Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

by Bill Mason

  None of us adults kidded ourselves that all was well in South Florida outside of our sheltered little neighborhood. The use of recreational pharmaceuticals had exploded in the United States following the “Summer of Love” in 1967, and the eastern shore of the Florida peninsula had become the prime point of entry for merchandise imported from Mexico and Central and South America. Otherwise legitimate freighters tooling up and down the coast dropped off bales of stuff to fast boats dispatched from shore to pick them up. Federal drug enforcement officials chased them around all the time and even caught a few occasionally. In a lot of cases, the pickup boats would just dump their loads over the side if the authorities got too close. Packages of marijuana, cocaine and hashish were washing up on shore all the time. People who went out fishing were always on the lookout for “bale fish,” or wayward bales of dope. Sometimes these were turned in to the authorities, especially if it was something crazy hard like heroin. The amount of marijuana turned in was, so I was told, close to zero.

  Bill Welling (right) and me on Antigua.

  There were some funny and colorful things about the drug trade, at least from a distance and in retrospect, but up close and personal there wasn’t a damned thing funny about it at all. Cocaine cowboys were shooting it out with each other all the time, sometimes in shopping malls and other places crowded with innocent bystanders. Drug runners didn’t give a rat’s ass who got in the way when things got violent. There was too much money in the trade, and too much money can turn people into monsters. There are few things I find more terrifying than a human being without a conscience, and South Florida was filled with them.

  I spent most of our first year there working on the house, managing the properties that had been put in my care and hunting around for other places for the company back in Cleveland to buy. It was an idyllic life. Barb and the kids were deliriously happy to be there, and I loved it, too.

  Naturally, I started looking around for a way to fuck it all up.

  There was something about all those glitzy high-rises on the beach that was just tugging at me, and after a year of doing the Ozzie and Harriet thing, I was getting itchy, although not itchy enough to crank up a full-scale operation starting with cold prospecting. I needed a silver-plattered opportunity to practically fall into my lap to really get the old juices flowing.

  My neighbor Tata Leslie, who lived next door to Chuck, the retired cop, was very well off and spent most of her time doing the social circuit with all kinds of famous people. She and I got along well, and once she found out I was handy, she had me fixing little things for her all the time. I didn’t mind, and it gave me the opportunity to occasionally rub elbows with some of her tonier acquaintances, which was kind of fun.

  She was close friends with Johnny Weissmuller and his wife, Maria. Although the accomplishments that made him famous were long past, Weissmuller couldn’t seem to abide no longer being at the center of things. He was somewhat showy and liked to be recognized, and he was good at getting himself photographed. Once in a while he’d even stand on Tata’s lawn and do his famous Tarzan yell, which tickled the hell out of the kids in the neighborhood who’d seen those movies on Saturday-morning television.

  He and his wife both wore a lot of jewelry.

  I suppose I should have left it alone—for one thing, it was inevitable that there would be a lot of publicity if Tarzan were to get robbed—but I didn’t. I’ve always thought of myself as careful and calculating, even though my avocation was more about thrills than business, but to this day I’m not sure how much of this particular score had to do with the thought of how cool it would be to take off Tarzan, along with his Jane. I rationalized to myself that it would be a good haul and that the security would be on the light side, because I assumed Weissmuller was the kind of guy who would find it hard to believe that anyone would dare to rob him. I determined early on that I wouldn’t pursue the job if it looked like a long and intensive effort was needed.

  Weissmuller lived at the very north end of the Coral Ridge Country Club, on the third floor of a small condo. As luck would have it, his patio looked out over the golf course. I wonder if people with those highly desirable views realize how vulnerable they are. Golf courses are pitch-black at night, not only because there’s no reason to light them but because they’re a few hundred acres in size and little light encroaches from distant commercial establishments. All that acreage is utterly deserted, too, there not being much to do out there after the sun goes down. It’s about as ideal a setup as a thief could want—cover so perfect you could mount a small military invasion without anybody catching wise.

  It looked to me as though it would be an easy task to climb up one corner of the building and then walk from patio to patio until I got to Weissmuller’s. It was just a matter of making sure there was nobody home in the correct combination of units. That was easy, too; all I had to do was hang out on the golf course and watch the interior lights. To top it all off, there was excellent parking available. Commercial Boulevard was only some five hundred feet away, and because it was a major thoroughfare, no individual car would be out of place and therefore noticeable.

  Don’t laugh: When you get past all the sexy tools, clothes and acrobatics, you’ve still got to worry about where to park, about whether your vehicle is going to be conspicuous, about whether you’ll be able to get your tools in and out and then leave without arousing suspicion. Getting away safely is the number one planning priority. Getting away with something worth taking runs a distant second.

  It took only a few nights of sitting out on the golf course to figure out who was home and who was out of town, and therefore who was just out for the evening if the lights were off. By the time Saturday night rolled around, I was ready. I loaded my backpack with tools to jimmy a patio door, disable or bypass an alarm and work my way through a small safe. I sat on the golf course for about ninety minutes, until I was sure I had a clear path across the patios of unoccupied units, then climbed up the wall and got quickly to Weissmuller’s place. I was no longer capable of being surprised by outside doors left open and had also learned that nobody who left them open bothered to set their alarms. I slid the door open and walked in.

