• There are no statutes in Japan that prohibit money laundering, making the Yakuza very financially successful. And with financial success comes power. As such, organized crime has been influencing politics in Japan since World War II. Even now, several prominent politicians have family members who bear Yakuza tattoos.
• Relations between Japanese authorities and the Yakuza are complex. Some of the police admire the Yakuza’s code of chivalry. As long as the gangsters are not too disruptive, the police mostly leave them alone. In return, the mobsters occasionally turn in a member of a gang to help the cops “solve” a case. At the same time, however, the Yakuza are indeed criminals, and always try to stay one step ahead of the law.
YAKUZA AND THE PEOPLE
• For the most part, the Japanese public tolerates the Yakuza. Some people have even come to appreciate them. For example, after a car accident, instead of hiring lawyers, one party might hire a Yakuza member called a jiken-ya (incident specialist) to propose a settlement. Usually an agreement is made without threats or violence.
Sing Sing prison is up the Hudson River from New York City, hence the phrase “up the river.”
• The Yakuza also try to play up their image as champions of the downtrodden and the outcast, providing havens for burakumin (a segregated group of “untouchables”). They also provide a home for high-school dropouts unable to succeed in Japan’s highly competitive educational system. By “adopting” the rougher elements of society, the Yakuza help to discipline criminals and minimize violent acts against ordinary people. Ironically, the Yakuza have helped to keep Japan’s crime rate one of the lowest in the world.
• Yakuza members are often employed by the community as fund raisers, bodyguards, and campaign workers. Every so often, these “Robin Hoods” do good deeds: After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, many Yakuza families provided food, shelter, and trucks to clean up the debris. A few months later, however, Japanese officials complained that the gangsters had bullied their way into being awarded contracts to finish the cleanup effort. They are outlaws, after all, and because of that, the Yakuza are shunned by mainstream Japanese society.
BAD BOYS
• A crop of younger, more violent criminals are changing the way the Japanese view the Yakuza. Street gangs are taking over. In a recent case in Nagoya, police arrested 19 teenagers for nearly 100 muggings. In another, two of Tokyo’s largest teen gangs went head-to-head in a turf war, and a passerby was stabbed and beaten to death.
• Aging Yakuza members have grown quite dismayed with the decline of moral values and the rise in violence, especially gun-related violence. Many are leaving the organization and snitching on their fellow members. If they can escape, awaiting them are legitimate Japanese employers who openly offer jobs and rehabilitation programs for Yakuza members who wish to renounce their lives of crime.
• The most powerful Yakuza families have started acting less like the Mafia and more like legitimate corporations, moving into mainstream high finance. What does all this mean? The future of the world’s largest crime syndicate is uncertain.
“If your boss says the passing crow is white, you must agree.” —Yakuza proverb
DOUBLE TROUBLE
Having an identical twin isn’t always twice as nice.
TWINS: John and Glen Winslow, 38
DOUBLE TROUBLE: When John Winslow was pulled over in Council Bluffs, Nebraska, in July 2004, he didn’t have his license with him, and he knew he had a misdemeanor warrant for damaging property. So rather than admit who he was, John identified himself as Glen Winslow. What John didn’t know at the time was that his twin brother Glen was also wanted by the police—for first-degree sexual assault. When John identified himself as Glen, the police immediately slapped the cuffs on him and hauled him off to jail.
OUTCOME: John confessed to lying to the police, but they weren’t taking any chances. They held him until a fingerprint check confirmed that he really was John. Then he spent 10 days in jail for the original property damage charge, for not having a driver’s license, and for providing false information to police. A new arrest warrant was issued for Glen; he was taken into custody in Omaha five days later.
TWINS: Angela and Sharon Statton, 19
DOUBLE TROUBLE: In April 1997, Angela got into a heated argument with her boyfriend and called the police. When they arrived, the boyfriend lied and said Angela wasn’t Angela, but her sister Sharon... who had a warrant for failure to appear on shoplifting charge. Angela insisted she really was Angela, and to prove it she pleaded with the police to drive her to her mother’s house to talk to the real Sharon. Even after talking to the real Sharon, the officers weren’t convinced. They wanted to arrest both sisters but couldn’t because they only had one warrant. In the end, they arrested Angela on Sharon’s warrant.
