Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

by Bill Mason

  Welling and his wife, Nancy, flew in from Cleveland, and Barb was going to come up from Fort Lauderdale in a few days. As soon as Welling and I got our money, the four of us would head down to New Orleans and see the sights for a few days.

  The three of us had a good time in Atlanta. We, and that included Barb, had always gotten along really well and enjoyed one another’s company. But after a few days, Welling and I started to get antsy.

  “How come a guy like that needs a hundred grand to begin with?” he asked me one evening, referring to Pierce. “You saw his farm and all his other shit. What the hell did he need us for? He could have done the whole deal himself and netted nearly two million.”

  I tried to reassure him, but it was a damned good question. I could see where Carl might have strong-armed Pierce into throwing something my way, but Pierce had also taken money from Carl and Joey. We decided to call him.

  “Some minor snags,” he insisted. “Nothing serious. But call me at two tomorrow, case maybe I need you.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “How the hell should I know? If I knew, I’d tell you now.” And he hung up.

  The next day we went to a shopping mall in Atlanta. Nancy went off by herself for a while, and at exactly two Welling and I went to a pay phone and called Pierce.

  “A little problem,” Pierce said. “The plane’s coming in from, uh, it started in Colombia, but . . . it had to gas up, you know? So it set down on the way.”

  “Where?” I asked, holding the receiver a little sideways so Welling could hear.

  “Somewhere off Jacksonville,” Pierce said. “I think.”

  “Isn’t that in the ocean?”

  “Yeah, well . . . it’s a seaplane. Pontoons and shit.”

  “Okay, but where did it get fuel out in the ocean?”

  “I don’t . . . from a boat. There was a boat, waiting for it. The boat had fuel.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I asked as Welling made a hurry-up motion with his hand.

  “The problem,” Pierce said. “Yeah, well, we need two guys to meet the plane and off-load the stuff.”

  Welling and I exchanged glances; had Pierce gone crazy? “What the hell are you talking about!” I shouted into the phone. “Didn’t you arrange for that?”

  “Sure, sure. Of course. Except, here’s the thing: The guys who were supposed to . . . The plane was late, on account of the refueling. So the guys, the ones who were supposed to unload it . . .”

  He went on like that for a while, and it sounded to me like he was making it up as he went along. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and asked Welling what he thought.

  “I think you should hang up,” he said.

  I nodded, then took my hand away from the mouthpiece and cut in on Pierce as he was speaking. “We’re gonna call you back,” I said. “You better figure out—”

  “No, no!” he said, nearly screaming. “Don’t hang up! Listen, it’s not a big deal. All we have to do, we have to—”

  Welling grabbed the receiver out of my hand and dropped it into the cradle, then motioned for me to step out of the booth. I tried to make sense of the weird conversation with Pierce, but Welling nutshelled it for me right away.

  “They got a goddamned refueling boat waiting in the middle of the ocean,” he said. “So how the hell can it be a surprise that the plane needed to take on gas?”

  I felt an actual shiver run down my spine and then saw Nancy coming toward us and waving. I grabbed Welling’s arm and said, “Let’s move away.”

  We walked to the other side of the broad central promenade and Nancy veered off to meet us. Just as we came to a halt in front of the mall’s multiscreen movie theater, we heard a commotion and turned to see three guys bursting out of one of the mall entrances and running toward the phone booth. Welling tapped my shoulder and pointed to a different entrance. Another three guys were running out of that one and heading for the booth as well. All six of them wore blue jeans, running shoes, light windbreakers and sunglasses. As they converged on the booth and saw that it was empty, they started looking around in all directions.

  “Hey, let’s see a movie!” I said. Before Nancy could react, I had my wallet out and was buying tickets. I left it to Welling to explain to his wife as he hustled her inside why I was going to see a different film than they were. Both of us knew not only to separate but to stay put until the films were over.

  When I came out some two hours later, the agents were nowhere to be seen. I waited for Welling and Nancy, then we went back to the motel to check out. I used the pay phone there to call Carl to warn him and Joey about what had happened.

