by Bill Mason
Ray Sandstrom, beset by liability resulting from his numerous divorces, felt it necessary to leave southern Florida and went to Wyoming. He was killed there when his car was broadsided by a logging truck. Given Ray’s penchant for hiding large sums of cash, there is no doubt in my mind that somewhere in that vast state, there are caches of money sitting just below ground inside well-protected safes. More than a few of his ex-wives paid good money to psychics trying to find out where.
Ray’s partner, Fred Haddad, is not only still alive but has straightened out his life to such a degree that I sometimes wonder who took over his body and what they did with the real Fred. He has a phenomenally successful practice in Fort Lauderdale and is listed in the current edition of The Best Lawyers in America. I’m happy to say that the two of us remain close friends.
Fran and I moved back up to New York permanently, and life has been blessedly uneventful. We’re still in the costume jewelry and antique businesses, and spend a good deal of time traveling, mostly to see family. It was the intense curiosity of our now fully grown kids and some close friends that led me to decide to lay all of this down in print.
One last story:
In 2002 the U.S. Olympic Committee hired Mark to build a giant maze made entirely of snow for the Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. In addition to his usual team, he decided to bring in some new talent, namely Bill Welling and me. Mark did the design himself, then seven of us worked long hours setting up wooden forms, shoveling in snow and pouring water, then taking down the forms and hand-carving the finishing touches. It was the largest snow maze ever built, twelve thousand square feet in all, with over a thousand linear feet of seven-foot-high walls. While we were constructing it, we attracted the attention of only the local press, but once the Games were under way, the maze became about the single biggest attraction aside from the official ceremonies and the competitions themselves. Throngs of people swarmed all over the place ooh-ing and aah-ing, and about fifty thousand got to take a shot at navigating the walls of ice. NBC’s Today show did a major feature, with Katie Couric, Al Roker and Matt Lauer having a ball running around inside trying to find their way out.
Wonder what they would have thought had they known that the phenomenally popular maze had been built by a bank robber and a jewel thief.
Epilogue
I GUESS the big question, when I look back on my life, is the same as it is for anybody who lived hard and takes a look back: Why did I do the things I did?
When friends began urging me to write a book (“Before you die,” they politely declined to add), they of course had in mind a recounting of some of the more interesting scores I’d pulled, because aside from those I’m not much different from millions of ordinary guys. And right up until I started jotting down notes and reminiscences, it seemed that I myself thought this was what my life was all about. Now, having gone through some truly excruciating soul-searching, and having been forced to dredge up a lot of memories I always thought were best left buried, I realize that there was so much more I failed to appreciate at the time. To my everlasting regret, most of it seems to have Barbara at its center.
The scores were certainly exhilarating highlights, and writing about them in a book makes it seem that it was just one continuous string of whiz-bang burglaries. The reality is that, spread over some thirty-odd years, they were few and a lot of time passed between them. Most of the time our family not only looked pretty normal but actually was, and we were far from dysfunctional. A warm, close-knit bunch, we spent a great deal of time together and took a lot of family vacations, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Barb was able to keep alive the hope that before too long I would see the light of day, appreciate what I had and avoid putting it in jeopardy.
Fran and me, 2003.
To say Barb was a true lady and a wonderful mother to three great children doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of her character. I’m not nominating her for sainthood—she had her flaws, as all of us do—but she was a loving and loyal wife who deserved a husband much better than I ever was. She knew she could count on me for anything, but what must it have been like for her every time I walked out the door not to know whether I’d be coming back? I suspect it was much harder for her to sit at home and wait to see if I would come home or had been jailed or injured or killed than it was for me to be out doing the job. I, at least, had some control over the situation, whereas she had none at all. And since I never told her about scores, impending or completed, she never knew when I was leaving whether I was going out for a pack of smokes or was on my way to a major heist I’d been planning for months. Remarkably, we’re still very close and see each other often (Barb and Fran are fast friends), which only intensifies the overwhelming guilt over how badly I served our marriage.
There were other late-life revelations as well. Shortly after I gave up the houseboat, Barb’s younger brother, Augie, was enticed by a crook working for the DEA into buying some coke. It was a complete setup from start to finish and one of the most blatant cases of entrapment I have ever seen. Augie was no choirboy and has done a couple of bits in federal prison, but there was no way in hell he would have gone in on this deal and risked another collar had he not been coaxed and prodded into it. Now he faced a possible life term as a three-time felon.
