parts of the human body do not change over an adult’s lifetime and cannot be hidden by even the most elaborate disguise. The Bertillion method, which was introduced widely in Europe, involved the careful measurement of a criminal’s vital statistics, which could then be filed and distributed to aid identification. Before the invention of fingerprinting, the Bertillion method was hailed as a crucial contribution to crime-fighting, until about 1903, when the “science” was seriously undermined by the discovery that two prisoners at Leavenworth not only had the same name, William West, but had identical Bertillion measurements. By this time Scotland Yard had introduced fingerprinting, and the Pinkertons and European police authorities soon followed suit. Worth himself had decided that America, while a splendid place to visit and to hide a grand English painting, was no longer a good venue for business. As he subsequently explained to Pinkerton himself, “he had looked about this country, and had looked at the bank work as put up in this country, and it looked to him impossible.”

  With such technological advances as the telephone, which, as Guerin noted, “plays sad havoc with your chance of escape,” and the increasing sophistication of crime-fighting techniques, it is hardly surprising that the ranks of Worth’s criminal fraternity were thinning out fast. As Shore noted, Worth was becoming increasingly “fidgety over the ill-luck which is attending so many of his American clients.” By 1890 such notable burglars as Langdon Moore, Banjo Pete Emerson, George Bliss (who had once extracted more than two million dollars from the Ocean National Bank), Joe Killoran, and Western George Leslie, New York’s King of the Bank Robbers, were either dead or in prison. Of Worth’s inner circle, Ned Wynert, a Lothario to the last, had suffered the traditional adulterer’s fate, gunned down in flagrante delicto by an enraged husband; Joe Chapman, finally allowed to leave the Turkish jail, was now a semilunatic; Becker was lying low in the American Midwest; Captain George languished in a Parisian jail; and fickle Joe Elliott and Carlo Sesicovitch had died in American ones. Even old Junka Phillips was out of the picture, having been arrested in 1886 in Quebec “for uttering spurious Bank of Scotland notes” and sentenced to ten years in prison. It was not an encouraging roster.

  Worth’s twitchiness at the misfortune of his American clients was most particularly a reference to the sad fate of poor, battered Charley Bullard. The partnership between Piano Charley and Max Shinburn, resented by Worth from the outset, had proved largely unsuccessful despite a number of criminal forays in Belgium and Holland. Bullard was still drinking heavily, and Shinburn, determined to regain his grand life-style, tended to fritter away whatever they managed to steal. “The urge to speculate made him something of a plunger on the Bourse,” and what little was left over from the Baron’s speculations was lost through “gambling and extortion by a blackmailer threatening to reveal his identity.” Pinkerton ran into Shinburn in Belgium in the 1880s and found him “with resources sadly depleted.” According to one associate, “Max and Charlie [sic] after having made and spent fortunes in some of the most gigantic robberies known on two continents, were broke.”

  The Baron was hoping for one more big theft to establish himself as Worth’s equal and reclaim the life of luxury he craved. Shinburn’s crime de résistance would prove a humiliating, hilarious, and costly catastrophe, not just for himself, but for hopeless, drink-befuddled Charley Bullard as well. Many years later it was suggested that Worth himself may have had a hand in the Baron’s downfall. According to one, uncorroborated, account, he had grown “tired of supporting his old pals and determined to rid himself of his unwelcome parasites” by setting them up to commit a major crime and then betraying them. Although Worth may well have known of their plans, since he maintained friendly contact with Bullard, there is no evidence of treachery on his part. Indeed, he seems to have been quite stunned at the ensuing events.

  The target selected by the Baron was the Provincial Bank in Verviers, Belgium, a rural establishment containing an ancient safe which Shinburn was confident could be broken into without difficulty. Piano Charley was easily persuaded to go in as an accomplice and was promised $6,000 if the heist was successful. Shinburn later admitted that he “hoped to realize at least $100,000 for himself.”

  The bank was situated within a courtyard at the heart of the town, protected by a large wrought-iron gate. The door to the bank was constructed of oak at least a foot thick and secured by a lock later described by the Belgian press as “immense.” Armed with revolvers, the pair set out one midnight to case the premises. “They planned to rob the bank the following night,” according to the Belgian prosecutor, “after having made a thorough inspection of the interior.” Shinburn picked the lock of the outer gate and then set to work on the inner door, unscrewing the keyhole plate and placing the four screws in the pocket of his waistcoat. Once that door had been opened, the thieves removed their boots and left them on the doorstep, so they could tiptoe through the bank without leaving any traces.

