Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  Suffolk County District Attorney Garrick Byrne was intent on prosecuting Burke for either homicide or attempted murder, as well as possession of a machine gun. While questioning John Carlson, he learned that O’Keefe was alive. Byrne got Carlson’s signed statement of meeting the wounded Specky after the shooting incident, plus a promise to contact the fugitive and try to convince O’Keefe to come in and have a talk with the DA. Carlson’s secret statement found its way to the press. Again, Specky was in the headlines. When he didn’t turn himself in to Byrne, O’Keefe went on the city’s ten-most-wanted list. When he failed to appear at a scheduled hearing in Boston’s municipal court, Judge Arlow found him in default of probation and issued three warrants for Specs on counts dating back to July 5, 1945—negligently operating a car; carrying a weapon on his person in a car; obliterating serial numbers on a firearm; receiving firearms with the knowledge of serial numbers having been removed. O’Keefe was also slated to answer a charge of “Lewd and Lascivious Cohabitation” growing out of his girlfriend’s admission that she and the fugitive had an out-of-wedlock living arrangement. Judge Arlow swore out a fourth warrant for his arrest that same day. When still on this same day O’Keefe failed to appear in Dorchester district court on a traffic violation, a fifth warrant went out for his arrest. The following day, July 1, 1954, a Pennsylvania court of appeal rejected O’Keefe’s lawyer’s bid to overrule a March 29, 1954, conviction for the Smithport County robbery in June, 1950. All in all, Specs owed Pennsylvania three to twelve years of penal time and Suffolk County, Massachusetts, twenty-seven months.

  O’Keefe was apprehended on August 1, 1954, by a Worcester, Massachusetts, policeman. He was returned to Boston, where Garrick Byrne pressed him for a shooting accusation against Elmer Burke. O’Keefe intimated the matter went far beyond Burke. Byrne, who had had no part in the Brink’s robbery investigation and only minimal dealings with the FBI on other matters, felt O’Keefe was insinuating that the matter had something to do with Brink’s. The DA told Specs to be explicit, warned the prisoner to give out with facts or face Byrne’s personal wrath. O’Keefe opted for silence. Byrne marched right into a municipal courtroom and, without mentioning Brink’s, demanded O’Keefe’s immediate incarceration on the twenty-seven months of time owed the county. While the matter was being considered, Specs was sent over to the Charles Street Jail and was suddenly transferred when it was realized Elmer Burke was an inmate. The following day John Carlson left his home to buy some cigarettes and was never heard from again. Two days after that, on August 5, extra guards were called to a jailhouse and may have scared off potential gunmen intent on killing O’Keefe while he was being driven to court. On Saturday, August 7, 1954, O’Keefe arrived at the Hampden County Jail at Springfield, Massachusetts, to serve twenty-seven months. Twenty days later Elmer Burke made a spectacular escape from the Charles Street Jail.

  The day after Burke’s escape the BPD located the abandoned getaway car in a hospital parking lot and staked out the area. Five hours after that, a late-model Oldsmobile drove past the parking lot, circled the block twice more slowing down in front of the lot on each occasion, then drove off. The Oldsmobile was found to be registered to Pino’s sixty-eight-year-old Aunt Elizabeth. Tony—who had both conceived and participated in the Burke jailbreak—couldn’t be found. An eleven-state alarm went out for his apprehension. On August 8 Pino showed up at police headquarters and explained he was certainly circling around the parking lot, looking for a parking space because his wife’s daughter was across the way in the hospital having a baby. And indeed, she was having a baby. Three days later Pino was before a grand jury explaining his whereabouts on the day of Burke’s escape. A day after that he was preinterviewed for yet another crime commission probe. A month later he was seized by immigration officials and incarcerated as a “Threat to Public Safety and the Security of the Community.” At a hearing the immigration attorney guffawed, linked Pino to Burke, was forced by the defendant’s lawyer, Paul Smith, to make a public apology to Tony—which wound up in the headlines.

  Smith, as the hearing continued, was able to get into the record that the deportation action was a harassment technique being employed against Pino by the FBI. Nevertheless, Pino remained incarcerated until December 10. On advice from legal counsel, eighteen days later, Jimmy Costa and his son-in-law refused to tell a state crime commissioner whether Tony Pino had used stolen Brink’s money to finance the lottery in which he and Jimmy were partners.

