The three men pushed their way through the morning crush to the employee entrance to One World Trade. At the security desk they flashed their employee identification tags. If the guard had looked closely, he would have noticed that all three employees had the same name. The three men signed in under false names and pressed the button for the elevator bank that would take them to the eleventh floor. One of them, Richie Gillette, kept glancing at his watch.
The three men got on the passenger elevator with a number of other employees. They tried to look as bored as everyone else. At the eleventh floor they got off, and when the door closed, they found themselves in a gray-carpeted hallway with no windows that led in two directions past numerous anonymous offices. They quickly pulled on ski masks and figured out which of the elevators was marked FREIGHT. It was 8:28 A.M. In a minute, the freight door opened.
Inside, the two guards began to push out the cart full of money. They looked up to see three ski-masked men. Two were pointing guns at them.
One of the men hollered, “Don’t nobody move! Everybody up against the wall!”
One of the cleaning ladies fell to her knees and began to pray loudly on the floor of the elevator. Later the guards would remember three men in ski masks in dark clothes, and that was all. A third man—it was Richie Gillette— handcuffed each of the elevator’s occupants with plasticcovered wire. The men were clearly nervous. They disarmed only one of the two guards. The other guard remained handcuffed in a corner with his gun only inches away in its holster during the entire robbery. While Gillette tied up the guards and the cleaning ladies and the rest of the stunned passengers, Mel and Mike pulled out box cutters and slashed open the top four of the seven money bags. They then began jamming the contents into their duffel bags, not paying much attention to the fact that most of what they were stealing was not manufactured by the United States Treasury Department.
They moved as quickly as they could, but time was passing quickly. They had now been in the elevator for nearly eight minutes, holding the door and pointing guns at seven prone people. The cleaning lady who had been praying on her knees was now weeping. The robbers decided to call it a day, leaving behind $1.6 million in U.S. currency in carefully stacked packages inside the bottom three blue Brinks bags.
One of the men hit the button for the twenty-second floor. They stepped out of the freight elevator into the hall, still wearing their ski masks. At this moment they were confronted with confusion. They had been told again and again to hide their faces, but also to look as calm and normal as possible. Wearing ski masks in a bank unit’s hallway seemed hardly a normal thing to do. Thus it was that all three men removed their ski masks at once. Only Richie Gillette, who had apparently picked up a modest amount of common sense over the years, kept his hood on. Richie and Mel carried one bag, Mike carried two. They strolled down the hallway with their bags weighted down by money, looking as relaxed as vacationers on the beach. Or perhaps they were maintenance guys headed over to check out the latest complaint about the screwy heating system that kept things too hot in the summer and freezing from December through May.
Stroll was what they did, over to a passenger elevator. They pressed the button and waited. Soon they were on board, headed back to the concourse. In a few minutes— by 8:45 A.M.—they passed out of a set of revolving doors at One World Trade and onto a crowded New York City street.
They had to be feeling pretty fine. This was, after all, the World Trade Center, a building transformed into a fortress as a result of the acts of crazed overseas terrorists. And they had just stolen lots and lots of money from inside that very building and walked outside an actual door onto the street.
At that moment, as Richie, Mel, and Mike headed out of the revolving door, Ralphie sat across the street in a parked car, watching. He saw them leave. He saw the bags in their hands. He saw them walk down the street. He knew that they were to take different subway routes to Brooklyn and meet up that night to split up whatever they had snatched. It must have been a difficult moment for Ralphie. There he sat, knowing that his three handpicked guys had somehow managed to come out of that building without being arrested. And yet he could not know what had transpired inside, he could not know precisely how much they’d stolen, and he could not, under any circumstances, walk over at that moment and ask.
January 14, 1998 It was hard to tell from the media deluge whether the world viewed the mastermind behind the Great World Trade Center Heist of 1998 as a criminal Einstein or a comic genius.