OUTCOME: Angela spent four nights in jail before she got her day in court. Then she and Sharon appeared together and convinced the judge that Angela really was who she said she was. “I kept telling people, ‘My name is not Sharon, it’s Angela!’” said Angela (we think). “They thought I was playing with them, but I wasn’t. I sat in jail for nothing. I’m just glad I’m out.” Sharon was ordered to reappear at a later date to answer the shoplifting charges, but no word on which of them showed up.
Elvis Presley’s prisoner number in Jailhouse Rock: 6239.
THE GREAT
BRINKS ROBBERY
It was the perfect crime—so well planned and executed that all the gang members needed to do to was lie low until the heat cooled down. But could they?
IN AND OUT
The year was 1950. It was a cold January in Boston. At around 7 p.m. on the 17th, a green 1949 Ford truck pulled up in front of the Prince Street entrance of the Brinks Armored Car garage. Millions of dollars in cash, checks, and money orders were stored inside the building. Seven men emerged from the back of the Ford and walked swiftly to the front door. Each man wore a Navy peacoat, gloves, rubber-soled shoes, and a chauffeur’s cap.
After a series of blinking flashlight signals from a nearby rooftop, one of the men pulled out a key and unlocked the front door. Once inside, each man donned a Captain Marvel Halloween mask and went to work. They walked up the stairs and encountered a second locked door. Another key was produced, and they entered a room where five surprised Brinks employees were counting money. The gang pulled out handguns and quickly subdued the stunned Brinks men. Once their captives were bound and gagged, the masked men began collecting the loot.
With clockwork precision and very little talking, the gang filled their bags with money. Fifteen minutes after their arrival, the robbers—each carrying two full bags—left the building. Six of them got back into the truck and one got into a Ford sedan parked nearby. As they made their getaway, the employees managed to free themselves and call the police. When it was over, $1.2 million in cash and $1.5 million in checks, money orders, and securities were missing. It was the single largest robbery in U.S. history.
URBAN HEROES
The daring crime made front-page news all over the country. And the public was sympathetic with the robbers almost as soon as they heard about it. Their nonviolent methods and their audacity to take on a company as huge as Brinks made them cult heroes. Comedians and cartoonists joked about it, mocking the huge security company’s apparent lack of security. On his weekly TV variety show, Ed Sullivan announced that he had some very special guests: the Brinks robbers themselves. Seven men wearing Captain Marvel masks walked onstage to thunderous applause. It became more than a passing fad—the press dubbed it the “Crime of the Century.”
About 6,000 American banks are robbed every year.
COPS...
The Boston police and Brinks were humiliated. How could seven men so easily walk off with more than $2.7 million? The FBI took over the case and immediately found some good news: word on the street was that the caper had been in the works for months, and informants were naming names. Among the prime suspects: some of Bost
on’s most notorious petty criminals, such as Anthony Pino, Joseph McGinnis, Stanley Gusciora, and “Specs” O’Keefe—all men known for pulling off similar crimes, although nothing nearly as big. The bad news: they all had alibis. But when a green Ford truck matching witnesses’ descriptions was found in pieces at a dump near where O’Keefe and Gusciora lived, the investigators knew they were hot on the trail. They just needed proof.
...AND ROBBERS
The Feds’ instincts were correct: O’Keefe and Gusciora were two of the key men behind the Brinks job. But what they didn’t know was that it was Anthony Pino, an illegal alien from Italy, who first came up with the idea...back in 1947.