  We found a different motel and checked in there to stay overnight until Barb arrived. Welling and I stayed inside and didn’t even use the phone. Nancy went out to get us some food, and the next day she and Welling went to the airport to pick up Barb and make sure she wasn’t being followed. They swung by to get me and we headed for New Orleans. Barb, bless her, didn’t ask why we hadn’t just arranged to meet there in the first place.

  Dealing with all of this stuff was a good deal easier than dealing with Barbara. She was not at all happy about my association with Carl, Joey and Pierce, and sneaking off to visit her fugitive husband while he was still hanging around with hoodlums made things pretty tough on her. I tried to relieve the stress on regular occasions by having us meet in other cities without that negative element. The trip we were starting on now, a long weekend in New Orleans with two people Barbara loved, was the best of them all.

  We stopped in Montgomery and I called Carl. He told me he’d spoken to Pierce, who swore that his phone must have been tapped. Pierce also said that he was afraid to bring in the load.

  “Bullshit,” I said to Carl. “He gave us a whole song and dance about how the plane was late on account of it being refueled at sea. And he did everything he could to keep me from hanging up the phone.” I was implying that Pierce had tried to buy time for a trace, which is the only way those federal agents could have gotten to us in that phone booth.

  Carl agreed that Pierce might have been full of it, but Joey Cam didn’t seem to think so. For the next few months he called Welling two or three times a week to get hold of me. Every time I called him back, Joey tried to convince me to come on board with Pierce’s deal, as well as with a bunch of other ideas Joey had. But Welling and I were too leery at this point, although if it was just a question of going to Atlanta to pick up the money we were promised, we might have done that.

  Sometime later I brought Pierce’s name up to Carl again, and once again he voiced some reservations. “Something about him ain’t right,” he said, then added, “Only thing is, I don’t know what his game is. Or if he has one.”

  Pierce’s “game,” as it turned out, was that he was an informer for the DEA. Frankly, I could understand why the DEA would want to go after big fish like Carl Coppola and Joey Cam, but what the hell was the point of sucking Welling and me into the deal? Until Pierce convinced us to take part, neither of us was dirty, at least as far as the feds were concerned. I was no lawyer, but it sounded to me like the very definition of entrapment. If not for an informer actively soliciting our participation in a criminal act and enticing us to accept, we wouldn’t have been involved.

  Thankfully, neither of us ever got into trouble for that episode, although we each lost twenty-five thousand dollars. I guess it was a moderately high price to pay for a lesson I should already have learned, but this time I learned it well. I was never to use a partner again.

  I also resolved to stay the hell away from the drug business, and from Carl Coppola. But his name would pop up once more in my life and, not surprisingly, it would lead to trouble.

  Carl’s trial took place in 1987 and lasted fourteen weeks. DEA informant Gary Pierce was one of the main witnesses against him. Among the long list of allegations made by the government was one involving a misunderstanding between Carl and Joey Cam.

  Carl had gone to New York to plead his case
to the Gambino crime family, but Joey supposedly took a different route to enhancing his own negotiating position: He and his father-in-law, Daniel Forgione, kidnapped Carl and kept him tied up and drugged for two weeks. At some point Joey had a change of heart and let Carl go. In May of 1983, Joey and Forgione were found dead in Fort Lauderdale, both having been shot in the head. The federal indictment charged Carl and his former employee and bodyguard Tommy Papanier with the murders. They denied it, and pointed the finger at Alex Biscuiti.

  Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Deichert was relentless in his prosecution of Carl. He told the jury that they should “consider Mr. Coppola as the Lee Iacocca of the drug business, and the murder business, too.” He pressed the analogy of the CEO of a major corporation, saying that Carl filled the employee rank and file with contract killers and thugs whose tools of trade were Uzi submachine guns, pistols and sawed-off shotguns. Their method of ending someone’s employment was to murder him, as they had murdered Joey Cam.