  It was dark inside, but it took me less than two minutes with a penlight to locate the very ordinary jewelry box in the bedroom. I dumped the entire contents into my backpack, right on top of the tools I hadn’t needed. Less than fifteen minutes after I’d entered the apartment, I was back in my car, and ten minutes after that I was dropping the loot off at my office. I didn’t take the time to look it over because I wanted to get home so Barbara wouldn’t wonder what I’d been up to.

  It wasn’t much of a take, maybe forty thousand dollars if my fence Blute Tomba was feeling generous, which he never was. The monetary value, however, paled in comparison to what I found at the bottom of the hastily deposited pile of shiny baubles.

  An Olympic gold medal.

  I learned from the papers the next day that Weissmuller had won it for the four-hundred-meter freestyle swim at the Paris Olympics in 1924. It was one of three gold medals he’d won that year, and one of the five he’d gotten altogether from two Olympiads.

  I’d never had one of those in my hands before. I’d never even seen one up close. I was mesmerized, more so than by any jewel I’d ever held, and I’ve held some lulus. It seemed to carry its own history with it, and I had this really eerie feeling that there were people looking at it over my shoulder. All kinds of emotions shot through me that I was having trouble sorting out, and after about two minutes of not moving a muscle I realized that I felt absolutely terrible about having taken it, even though I hadn’t intended to. It meant nothing to me—for one thing, its monetary value was zero because, despite its obvious appeal, there’s no way to sell something like that—but it undoubtedly meant the world to Weissmuller.

  Despite how much it must have traumatized him, reporters couldn’t seem to help but crack wise about how someone had pulled a Tarzan-type robbery on Tarza
n. They suggested that the police look for the hanging vines the thief must have swung from, or that maybe it had been done by a chimpanzee . . . a predictable, and predictably lame, string of jokes.

  I was sorrier than I’d ever been as a thief. Although I wanted to give him back his medal, I wasn’t about to do anything risky to make that happen, yet I couldn’t seem to shake off how bad I felt.

  About a month later I went to Cleveland to sell the jewels to Blute. It was a much shorter interval than I was comfortable with, but since there were no remarkable pieces in the haul, I thought it safe to off-load them quickly.

  I planned the flight so I’d have to change planes in Atlanta. Before leaving, I carefully wrapped and packaged the medal, making sure to wipe everything clean of prints. I dropped the package into a mailbox at the Atlanta airport and felt much better after reading in the papers that Johnny had received his medal.

  Especially the part about his gratitude to the thieves.

  I first noticed Elizabeth Bender in the society pages of the Fort Lauderdale newspapers. She was on the Ten Best-Dressed List, but I don’t remember how big a geographical area that included. Didn’t matter, really, because the ten best dressed in Fort Lauderdale were like the ten richest in Beverly Hills: You were way the hell up there no matter who else you were compared to.

  What appealed to me about Bender was that she was older than the others on the list. To me that meant she’d had more time to accumulate goodies during her life. When I saw in a notice that she would be attending a luncheon at the Bahia Mar Hotel for the ten best dressed, I decided it might be worth having a quick look.

  I waited in the lobby of the hotel, which was filled with other onlookers. When Bender arrived, she wasn’t wearing very much jewelry. It looked to me like she had too much class to be flashing it in the daytime, but there was no doubt in my mind that this woman had some serious trinkets. Over the next few weeks I watched for photographs of her at various benefits, and while she never drenched herself in a whole lot of stuff, there were different pieces in every picture.

  She was listed in the phone book as living on Galt Ocean Mile in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. The building, called the Fountainhead, was a well-known, well-secured seventeen-story high-rise right on the beach and just across the Intracoastal from the Coral Ridge Country Club.

  I needed only one element to be in place to make this an opportunity worth pursuing further. I held my breath as I opened my trusty city directory, then exhaled with satisfaction and relief as I read her suite number: Penthouse J. The top floor.

  Nothing works more in a thief’s favor than people feeling secure. That’s why places that are heavily alarmed and guarded can sometimes be the easiest targets. The single most important factor in security—more than locks, alarms, sensors or armed guards—is attitude. A building protected by nothing more than a cheap combination lock but inhabited by people who are alert and risk-aware is much safer than one with the world’s most sophisticated alarm system whose tenants assume they’re living in an impregnable fortress.

  I came to understand that there’s something about altitude that seems to give people a sense of security. I first noticed this when I managed apartment buildings that were over eight or nine stories high. It’s not just a metaphor when people on the upper floors say they feel above it all. They really are, and when you think about it, the higher up you go, the fewer avenues of access there are connecting you to the rest of the world. It’s not an altogether unreasonable view of things that, aside from a stairwell and an elevator, there’s no way anybody can get to you, and I was to exploit that complacency many times.