Pino had the savvy to do the job, but he couldn’t do it alone. So he’d called a meeting of some members of the Boston underworld and put together a gang. By the time they were ready to go, there were 11 members: Pino; his associate, liquor store owner Joseph McGinnis; strong-arms O’Keefe and Gusciora, both experienced criminals with reputations for keeping their cool and handling weapons; Pino’s brother-in-law, Vincent Costa, the lookout; Adolph “Jazz” Maffie; Henry Baker; Michael Vincent Geagan; Thomas “Sandy” Richardson; James Faherty; and Joseph Banfield.
It would be the heist of a lifetime, and the gang spent the next two years preparing for it. Pino cased the Brinks building from nearby rooftops, and was amazed at how lax the security was. Still, they would take no chances: They broke in after hours on several different occasions and took the lock cylinders from five doors, had keys made to fit them, and returned the cylinders. And while inside, they obtained the Brinks shipment schedules. It took discipline to not steal anything on those smaller break-ins, but they knew the real score would be on the big break-in, planned for a time when the day’s receipts were being counted and the vault was open. They were willing to wait.
DeBeers spends millions per week buying stolen diamonds back so they don’t flood the market.
By December 1949, Costa, the lookout man, could tell exactly how many employees were in the building and what they were doing by observing which lights were on. After about a dozen dress rehearsals, the gang made their move. The job went down without a hitch.
THE LONG GOODBYE
The robbery was the easy part. Now each gang member had to keep quiet, not spend money like crazy, and lay low for six long years, after which the statute of limitations would run out. If they could do that, they would all be scot-free...and very rich.
A small portion of the loot was split up among the gang members, but most of it was hidden in various places. O’Keefe and Gusciora put their share ($100,000 each) in the trunk of O’Keefe’s car, parked in a garage on Blue Hill Avenue in Boston—with the agreement that the money was not to be touched until 1956.
Even though they were careful to destroy any physical evidence tying them to the crime, they were known criminals and couldn’t evade suspicion. Many were picked up and questioned by the FBI. All denied involvement; all provided alibis (though more than a few were shaky); and all of their homes and businesses turned up nothing in searches. Still, investigators knew there was something fishy going on. Their best approach would be to get one of the men to sing; they just had to watch closely and wait for someone to slip up.
SOMEONE SLIPS UP
Less than six months after the Brinks job, O’Keefe and Gusciora were nabbed for robbing an Army-Navy store in Pennsylvania. Police found a pile of cash in the car, but none of it could be tied to the Brinks job. O’Keefe was sentenced to three years in the Bradford County jail; Gusciora was sentenced to five years.
In 1658 the Virginia legislature passed a law outlawing lawyers.
O’Keefe wanted to appeal but had no money for legal bills, so he talked Banfield into retrieving his share of the money from the car. It was delivered a few weeks later (minus $2,000). But O’Keefe couldn’t keep it behind bars, so he sought out another gang member, the only one left on the outside that he thought he could trust—Jazz Maffie. Bad move: Maffie took O’Keefe’s money, disappeared, then reappeared claiming it had been stolen. Then Maffie said he had spent the money on O’Keefe’s legal bills. O’Keefe, meanwhile, was stuck in jail and getting angrier.
The Feds worked this angle, trying to create a wedge between O’Keefe and the rest of the gang. They told O’Keefe that the gang had ratted him out for the Brinks job. But O’Keefe stuck to his guns and kept denying any involvement.
THE TENSION MOUNTS
Prior to committing the robbery, the 11 men had agreed that if any one of them “muffed” (acted carelessly), he would be “taken care of” (killed). Sitting in jail, O’Keefe convinced himself that the other members of the gang had “muffed.” And he vowed he would get his share of the loot... one way or another.
After he was paroled in the spring of 1954, O’Keefe returned to Boston to ask McGinnis for enough money from the loot to hire a lawyer for his pending burglary charge. But McGinnis wouldn’t budge. So O’Keefe kidnapped McGinnis’s brother-in-law, Costa, demanding his share as ransom. He only got some of it but still released the hostage. Pino and McGinnis, in the meantime, decided that O’Keefe needed to be “taken care of.”