  Fred Haddad did his damnedest on Carl’s behalf, arguing that overzealous federal prosecutors were so obsessed about nailing Carl after spending three years investigating him that they cut deals with government witnesses to obtain damaging and questionable testimony. Ten of those witnesses were co-conspirators of Carl’s who either got special consideration in their own cases or were granted out-and-out immunity.

  Fred tried to convince the jury that it was Alex Biscuiti who’d killed both Joey Cam and Daniel Forgione. It was a vigorous and spirited defense, but Carl was found guilty anyway, and the sentencing didn’t go much better than the trial: He got fifty-five years. Fred is still working on his appeal and, last I heard, Carl is currently the chaplain’s assistant in a federal pen in Florida.

  The reason all of this is relevant to me is that Barb followed the trial in the papers, as did pretty much everybody in the Sun Belt. Since it wasn’t covered as extensively in the Midwest, she sent me a clipping about the sentencing. Years later, when I was arrested again, the FBI found this clipping among my papers and questioned me about Joey’s murder. They thought for sure that I’d had a hand in it, or at least said they did, and used the possibility to bolster their case against me.

  16

  Crazy

  I STAYED in constant touch with Welling. What an anchor he was in my life.

  Bill is one of the only people I’ve ever known who rarely judged me but simply took me as I came. Certainly my parents loved me, as did Barbara and my aunt, but to say that I earned their continual disapproval would be an understatement. I’m not saying they were wrong; it’s just that, somewhere in the back of my mind, every interaction seemed to come with a grade, depending on how clean I was at the time. My “okay-ness” with them was a variable thing.

  With Welling I was always okay, no matter how badly I fucked up. That’s just the way he was wired. Once he got around to determining that someone was a friend, judgment seemed to cease and you could do no wrong in his eyes. Unless, of course, the wrong was directed against him. Welling did not take betrayal kindly, maybe because he himself was so good to his friends that it was a shock when someone turned on him. Why anyone would want to cross someone with that intensity of personal loyalty was a mystery in the first place, but the world, and especially the circles I traveled in, were full of such mysteries.

  Despite some mayhem in our younger, wilder days—I once saw him pick up a man and throw him through the window of a bar—Welling is basically a big teddy bear. Gregarious and fun-loving, the kind of person who takes big bites out of life, he adores being with people and is especially fond of family-style parties like weddings. He can dance, play with kids, tell jokes and sing for hours on end, and is one of the most contented men I know. He’s also one of the most generous; it wasn’t at all unusual for him to spend a month helping a friend rebuild a kitchen or do some other major project like that.

  My kids were absolutely nuts about him when they were growing up, and still are. He’s one of those rare types who make you feel like there’s nothing else in the universe when they’re talking to you. My mother and aunt and Barb’s mother all loved to be with him; he would dance with them and make them feel special in many ways.

  All in all, not bad for a bank robber. Grouch that I am, I’ve been lucky and privileged to have him for a friend.

  Welling’s brother, John, was a good buddy, too, and allowed me to “steal” his identity. I soon had a driver’s license, credit cards, a passport, business cards and all kinds of other stuff identifying me as “John Welling,” complete with photos. It’s not as hard as it sounds, but it required that we both stay extra squeaky clean, because if one of us got into trouble and had his name circulated through law enforcement computers, it could make things awfully hot for the other one. I opened a bank account in Atlanta, too, and reregistered the van under my new name, still as the president of the “corporation” that owned it.

  I rarely stayed in one place for more than a few days, and never more than a week. Mostly I stayed in and around the greater Atlanta area, but I also went back and forth to Cleveland, usually when my aunt was out of town so I could use her place. Sometimes I found myself mindlessly gravitating south, so I drew a line on a road map and promised myself I wouldn’t go below it. All of that moving around was very hard on me. Surprising as it may sound, I’ve always been a real homebody at heart. I loved having a nice house, a comfortable, stable environment that I could always come back to no matter what else was going on.