  I did a bunch of walkarounds at the Fountainhead over the next few weeks and decided it ranked high (no pun intended) on the altitude meter and low on the attitude. There was plenty of highly visible security, including cameras all over the place and twenty-four-hour doormen and guards. There was also an atmosphere of “What could possibly happen?” that was unmistakable in the offhand manner with which the tenants treated the guards, as though they were errand boys and hand servants instead of security professionals. It was kind of like the way airline passengers view flight attendants, as though their primary function is to serve martinis and peanuts instead of what the job really is, which is to save your life in an emergency.

  Still, even the simple presence of all those doormen and guards would make getting into the place a challenge, especially at night, when foot traffic was light. On the beach side of the building there was a sheer wall about forty feet high, with a setback that formed the pool deck. (Beach buildup over the years has lowered it considerably since.) Not only would it make for a tough climb, but it was visible to the rear units of the building as well as to anyone wandering along the beach. It could probably be done, but I had to get inside the building for a detailed look around before I could determine exactly how.

  I waited until an ad for a unit for sale appeared in the paper, then made an appointment with the real estate agent. Dressed in my Sunday best, I showed up and explained to her that I was looking to buy a retirement place for my parents, who were moving down from the Northeast. Impressed that I had enough money to be so casually generous, the agent latched on to me like an eager-to-please remora.

  I tried to look unimpressed as she ticked down all the building amenities and services—the pool, the soundness of the construction, the quality of the other tenants. . . . Like too many salespeople with too little skill in their profession, she made a raft of assumptions about what I would think was important, and never thought to simply ask me.

  She babbled on about the incredible views, which I could see for myself, and the great tile in the kitchen, which I could also see for myself—what is it about real estate people that seems to compel them to describe in glorious detail what you’re already looking at?

  I waited until I was sure she sensed that she was losing me. “Tell you the truth,” I said, hoping to convey how little I cared about the “fabulous” bathroom and “utterly marvelous” walk-in closets, “my real concern is good security for my parents.”

  “Oh!” she nearly screamed in relief, and then started in. “It’s the most sophisticated and up-to-date system! There’s ultrasonic and infrared and—”

  But I was shaking my head and trying to look grim. “Somehow doesn’t seem as secure as some other places I’ve been looking at. They told me about all these really modern systems, the security people . . .”

  And thus opened the floodgates. The agent, who was surprisingly well versed in such matters, told me exactly how many guards the building employed, how many were on each shift, even the procedures they followed, right down to how they checked individual floors according to a schedule in addition to random roving around the building. They used a time-clock system in which the guard on duty had to insert a key at various stations around the building to prove he’d done his rounds and to make a record of where he’d been. The agent described how all the surveillance cameras were tied into a central recording system, what kinds of sensors monitored the doors, and how vehicles and driveways were secured in the valet-staffed underground garage. We went on a tour, during which she pointed out virtually every camera in the place, including three on the pool deck. I was starting to wonder if I shouldn’t cut her in for a piece of whatever I got on this score.

  I noticed three windows covered with heavy wire mesh near the pool, low down on a wall. The agent said that was the boiler room. I didn’t want to appear too interested, but I did manage to get a quick look. The windows were at the very top of a huge room that was two stories high.

  I began nodding so that the agent would keep yammering as I checked out the poolside cameras. They were fixed in place, and there appeared to be a dead zone near the top of the sheer wall very close to the boiler room windows. It was tight, though, and the guard station wasn’t all that far away. There was also a time-clock station by the pool, which meant the area was part of the scheduled patrols.

  When we were ba
ck inside, I asked about the layout of the floors, and the agent pulled out detailed drawings showing me not only the unit for sale but all the other ones on the floor. I pointed to things so she would have to look down at the plan and wouldn’t see my eyes studying the layout corresponding to the “J” line of apartments. I began nodding occasionally and asked a few questions realtors consider “buying signals”: Would the seller take back a mortgage, how was the homeowners association organized, how many parking spaces were included?

  I listened on autopilot as I thought about everything I’d learned, and maneuvered us back to the pool area because the rear wall presented a timing problem and I wanted one last look. I’d be able to use it only on a moonless night, and it would have to be fairly late so that there were no people on the beach, at least no sober ones. Things were going to depend heavily on what Ms. Bender’s evening schedule was. I badly wanted to get a long look inside that boiler room, too, but there was no way to do that without arousing suspicion.

  Luckily, Bender’s unit faced the ocean. I spent a lot of time out on that beach over the next few weeks. Barb must have thought I’d gone romantic or something, what with all the moonlit walks we took together. Good thing she wasn’t making a connection to the last time I’d taken a sudden interest in a particular location, the miniature golf course. I learned that Bender went out nearly every evening, left between six and seven and never came home before ten-thirty or eleven.

  The next moonless night, I went for a walk by myself. This time I was carrying a grappling hook and a flashlight. I was also wearing a bathing suit and had a towel with me. If I were to get caught by a guard, I could just say I was going for a swim. To make it more realistic I was prepared to say I’d sneaked in to go swimming in this pool dozens of times late at night.