  On January 28, 1955, Joseph Sylvester “Barney” Banfield died of what was listed as “natural causes.” Most of the gang assumed the real cause was alcoholism. He was forty-five years old. No one knew for certain, but his fellow crew members were of the opinion Joe McGinnis had kept the majority, if not all, of Barney’s Brink’s loot.

  On Wednesday, March 23, 1955, a court in Canterbury, New Hampshire, found Joe McGinnis guilty of unlawful possession of a distillery and violation of Internal Revenue laws. The conviction, with its thirty days’ imprisonment and $1,000 fine, was overruled by a higher court on the grounds that the search and seizure of the still were illegal. On April 11, 1955, the United. States Supreme Court ruled that Pino’s 1948 larceny of a dozen golf balls had not “attained such finality as to support an order of deportation.”

  Tony and all the other crooks in Boston had stood the heat, had only nine months to go before the statute of limitations ran out and they were, for all time, beyond the law.

  For the FBI and Jim Crowley and the Massachusetts attorney general this left only two possible candidates for turning state’s evidence—Gusciora and O’Keefe.

  Gus had spent five full years in Western State Penitentiary, had endured—according to his lawyer—unmerciful beatings, showed no indications of being “cooperative” toward the law.

  O’Keefe, like Gusciora, had already served nearly five years behind bars and been publicly named a Brink’s robber. But Specs had endured a great deal more. It was his brother and sister and brother-in-law who had been cited for contempt of the federal grand jury and sentenced to jail and had their names on the front pages of newspapers along with his estranged wife. In the course of assisting O’Keefe and their own legal battles, his relatives had been bankrupted. His brother-in-law lost the saloon he operated and was deeply in debt and driving a truck. O’Keefe’s sister was working at a hospital at a menial job. His estranged wife and adopted son were destitute. His girlfriend had been arraigned and humiliated when the “Lewd and Lascivious Cohabitation” charge hit the papers. He, and possibly other gang members, had been robbed of their rightful share of the Brink’s loot. His best friend was missing, undoubtedly had been murdered by or on instruction from gang members. Two attempts had been made on his life. Once out of Hampden County Jail he faced a long term in a Pennsylvania prison. Regardless of all this, O’Keefe blamed the bulk of his woes on the FBI, couldn’t conceive of cooperating with them, had refused to talk to special agents. He had chatted with BPD Lieutenant James V. Crowley on several occasions and even listened to what a member from the Massachusetts attorney’s office had to say. But “ratting” was anathema to him. He was of and from the street. Law was the enemy.

  Whatever was technically due him from the Brink’s robbery was of no consequence to O’Keefe. He needed money for his wife and stepson and sister and brother-in-law. After the state statute of limitations ran out, he would have no leverage with the robbers. Correctly assuming that all his smuggled communications would be read by the Law, O’Keefe sent carefully worded messages—ones he felt couldn’t incriminate him in a courtroom—to McGinnis and Pino. The meaning was unmistakable and threatening: Come up with the money or else. He got no response.

  A second batch of messages went out—more strongly worded. When he still didn’t hear, he got word through to Pino and McGinnis’ lawyer. The attorney visited Specs, was told to tell McGinnis that O’Keefe wanted an answer. Other friends who came to see Specky were given similar messages.

  McGinnis appeared at Ha
mpden County Jail, was refused admittance. Edward A. “Wimpy” Bennett, a McGinnis emissary, arrived, was granted a meeting, told Specs the gang would give his wife $5,000 and “take care of him later.” According to O’Keefe, he accepted the offer. According to gang members, Bennett said O’Keefe turned down the proposal, demanded $50,000 or nothing.

  Many of the robbers were broke. Many felt that the funds they had given O’Keefe were enough. Some suggested having O’Keefe committed to a mental institution. Majority consensus was that O’Keefe was too potent a crook to rat. Consensus was that even if he did rat, it wouldn’t hold up in court. The prosecution would need a corroborating witness for anything O’Keefe said on the stand.