  When I told Welling I just had to see my kids, he understood, and didn’t bother to lecture me on how dangerous it was. He just helped me work out the logistics.

  “I have to go to them,” I told him. “If Barb loads them into the car and takes off to come to me, they’ll see that and might follow her. But if I can manage to sneak down there somehow, they may not know anything’s happening.”

  Welling and his wife and another couple arranged to vacation in Florida. They rented an apartment about a mile north of my house, then visited with Barb and borrowed one of my cars. The next day I drove the van down to their apartment, which was on NE 48th Street and Federal Highway in Coral Ridge, and parked it behind the building. I had Welling move it daily so no one would think it had been abandoned, a fairly common occurrence in South Florida, where smugglers would buy a car to use for a few hours and then just leave it somewhere.

  Welling drove me to my house in my car, with me sitting in the back. I scrunched down on the rear floor as we approached and waited until we were in the garage before getting out.

  I was so happy to see Barb and the kids, I literally couldn’t speak for the first minute or so. I stayed for several days, never leaving the house. Everybody kept to their normal routine so as not to arouse suspicion, and those glorious few days passed without incident. Suzi even canceled a date to be home with me, which is probably the biggest sacrifice you can make when you’re nineteen.

  Finally, on the fifth day, I poured drinks for Welling and me and said, “Time to go.”

  I hadn’t originally given any thought to how long I could stay. I think I just subconsciously trusted myself to know when the time was right, and Welling didn’t argue with me now. I took a long pull on the drink, though, and when Barb walked into the living room a few minutes later, she knew right away that I was leaving.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Maybe nothing,” I said. “One or two more police cars in the area than I saw the first two or three days.”

  “But maybe—” she started to say.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, more forcefully than I’d intended, but I didn’t want to debate the issue. I’d vacated motels just because chambermaids looked at me funny. “We have no way to know, though.”

  “When?”

  “Now. You need to drive me up to the apartment.”

  “The kids . . . ?”

  “You’ll have to say my good-byes.”

  Welling left first, and Barb and I followed a few minutes later. If
anybody was following us, Welling would draw them off. He was safe because he had no outstanding wants or warrants and was therefore just another honest citizen. At least on paper.

  The drive to his apartment was subdued and awkward for Barb and me. There wasn’t much to say. I didn’t know when I’d be back, and I wasn’t even sure exactly where I was going. The kids were tough and would do their best to buck up, and that stoicism would only make Barb more sick at heart. It didn’t make me feel any better to know that all that heartache was my fault.

  We said good-bye in the car a few buildings away from Welling’s, and then she drove off as soon as I got out. I went around back, where Welling was waiting for me in the parking lot. I don’t remember how much time we spent standing there, or what we said, but soon I was behind the wheel of the van heading north on I-95. The plan was that Barb would go straight home and I’d call her as soon as I was out of Broward County. If I made it that far, I’d probably be okay.

  I got off the interstate in Boca Raton and found a pay phone. There was no answer at the house, so I waited five minutes and called again. Still no answer. I didn’t have the phone number to Welling’s apartment; I hadn’t used the phone in our house and so had never bothered to learn his number. There was no one else to call and I was starting to worry, because Barb was as reliable as the sunrise. Something had to be wrong.

  What I should have done was just keep going and try again later, because even if something had happened, what could I possibly have done about it? As a compromise, though, I turned around and drove back toward Welling’s place, thinking I’d get him to drive to my house and see what was up.

  I got off the interstate at West Commercial Boulevard and headed east. Out of instinct I decided not to approach the apartment directly but instead went all the way to Route 1 and then south past Holy Cross Hospital, where I could get a good view of the building. I was still half a mile away when I spotted trouble: There were half a dozen cars clustered on NE 46th Street, about two blocks from the apartment building. They were all ordinary “your father’s Oldsmobile” kinds of cars, and they were in the middle of the street pointing every which way. People were milling about, and as I got closer, I saw several of them talking into their hands. They might as well have had “POLICE” stenciled in yellow across their backs.