The reason I mention this is that, almost from the time I first met him when I was dating Barbara, Augie has been like my younger brother and I’ve always tried to do everything—legal and not so legal—to help him. This was the first time I truly understood the torment and agonizing helplessness experienced by people trying desperately to get loved ones out of the clutches of “the system.” The thought of a cheap hoodlum pressuring Augie into a deal at the behest of government authorities just to save his own neck threw me into a towering rage. Banging up against brick wall after brick wall as we went through the motions to try to do something to help him only made it worse, and when it was all over—Augie got five years—it finally sank into me what it must have been like for Barb, for Bill Welling, for my kids and for my mother when I was set up by the Fort Lauderdale police. Nights are the worst, when there’s nothing to do but lie in a warm, comfortable bed and torture yourself with what the guy inside must be going through.
I’m so different now, it’s hard to believe some of the crap that went through my mind when rationalizing away the risk to Barb and the kids of some upcoming score. I was selfish and loved the thrill and had plenty of ways to reassure myself. After a while it became easier and easier to leave the house, put the family out of my mind and concentrate exclusively on the job. Not just easier, but absolutely critical; mine was no business to be in if you were prone to letting your mind wander for even a moment at the wrong time.
Fran, too, has had ample opportunity and many reasons to walk out, but still continues to stick with me. And my second family has stood by and loved me like their own. I thank them for that, every day, and can only apologize for the pain I’ve caused them. I apologize to everybody I’ve hurt.
As long as I’m flogging myself here, I might as well point out something that may not be obvious. I’m thinking back to that immortal classic by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Despite all that Scrooge goes through when forced by the three ghosts to review his life, the one thing that finally turns him around is direct confrontation with his own mortality. Sure, he feels bad about all the sorrow he’s caused other people and himself, but only when he sees his own gravestone does he at last fall to the ground and beg for a chance to change his ways. Only then does the magnitude of what an awful human being he was truly dawn on him.
It was much like that with me. I was aware of the chaos and heartbreak I was causing for people who loved me, but it wasn’t until a ladder slipped out from under me at the top of a high-rise building that I finally swore off thieving. Now, of course, having thought about it a great deal and coming to understand the enormity of the anguish I caused, I would find it inconceivable to go back to pulling scores, but it took the
immediate prospect of my own violent death to get me to stop in the first place.
I used to say that of all the things in my life I was sorry for, stealing jewelry from rich people wasn’t one of them. That’s no longer true, if it ever really was. It may have been a falling ladder that got me to stop stealing, but it was writing this book that got me to start thinking.
Putting it all down on paper was a wrenching experience, even sort of horrifying. In addition to the mental games I played all my life to avoid dealing with the effect I was having on my family, there was the fact of my not having had much consideration for the people I robbed, either. I talked myself into resenting that they had a lot of money but I didn’t. In fact, I admired the well-to-do, at least those who had built their own fortunes. After all, wasn’t I in some sense seeking to emulate them with my real estate businesses? But it was necessary not to allow myself to see them as good people, or else I wouldn’t have been able to rob them.
Having now taken an acutely painful look back at my life, I find myself a lot less glib and dismissive about many of the things I did. That some of the items I took might have been of more than monetary value to their original owners was something I never gave much thought to, but it becomes harder and harder with the passing years to push that possibility aside, and that is part of the reason I’m donating a portion of my proceeds from this book to victim compensation organizations in Ohio and Florida.
The other part of the reason is that there’s something else about a burglary that may not be apparent from sensational news accounts: a depressing and disturbing feeling of violation on the part of the victims.
If you’ve ever had your suitcase lifted from an airline luggage carousel, you know that even though it’s a huge inconvenience and can entail considerable expense, it’s not something you’re likely to take personally or feel especially troubled about, regardless of how angry it makes you. In fact, you probably didn’t think a lot about the thief but directed nearly all of your ire at the airline for failing to protect your luggage.
Having your house broken into is an entirely different matter. There’s an unshakable uneasiness at the thought that some stranger walked around in your living room or bedroom and rummaged through your things. Interestingly, many victims are much more troubled to discover an empty bottle on the table and realize that the intruder opened the refrigerator, pulled out a beer, sat down at our table and poured himself a cold one than they are to find out jewelry and money have been taken. It’s hard to explain, but it affects nearly everybody who’s ever been burglarized, and isn’t really about the fear that the perpetrator might return. It has more to do with some kind of a sacred barrier being breached, and having made people feel that way is the one thing about robbing them that I’m most remorseful over.
Still, it pales in comparison to the harm I caused those closest to me, whom I robbed in profoundly more important ways.
I realized other things as well. I would like to have given some hint in these pages as to what was going on in the minds of my family and friends, but found that I rarely could. I have enough trouble trying to figure myself out, and the more I go back, the more I realize how self-centered and spoiled I was. It was difficult for me to get into anyone else’s head, since my main priority was self-gratification, except when I was in jail, and then the priority was getting out and having everyone work toward that end. I was too self-involved to think about what other people were thinking. Maybe that stemmed from the combination of being an only child and becoming the head of a family at a young age, but I don’t really know and it’s hard to figure out: As much time as I spend with the kids now, we don’t talk much about that part of our past.