  Bennett returned to Hampden County Jail and not only told O’Keefe there was no money at all coming, but confided the gang was planning to have Specky declared insane.

  With less than a month left before the statute of limitations lapsed, O’Keefe told a few close friends who visited him to spread word he was definitely considering talking to the law, to let the news travel around town fast so the gang would hear. It traveled fast. No one from the gang showed up. But Jim Crowley showed up—and the FBI knew it. The FBI also learned from one of its informants the time was right to visit Specs.

  Jack Kehoe, one of the first two special agents to reach Brink’s the night of January 17, and John Larkin, who had been assigned to the case the next morning, set out for Hampden County Jail. They were the last two bureau men assigned to Robrink 91-5535 on a full-time basis and had no idea whether Specs would see them or not. No agents had talked to O’Keefe in more than a year. Specs did see them but made the pair stand out in the corridor and talk to him through the call door. O’Keefe continued to blame the FBI for his troubles, was both negative and evasive in whatever else he said, steered a thousand miles clear of Brink’s. The special agents were sympathetic to his troubles, dwelled on how badly other gang members had treated him, how well and “high” other gang members were living while he remained in jail, brought up Elmer “Trigger” Burke. They hinted that once he did get out of prison the others might very well try to kill him again. The date was December 27, 1955, and Kehoe and Larkin reminded O’Keefe that in twenty days they would be helpless to take any action against the gang, would no longer be able to do anything in O’Keefe’s behalf. No deal was offered. No guarantees were made. The interview lasted more than three hours, and at one point O’Keefe stared down at the floor and, after shaking his head for several moments, said, “There are just too many involved. I don’t see any possible way it can be worked out. I’ll have to think it over.” O’Keefe said that if he went on talking to the FBI, he wanted to talk to “brass”—a person in authority.

  Hurried calls to Washington received minimal enthusiasm from a senior headquarters official who had long had his fill of the Pino Crowd theory. If there was to be brass, Boston was told, make it local brass.

  Edward J. Powers was the sixth SAC to head the Boston field office since the robbery. When he received the assignment, he felt he was being sent to “Siberia,” sent into “exile.” He had been warned by associates to beware of the Irish Gang of agents, had been briefed in Washington by a Hoover aide and told that when it came to Brink’s, “stay off the Pino Crowd” and come up with some new approach to cracking Robink 91. When he arrived at Boston in September, 1957, he did try new approaches, found the Irish Gang patient and courteous and cooperative and ultimately was convinced the Pino Crowd had to be the perpetrators.

  Powers was the brass who accompanied John Larkin to Hampden County Jail on December 29, 1955. He wasn’t sure if O’Keefe would see them. He wanted the case for the FBI and had uneasy feelings that if O’Keefe finally did decide to confess, he might bypass the bureau and get to either James Crowley or the state’s attorney. O’Keefe saw them. From the very first he took to Ed Powers and talked more freely. The session ended at 3:50 P.M. with O’Keefe remaining noncommittal, but at least saying he wanted “more time to think it over,” suggesting Powers “stop by again within the next couple of weeks.” Powers reminded O’Keefe that “time was running out” and that if he “intended to do anything, he should not delay any longer.” O’Keefe nodded.

  At 2:15 P.M., January 6, 1956—with eleven days remaining before the statute of limitations ran out—Powers and Larkin sat down with O’Keefe at Hampden County Jail. O’Keefe showed them a copy of the 1955 issue of Coronet magazine containing an article by J. Edgar Hoover entitled “What Makes an FBI Agent?” O’Keefe was particularly concerned with a section of the story which explained that the bureau was a fact-reporting investigation agency—not the law itself, not the court. O’Keefe, speaking obliquely, voiced a distrust of the Boston court system, but he did seem to like DA Garrick Byrne. Powers intimated that the case could end with Byrne prosecuting and, in response to a question, said the bureau might even try to get a reduction in O’Keefe’s pending Pennsylvania prison term. Powers offered to protect O’Keefe’s relatives if a trial should take place. O’Keefe, talking hypothetically, asked if Gusciora had to be involved. He was told there was no way Gusciora could be overlooked. O’Keefe seemed to cool on the idea of “cooperating.” Powers and Larkin stressed all he’d been through, all that his family had suffered, how badly the gang had treated him—that they might try to kill him again. O’Keefe shifted the conversation to other things.