  But while Shinburn and Bullard were inside sizing up the safe, a night watchman happened to pass by the outer gate and, noticing it was ajar, shone his torch inside. The robbers’ boots were clearly visible on the doorstep. The watchman, realizing what was happening, gathered up the shoes and set off to alert the police. Moments later the thieves reappeared, having seen all they needed to, and Shinburn had almost finished screwing back
the keyhole plate when Bullard pointed out that their footwear had vanished. Shinburn could not find the fourth screw despite frantically emptying his pockets. “To save time rather than attempt a search in the darkness, Shinburn took some wax from a ball of that material in his pocket, and filled the hole, drawing his finger nail through the substance to give it the appearance of the top of the screw.” The pair then fled in their socks, just as the Belgian police arrived in force. The Baron “fired a pistol at one of the gendarmes but missed him, and was immediately overpowered.” Bullard somehow managed to break free, gamely cantering off into the darkness and firing his gun skywards in a vain effort to scare off his pursuers. He was tackled and handcuffed before he made it to the end of the street.

  Although the American criminals appeared to have been caught red-handed, the Belgian police were baffled. Having searched the suspects, they found no stolen goods and only a tiny ball of wax in Shinburn’s waistcoat. While they strongly (and rightly) suspected this had been used to obtain an impression of the interior of the keyhole, they could not prove it.

  With typical insouciance, Shinburn insisted the courtyard gate had been left open and that he and his friend were footsore after a long day sightseeing in the town, and had merely removed their boots in order to sit down for a rest on the bank steps. Mr. Bullard, he explained, had started shooting at the police officers because he believed he was being mugged, spoke no French and was, moreover, prone to alcoholic hallucinations. One look at raddled Piano Charley confirmed that at least the latter part of this tale was thoroughly credible.

  Shinburn was an adept liar, and the police, lacking proof, were on the point of setting the two men free when one of the officers suggested they call in what would now be considered forensic experts for one final examination of the bank interior. As the Belgian papers reported, “one of the experts requested an opportunity to examine Shinburn’s ball of wax. To his surprise a small screw was deeply embedded in the wax. A locksmith tested the door in the yard, whereupon he noted that one of the screw holes was filled with wax, and the screw missing.”

  The missing screw was the same type as that found in Shinburn’s pocket, and on minute examination the keyhole plate showed scratch marks from tampering. Inspector Byrnes of New York, meanwhile, had received photographs of the pair and immediately “identified them as notorious burglars and jail breakers for whom the police in this country had been looking.” After a swift trial before the Court of assises in Liège, they were sentenced on February 21, 1884. Charley got twelve years’ hard labor, and Shinburn, as the ringleader, got sixteen and a half.

  Worth was busy arranging his own criminal affairs at the time of these events, but he observed them with horror from London. He already had ample reason to dislike Shinburn, and the Baron’s part in bringing down his former partner seems to have caused the crook particular anguish. He railed against Shinburn’s stupidity and bemoaned Charley’s fate, but he was powerless to intervene.

  As the years of Charley’s incarceration dragged by, the aging pianist, deprived of his dual supports of alcohol and music, declined visibly. Like Worth, he had never forgotten Kitty Flynn and seems to have entertained the hopeless illusion that she might now come to his aid with her new wealth. The Pinkertons recorded that he even made a “vow to reunite with the rich widow Terry” and noted “she is immensely rich, but whether she will consent to reunite with her convict husband, those who know her best are unable to tell.” The last photograph of Piano Charley shows a pitiful figure with straggling beard and staring eyes, a grim cipher of the once-glamorous rake. Worth provided his former partner with what little succor he could, bribing the wardens to slip him small packages of food and messages of support. But by 1891, as Bullard began the seventh year of his sentence, the old thief was plainly dying.

  Worth wanted to see his friend again, and perhaps even to plead, if not in person, then with cash, for his release. Bullard was adept at getting into prison, but no slouch at getting out of them again, as he had shown in 1868 and again in 1878. Worth may have thought he could spring Charley from Liège prison: almost equally pleasurable would be to leave Shinburn behind.

  The Prison de Louvain at Liège was, like most penitentiaries of the time, a place of lavish nastiness, designed to crush all rebellion out of its inmates rather than reform them. Only the most resilient or resourceful survived its rigors unbowed. Piano Charley, aesthete and lush, was neither.

  One day in 1892 Worth suddenly announced to his wife that he was going on a short foreign business trip, bade farewell to his young children, and headed for the Continent. As always, Worth’s motives were a mixture of the altruistic and the criminal: he intended to see and perhaps try to free Charley Bullard, but he was also nursing a new scheme to liberate the Belgian banks of some cash.