BULLET-PROOF
That June, O’Keefe was driving through Dorchester, Massachusetts, when a car pulled up next to him and sprayed his car with bullets. O’Keefe escaped unharmed. Days later, fellow gang member Henry Baker shot at him, but O’Keefe escaped again. Fearing retribution, Pino brought in a professional hit man named Elmer “Trigger” Burke. When Burke found his target and shot him in the chest and wrist with a machine gun, Specs O’Keefe lived up to his reputation as one of the toughest crooks in the Boston underworld by surviving. By this point, he was extremely angry.
The term “serial killer” was coined by FBI agent Robert Ressler in the 1970s.
O’Keefe immediately went to the cops and fingered Burke, who was arrested and convicted for attempted murder. But the plan backfired. While he was talking to police, they discovered that O’Keefe was carrying a concealed weapon, a violation of his parole. He was arrested and sentenced to 27 months in prison. Knowing that there was a contract on O’Keefe’s life, the FBI stepped up their interrogations. But he still wouldn’t confess.
THE HEAT IS ON
Time was starting to run out. It had been more than five years since the crime, and the deadline for the statute of limitations was getting closer and closer. Thousands of hours had gone into identifying the suspects, but the FBI still had no hard evidence. As the case remained in the public eye, each passing day without an arrest was an embarrassment.
Through all of it, the Feds knew that O’Keefe was the key, so they kept chipping away at him. When they informed him that a huge portion of the loot had been recovered, he finally gave in. On January 6, 1956, Specs O’Keefe called a meeting with the Feds and said, “All right, what do you want to know?” It was 11 days before the six-year statute of limitations would take effect.
O’Keefe spelled out every detail to the police—except where the rest of the money was hidden. He had no idea. (Neither did the police—they had exaggerated the loot-recovery story as a ruse to get O’Keefe to talk.)
TRIED AND CONVICTED
Police rounded up all of the remaining members. They were arrested and tried amid a media circus. More than 1,000 prospective jurors had to be excused because they admitted they were sympathetic to the robbers. In the end, a jury found all of them guilty. Each man was sentenced to life in prison. Some died there—others were later released on parole.
For turning state’s evidence, O’Keefe was given a reduced sentence. After prison, he changed his name, moved to California, and reportedly worked as Cary Grant’s chauffeur.
The Brinks gang stole $2.7 million in cash and securities. The government spent $29 million trying to catch them and bring them to justice. But in the end, only 0.2% of the loot—$51,906—was recovered. What happened to the remaining 99.8% is a mystery.
Police-issued TASERS have a 5-second recharge time; civilian o
nes take 30 seconds to recharge.
BELLE WAS A STARR
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
—The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962)
FOXY LADY
The Wild West had its share of lawless legends, but the overwhelming majority of them were men. Perhaps that’s why in 1889—shortly after her death—tales of Belle Starr and her outlaw ways entranced the nation. Reporter Richard Fox published Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James, which chronicled the gunslingin’, horse-rustlin’, man-eatin’ adventures of the roughest, toughest, shootingest lady that ever did live!
One problem: Fox made most of it up. Yes, there was a Belle Starr, and yes, she did spend some time on the shady side of the law. She even served nine months in prison for rustling horses. But when it comes right down to it, most of her adventures—from saloon shootouts to bank robberies to all the men she was supposed to have “known”—were nothing more than the inventions of a pulp writer looking to thrill his readers.
So which parts of the Belle Starr legend are true, and which are false?
SHIRLEY YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS
Before she called herself Belle, she was born Myra Maybelle Shirley in 1848 to well-to-do parents in Missouri. They tried to raise her as a proper young woman, but Belle’s biggest influence was her older brother Bud, who showed her how to ride a horse and shoot a gun. During the Civil War, the Shirleys sided with the Confederacy. Bud partnered up with a band of young guns, including future outlaws Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger. Belle passed on information collected at social gatherings to her brother during these times. Bud was killed by Union troops in 1864, and sme accounts have Belle taking to her guns to avenge Bud’s death. Historians find that unlikely.
Uncle John’s True Crime Page 25