The question still remains: With a woman like Barb and three terrific kids in my life, why couldn’t I stop myself from doing something I knew was self-destructive and selfish?
It certainly wasn’t the money. I didn’t need it, and I didn’t spend a fraction of what I stole. It certainly wasn’t a demanding, materialistic wife, either: Barb’s idea of a big day was to go to a bunch of garage sales and never buy anything for more than two dollars, then go to dinner with me.
There is also no doubting that I was capable of intense self-discipline. I could be patient and lie completely immobile for hours when the job called for it. My exercise regimen was punishing, and I made myself so strong and fit that I could climb ropes without using my feet and hang by my fingertips for long periods of time.
I didn’t spend a lifetime at the mercy of a variety of the standard urges, either. I smoked cigarettes and drank, and occasionally did some recreational pharmaceuticals, but at no point was I even close to being hooked on any of them. When I was in prison without alcohol or weed, I missed them, sure—in prison you miss everything—but it just wasn’t that big a deal.
When it came to the thrill of the big score, though, that utterly indescribable euphoria that accompanies the perfect execution of a perfect and perfectly dangerous plan, I was as hooked as the hardest-core heroin addict. I was powerless before the lure of the adrenaline that soaked every high-risk burglary, completely undone by the challenge of doing the seemingly impossible. Walking casually out of a building with a bag full of sparkling stones after months of planning was a rush like no other. The one thing I dreaded the most, doing time in prison, was something I had complete control over—all I had to do was go straight—yet even that fear couldn’t stop me from indulging the craving.
I think it fair to say that I’m far from being a sociopath. For one thing, I’ve formed several deep and lasting emotional relationships. You could accuse me of having seduced a perfectly respectable but very vulnerable Midwestern socialite into leaving her husband to join me in a dangerously illicit lifestyle—and you might have a legitimate point, even though I could make a pretty good case for her having seduced me—but our loving relationship still continues after nearly twenty-five years. I was also never in denial about what I was doing, and never tried to rationalize it using twisted logic. I was well aware that it was wrong, but simply lacked the will to stop myself, and over time just learned not to concern myself about it too much. Finally, unlike a sociopath, I have a conscience. My remorse over the pain I caused people close to me is genuine and profound, and I’m doing my best to make amends.
We’re all familiar with drug, alcohol and gambling addicts who watch their home lives getting ruined but are powerless to stop it, so is it possible that there is a “crime addict” personality as well?
I’d like to be able to make the case that my outlaw life was born of a unique set of strengths, but those were only the enablers. At the root of it all was a very ordinary set of weaknesses. To be brutally frank, if I had those choices to make again knowing what I know now, I can’t honestly say I’d take a different path, because I knew it then, too.
What I still haven’t figured out is from what source that drive arose. I jokingly refer to my “bent Y” chromosome, as though my core personality was handed to me at birth, but it’s equally likely that there were factors in my childhood that propelled me toward lawlessness. “Nature versus nurture” is, of course, an old controversy among scientists, philosophers and psychologists, and I’m not smart enough to make that call, but I suspect that there was a mix of both at work. Maybe if my father hadn’t died so suddenly at a crucial stage of my youth, I might have turned out differently. Maybe if more enlightened counselors than the closet elitists in high school had gotten hold of me, or if I hadn’t bought a car and begun to hang out in an auto shop with a whole cast of hardened career criminals, or if I’d gotten busted again right after that amateurish gas station break-in . . .
But who knows? All I know for certain is what happened, and nothing of what might have been.
PHOTO: SARA BARRETT
BILL MASON, by day an ordinary family man and real estate manager and investor, was by night the most successful jewel thief this country has ever known. He currently lives in New York City.
LEE GRUENFEL
D is the bestselling author of such celebrated novels as The Halls of Justice and All Fall Down. He has also written several novels under the pseudonym Troon McAllister, including the golf classic The Green. He lives in Southern California.
Praise for Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief
“[An] entertaining recollection.”
—People (critic’s choice)
“Fast-paced and never dull . . . Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief delivers what it promises.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A compelling story.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Fascinating book . . . This absorbing memoir will catapult [Mason] to prominence as he revives in mesmerizing detail his extraordinary criminal exploits that were headline news. . . . Has “movie” written all over it. Too bad the most glamorous cat burglar of them all, Cary Grant, isn’t available to play the lead.”
—The Miami Herald
“Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief is the kind of book that drives crime-fiction writers like me up a wall: No one would ever believe these amazing, compelling stories of theft and deception if they weren’t sitting on the nonfiction rack. Mason tells his life story with such flair and confidence that I felt like I was dangling from a twenty-story ledge right along with him. Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief is the ultimate kind of guilty pleasure, because even though you know it’s so wrong, it feels so right.”