It was full-court media bombardment, almost from the moment Richie, Mel, and Mike traipsed out of the Trade Center with their heavy loads. On TV, on the radio—hour
after hour it continued. The press loved it! Three guys—in some reports “bozos”—managed to walk out of New York’s most sensitive building in broad daylight (whatever that is) with more than $1 million in cash. And they did it while showing their faces to no fewer than fifty-five hidden cameras. How about that! These radio and TV people were practically laughing out loud as they read their copy to the masses.
The mastermind himself—Ralphie Guarino—remained in a state of shock. He didn’t know what to think, except to know that whatever would come of this, it would surely be bad. During the previous twenty-four hours, after he watched his guys exit the towers, he headed to a rendezvous spot in Brooklyn. There he helped Richie and the other two guys count and split the cash. His first shock came when he got a look at the take. There was nary a dead U.S. president in the lot. Francs. Yen. Lire. Lots of lire.
“You know I got fucking bags of this Italian yen,” Ralphie told Sal later. “I don’t know, Italian lire. You know, eighty thousand of them making fucking ten dollars.”
There were some good old American dollar bills, but not a whole hell of a lot, and Ralphie was forced to hand over most of the U.S. cash to his three foot soldiers in stacks of $20,000 each. Counting the rest became somewhat tricky. Ralphie—a guy from Brooklyn—had little experience with the finer details of foreign currency exchange rates. They did the best they could. He arranged to have the bulk of the overseas cash hidden away until he could figure a way to exchange it for real American bills. He made sure to tell all three of his guys to get out of town as quickly as possible, and then he went on his way. He was happy that the job itself had come off, but talking with Sal Calciano, he was not so happy about the foreign aspect of the haul.
“Maybe we can figure it out on a computer,” he said. “I got to know what a pound is worth. I got to know what the Armenian dollar is worth. Excuse me. What a lire is worth. I mean, I look at the paper, but I can’t understand it. You know? It’s zero-zero-point-five. I’m not good at it. I have bad dreams about this.”
That morning, the New York Daily News story headline on page 3: 1.6M LOST IN WTC HEIST.
That was bad. What was below the headline was worse.
There were two photographs, taken off surveillance cameras on the eleventh floor of the World Trade Center. In
one photo taken from Camera no. 4, the time was listed as
8:40:11 A.M. 1/13/98. There, for all the world to see, was
Melvin Folk. His face was as clear as if he was appearing
on America’s Funniest Home Videos. He might as well
have waved at the camera. Then right behind him came
Michael Reed, his jacket open, carrying two bags, oblivious. Richie Gillette walked behind the three, his face obscured by a hooded jacket. The photographs were precise
and clear. They offered time to the nanosecond and wellfocused detail of Mel and Mike’s collective mugs. “What’s the big deal about buying a hat?” Ralphie
asked Sal. “No good news. Can’t get no good news out of
this. Sitting on a million dollars. I never lied in my whole
life.”
Sal: “You know what I want? We need to get somebody
sharp.”
Ralph: “I mean, I’m so pissed. I should be. You know
what? I don’t mind
. You want to get caught, you get
caught. These things happen, right? Can’t go to fucking
Mommy.”
But the details. The stories alongside those horrible
photos provided galling details.
“They knew the layout of the World Trade Center well,” one law enforcement source was quoted as saying. “They
seemed to know the delivery schedule.”
And worst of all—the newspapers reported that the
thieves left behind $1.6 million of mostly U.S. currency. “How can you only take two bags?” Ralphie asked
rhetorically. “Two bags whatever the fuck you take. He
was on the elevator. He saw it. I mean, I can’t believe they
did this. I think they just panicked.”
One question begat another, then another.
Ralph: “I mean I didn’t see them. You know, they went
by train. And then I saw them later on. So who knows what
they fucking did. You know they’re fucking junkies. All
right? I mean I hate to say the fucking word junkie, but I
mean, they’re fucking thieves.”
As the day wore on, more and more details of the Trade
Center robbery became a matter of public entertainment.
By the next morning, on the front page of the Daily News,
it deteriorated into high comedy.
MOE, LARRY AND CURLY Three stooges swiped $1M from WTC then went home to show off in B’klyn nabe
What did that make Ralphie? Shemp?