  The first part of the plan came to nothing, for by the time Worth reached Liège, Charley Bullard was already dead and presumably playing the piano in Hades; the second part was to prove Worth’s undoing.

  NINETEEN

  Worth’s Waterloo

  Perhaps it was the emotional trauma of Bullard’s death that caused Worth to undertake a crime he would not have contemplated in his more rational moments. His taste for highway robbery had been demonstrated in South Africa, and maybe he thought a little light larceny would take his mind off things for a while, or perhaps he had simply become so vain that he considered himself immune to ill fortune. Even the Pinkertons considered it bizarre that a man of Worth’s intelligence, who had stolen enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life, should stoop to petty crime once again. “Worth was living ‘on top of the wave’ in England, he had become wealthy,” William Pinkerton reflected. “One would have thought that with this amount Worth could have retired, but the gambling propensity was so strong within him, and the desire for other fields led him into a still further life of crime.”

  After leaving London early in September 1892, Worth first headed for Switzerland, where he had arranged a rendezvous with a crook and former habitué of the American Bar named Oscar Klein, before heading on to Liège via Cologne and Aix to pick up some customized burglar’s tools from a local blacksmith. A week after leaving London he arrived in Liège and checked into one of the city’s more expensive hotels. The scheme hatched by Worth as he wandered around the city mulling over Charley’s demise was straightforward but exceedingly rash. Most of the currency delivered to the Belgian city was brought by rail, Worth learned, before it was transported to the various banks by an express van guarded by an armed driver accompanied by a young boy. The driver was responsible for the safe delivery of the strongboxes, while the urchin ran lesser errands. After a few days of observation, Worth worked out that the driver and the boy sometimes went off simultaneously, leaving the van briefly unguarded. As he later explained to Pinkerton, if he sent a package to be delivered at a point near one of the larger banks, he could ensure that “the boy would be sent with this while the man went in the bank, leaving the wagon alone.”

  For the first time in several years, and for reasons best known to himself, Worth decided to carry out this theft personally rather than delegating the job to others, but obviously he needed accomplices. He recruited two known crooks, Johnny Curtin, a fugitive American bank robber whom he summoned from England, and Dutch Alonzo Henne, a local sneak thief with a solid underworld reputation. Curtin was a plausible but wholly unreliable rogue of saturnine good looks and long brown whiskers, whose charm was matched only by his avarice. The forty-two-year-old Curtin had served time for various crimes in Chicago, Sing Sing, and the Eastern Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, and had a reputation as “one of the most notorious burglars and shoplifters in America,” before crossing the Atlantic in 1886 with two other criminals, as the police reported, to “make a tour of the continent, as they had considerable work laid out for them by Adam Worth, a noted receiver of stolen goods to whom all the American thieves go, on their arrival in London, for points.” Curtin had won Worth’s admiration and
approval some months before when he was arrested while attempting to pass off a forged check and then swallowed the evidence en route to the police station.

  Big Dutch Alonzo, one of the most villainous-looking men in Europe, was brought along as backup. He might appear terrifying, but, as Worth later reflected bitterly, “Alonzo, in spite of the fact that he had a great reputation for being a staunch fellow, and everything of that kind, was the biggest coward that ever lived when it came to doing anything daring.”

  For several days Worth coached his partners in their appointed roles: Curtin was to be the legman, ready to whisk off the bag which Worth would fill from the express-van strongbox, while Alonzo would act as lookout. The day before the robbery, Worth purchased a padlock identical to the one on the wagon strongbox, and a new overcoat, should a quick disguise become necessary. On the morning of October 5, 1892, the trio set out, and in its early stages the plan ran smoothly. At 9:30 a.m. the driver climbed down from the coach to deliver a strongbox to a Monsieur Comblen at 31, Boulevard Frère Orban, while his boy disappeared up a side street to make the bogus delivery. Worth, as he later recounted, “jumped on the seat and tore the lock off” the van’s strongbox and “in less time than this takes to write,” as one paper later reported, emptied the contents into a small sack.

  “Alonzo was to be on the lookout to give the signal one way and Curtin the other, but when he looked about he saw both of them walking away.” Either Worth’s reflexes were going, or greed had got the better of him, for instead of taking to his heels at once, he “got off the van with as many packages as he could carry in his arms and started up the street.” The reason for the disappearance of both Curtin and Alonzo was immediately apparent. Just as the robbery was taking place, one “Monsieur Decorty, a railway employee, happened to be passing who noticed the event.” Worth’s two accomplices saw Decorty staring with his mouth open, and scrammed. The railwayman recovered from his surprise “and, seeing the malefactor running away, set off in pursuit crying ‘Stop! Thief!’ ”