  Somewhere in the middle of a reply to some question or other on some unimportant subject, Specs O’Keefe bowed his head, took a long drag on his cigarette and remained silent. Then he looked up at Powers.

  “All right,” the inmate said. “What do you want to know?”

  Garrick Byrne agreed to try the case and had no objection to the FBI’s arresting the suspects on federal warrants. On January 11 the U.S. Attorney at Boston authorized special agents to file complaints charging eleven criminals with various counts of theft of government property, bank robbery, as well as assault on Brink’s employees during the taking of money and conspiracy to receive and conceal stolen money. Fear that a local reporter might leak the story prematurely, thereby cracking the news blackout and alerting the robbers, prompted a premature arrest raid, which Sandy Richardson and Jimma Faherty were able to elude. Pino, McGinnis, Maffie, Costa, Geagan and Baker were seized.

  On May 16, 1956, after being on the national ten most wanted list for four months, Richardson and Faherty were apprehended in a Dorchester apartment. The FBI, which led the raid, had learned of their whereabouts via an informer. Informer information, not Police Department deduction as publicly stated, led to the June 3 pickup in Baltimore of a man carrying currency identified as being stolen in the Brink’s robbery—bills every one of the gang members had been led to believe Joe McGinnis had destroyed, as per agreement. On June 4 special agents and police entered the basement office of a construction company on Tremont Street, Boston, tore away a wall partition, removed a “picnic-type cooler” and from the cooler recovered more than. $56,000, including $51,906 which were identified as having been stolen from Brink’s—more of the consecutive serial-numbered bills McGinnis was supposed to destroy. The owners of the construction, company were arrested—Wimpy Bennett, who had visited Specs O’Keefe at Hampden County Jail in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Fats Buccelli, who had visited O’Keefe at the county jail at Towanda.

  At 6:10 P.M., Stanley Gusciora, thirty-six, died at the Norfolk State Prison Colony Hospital. The coroner reported the indicted Brink’s robber had died of natural causes—to wit, “tumor of the brain—acute cerebral edema.” The gang believed he died as a result of the constant beating he had taken at Western State Penitentiary. Gus had received $98,000 in stolen Brink’s money. No one is certain what he did with these funds.

  FBI fears that O’Keefe might have changed his mind and not testify against his former crooks because of his close friendship with Gusciora ended. Apprehension that a jury might not accept his uncorroborated testimony remained.

  The trial of the eight men accused of robb
ing Brink’s began on August 6, 1956, under the strictest security regulations ever seen in Boston, amid some of the greatest press coverage ever remembered. In the following two weeks, 1,200 prospective jurors were eliminated as the defense counsel invoked 262 peremptory charges. After another week and 500 more interviews, a fourteen-member jury was assembled.

  Passes for the trial were scalped for as high as $100 a pair. A glass window was built into the wall between the court chamber and an adjacent room so the overflow press corps could be accommodated. Armed guards lined the street between the court building and the jail whenever the defendants were transported back and forth. Armed guards patrolled the courtroom building inside and out. Armed guards stood at the door watching spectators enter the court chamber and searched anyone who struck them as suspicious. Armed guards stood in the courtroom.

  Pino, Geagan, Richardson, Maffie, Costa, Baker and McGinnis had “stood mute” at the original arraignment, had refused to utter a single word, had had the court enter pleas of not guilty for each of them. At the trial they refused to testify in their own defense. Specs O’Keefe testified for the prosecution, was billed as the “star witness,” proved to be just that. The prosecutor highlighted the fact that O’Keefe had removed lock tumblers from the premises and helped obtain the rope and tape used during the heist, avoided the fact that beyond those achievements the witness had done little else and knew little else concerning where and how the remainder of the gang’s equipment was had—astutely leaving an impression that Specky was a vital cog in the organization, preparation and perpetration of the crime. Defense attorneys could not trip O’Keefe up. O’Keefe reaffirmed Garrick Byrne’s opening description of McGinnis as the boss and brains—and Pino as the aide-de-camp.