Now the photo of Richie, Mel, and Mike was on the front page, too, over the caption: “Oooh look, a camera!” And as a final insult, one of the suspects had already been picked up by the FBI.
Though no names were yet mentioned, it was clear everybody knew who was involved. That’s because at least two of the three—Mel and Mike—had clearly ignored Ralphie’s advice to get the hell out of Dodge and instead returned to their old haunts in Windsor Terrace. This indicated they either had no clue their faces were all over the
newspapers and on the TV news, or they simply didn’t care. Otherwise, why would Michael Reed have headed straight back to his usual barber at the Unisex Salon on Prospect Park West to drop fourteen dollars on a haircut? Barber Lou Amato got a measly three-dollar tip and was thus inspired to tell the Daily News, “I saw his picture in the paper and I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, I cut a bank robber’s hair.’ ”
From there, Reed walked down the street feeling mighty munificent. He walked into a local corner store where he was well-known and gave the owner a dollar he owed her. He then bought himself a carton of strawberry milk.
“All singles,” she said. “He acted very normal. It was unbelievable.”
Within hours after the newspapers printed a number to call the police with information about the suspects, the cops had received no fewer than fifty-six tips. It did not hurt that there was now a $26,000 reward. All over Windsor Terrace people were dropping quarters into pay phones. Mel and Mike, after all, weren’t exactly well liked in the neighborhood. At Farrell’s bar, for instance, the bartender— who also managed to call the tip line—made it clear that Reed was considered a bit of a skell, and was therefore unwelcome on the premises—“not even to use the bathroom.”
But worse than all of the humiliation was the fact that one of the Three Stooges was now in the custody of the FBI, and Ralphie was sure he knew which one.
It had to be Mel, and Mel knew Richie’s first and last name. Whether or not he knew Ralphie’s name, Ralphie could not be sure. Certainly Richie had mentioned it once or twice. And even more certain was that the FBI could not in their right minds believe that Moe, Larry, and Curly had thought this thing up. As a liquor-store owner from Windsor Terrace told the News, “They weren’t smart enough for that. Someone had to come to them and offer a deal.”
Someone indeed.
Ralphie reached out to Sal to have a talk. They met for coffee.
Sal: “You want some coffee?”
Ralph: “You drink the coffee.”
Sal: “I’ll drink any fucking thing. I mean, I don’t give a fuck.”
Ralph: “I got a fucking headache.”
Sal: “All right, then. What are we gonna do? Let’s really start thinking.”
Sal then informed Ralphie that he’d heard a kid from the neighborhood was at a local funeral home and was saying that Melvin Desmond Folk had $25,000 stashed at his house and then the federal agents came around and were asking the kid questions. Sal said the kid told them, “I was just talking out of my hat.”
Ralph said, “Sally, you know, you gotta believe one thing. You gotta believe you’re dealing with fucking morons, this whole neighborhood.”
The FBI picked up Michael Reed on Thursday, the fifteenth of January. He was actually staying at the home of a friend right there on Twentieth Street in Brooklyn where he hung out all the time. A retired NYPD detective who’d known Reed for years from Windsor Terrace had identified him within a few hours of the robbery. That same day a photo of Richie Gillette was circulated to police stations across the nation.
Around 7:30 P.M. on Friday, January 16, a passenger on a California-bound Amtrak aroused the suspicions of railroad security because he was chain-smoking and flashing money around. The man was approached by security in his sleeper car as the train pulled into Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was asked a few questions. The man wore a Green Bay Packers jacket and produced an ID with the name George Grillo. He said he was from New York and was headed to San Bernardino. He consented to a search of the cabin and a drug-sniffing dog reacted to his red duffel bag. Inside, Amtrak agent Jonathan Salazar found lots of cash and an ID with the name Richard Gillette. The cash was confiscated because Gillette couldn’t explain it. Agent Salazar did not arrest the passenger but instead headed back to his radio car to check both names. When Gillette popped up in the computer as wanted by the FBI, Salazar returned to the sleeper and discovered his man was gone.
The train had by now pulled out of Albuquerque and was headed out into the frigid desert night. Amtrak ordered it stopped and the local police in Albuquerque began searching for Gillette, street by street. A waitress pointed him out in a bar called Famous Sam’s, but he ducked out the back door. An hour later they tracked him down to a nearby hotel. At 8:30 P.M., January 16, 1998, Gillette was arrested by the FBI and charged with participating in the daring January 13, 1998, robbery of Bank of America from inside the heart of the nation’s safest building.
In less than four days, the Three Stooges were in the custody of the United States government. Nearly all of the stolen $1 million in lire, francs, yen, and good old American dollars was still unaccounted for.
January 19, 1998 In Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island and the Bronx and North Jersey, the bookies prepared. Sunday, January 25, was Super Bowl XXXIII. Two weeks out, Vegas had Green Bay as thirteen-point favorites over Denver. Now it was twelve points, Green Bay. This was the week that could make or break the bank. Usually during the week leading up to Super Bowl, Ralphie was excited. This was the event. More money was bet on this game than on any single sports event during the year. In the New York area, millions of dollars were at stake. Fortunes were acquired; fortunes were lost. Spousal abuse was rampant. Enough beer was consumed to fill several football stadiums. In years past, Ralphie had done well on Super Bowl Sunday. This year he was betting against the spread, picking Denver over Green Bay, trying to get himself excited about earning some money as he had in years past.
But this was not years past. This was the week after the greatest failure of Ralphie’s storied career. And during the last seven days, Ralphie has heard some things. For one, Sal told him the Port Authority police and the FBI now believed Moe, Larry, and Curly could not have pulled off such a well-organized heist without help from someone of more substantive intelligence. That they had names of actual individuals. That Sal and Ralphie now had their names on a list.
A few days
before Super Bowl XXXIII, Ralph and Sal were driving around Brooklyn, headed for a seafood restaurant they both had known for years. Sal mentioned that the Port Authority police had been around to Sal’s office asking many questions.
“They gotta be buzzin’ about you inside the building because they know your fucking activity,” Ralphie says.
“Everybody’s thinking,” Sal says.
“Yeah,” Ralphie says, “they know, huh. Because, remember you said, you’re gonna be all hot because of that building.”
Sal: “Everybody’s thinking I know about it.”
Ralph: “Really.”
Sal: “Hey. I’m not ’fessing up to nothing. I don’t give a fuck. The only one I told, between me and you, believe it or not, is my wife.” Sal stopped talking.
Ralphie says, “Say it.”
Sal: “I told her my Jewish partner came over. I says, ‘Steve, listen, do you know me?’ And he knows me. Me and him do everything together. He’s embarrassed. I says, ‘Just tell me one thing. If I do get fucking nailed on this, if I gotta do twenty, will you look after my family?’ He says, ‘Sal, they will want for nothing.’ That’s all I needed to hear. So that’s why I tell my wife. She’s going crazy right before I’m locked up. I’m going alone.”
Ralph: “Yeah, of course.”
Sal: “Ain’t nobody coming with me. She says, ‘I know that.’ She says, ‘I knew it was you, you fuck.’ ”
They both laughed, but only for a minute.
Sal: “She says to me, ‘Why?’ I don’t know why. Who the fuck knows why?”
Sal said the Port Authority has two detectives working on the case and they have no leads. “Everybody’s protected,” he says.
“Richie is protecting us, that’s all I care about,” Ralphie says. “All right. So what do you want to do with this money? That’s the next problem. I don’t want to send it away again, I don’t want to keep it around me. You know what I mean?”
“My fucking head hurts when I think about it,” Sal says. “I says to myself, I’m sitting here talking on the computer and I’m talking to this fucking girl in Florida. I wanna go see this girl in Florida. She’s a Jewish girl. She’s fifty-four years old. She is fucking twenty years older than me. She’s very attractive, though. I like that in older women. She wants me to come down and spend the weekend with her and I am talking to her and I’m thinking, ‘I can do this. I know I can fucking do this.’ But why ain’t I doing it? I don’t know what we did wrong.”
Made Men Page 4