On November 26, 1981, six armed men from South London broke into the Brink's-Mat warehouse near London Heathrow. In a report which was released on January 16, 1953, the grand jury disclosed that its members did not feel they possessed complete, positive information as to the identify of the participants in the Brinks robbery because (1) the participants were effectively disguised; (2) there was a lack of eyewitnesses to the crime itself; and (3) certain witnesses refused to give testimony, and the grand jury was unable to compel them to do so. On the night of January 17, 1952exactly two years after the crime occurredthe FBIs Boston Office received an anonymous telephone call from an individual who claimed he was sending a letter identifying the Brinks robbers. Estimates range from $10 million to $100 million. OKeefe was sentenced on August 5, 1954, to serve 27 months in prison. Approximately one and one-half hours later, Banfield returned with McGinnis. During the preceding year, however, he had filed a petition for pardon in the hope of removing one of the criminal convictions from his record. The group were led by Mickey McAdams and Brian Robinson who planned to find 3 million in cash. The person ringing the buzzer was a garage attendant. They did not expect to. Of the hundreds of New England hoodlums contacted by FBI agents in the weeks immediately following the robbery, few were willing to be interviewed. The gang members who remained at the house of Maffies parents soon dispersed to establish alibis for themselves. He was found brutally murdered in his car in 1987. Several hundred dollars were found hidden in the house but could not be identified as part of the loot. In addition to the general descriptions received from the Brinks employees, the investigators obtained several pieces of physical evidence. Henry Baker, another veteran criminal who was rumored to be kicking in to the Pennsylvania defense fund, had spent a number of years of his adult life in prison. Paul Jawarski (sometimes spelled Jaworski) in a yellowed newspaper . (Following pleas of guilty in November 1956, Fat John received a two-year sentence, and the other two men were sentenced to serve one years imprisonment. Perhaps most remarkable, its mastermind didn't even have a criminal record when he planned it out. During the trip from Roxbury, Pino distributed Navy-type peacoats and chauffeurs caps to the other seven men in the rear of the truck. The door opened, and an armed masked man wearing a prison guard-type uniform commanded the guard, Back up, or Ill blow your brains out. Burke and the armed man disappeared through the door and fled in an automobile parked nearby. The gang at that time included all of the participants in the January 17, 1950, robbery except Henry Baker. Due to unsatisfactory conduct, drunkenness, refusal to seek employment, and association with known criminals, his parole was revoked, and he was returned to the Massachusetts State Prison. The public called the robbery the crime of the century: On January 17, 1950, armed men stole more than $2.7 million in cash, checks, money orders, and other securities from a Brink's in. Adding to these problems was the constant pressure being exerted upon Pino by OKeefe from the county jail in Towanda, Pennsylvania. Banfield, the driver, was alone in the front. Investigation established that this gun, together with another rusty revolver, had been found on February 4, 1950, by a group of boys who were playing on a sand bar at the edge of the Mystic River in Somerville. Andrew J. Whitaker/Pool/USA Today Network via REUTERSStanding in shackles and a beige prison jumpsuit, the once prominent South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh continued to swear he was innocent Friday as a judge slammed him as a "monster" whose conduct was worse than many offenders who got the death penalty.Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Murdaugh to life in prison for the June 7, 2021 . One of the biggest robberies in U.S. history happened here. It was called the crime of the century, the largest heist in US history, an almost perfect robbery. On November 26, 1982, six armed robbers forced their way into the Brink's-Mat warehouse, the plan was to steal the 3.2m in cash they were expecting to find stored there. Pino, Costa, Maffie, Geagan, Faherty, Richardson, and Baker received life sentences for robbery, two-year sentences for conspiracy to steal, and sentences of eight years to ten years for breaking and entering at night. The defense immediately filed motions which would delay or prevent the trial. The roofs of buildings on Prince and Snow Hill Streets soon were alive with inconspicuous activity as the gang looked for the most advantageous sites from which to observe what transpired inside Brinks offices. After being wounded on June 16, OKeefe disappeared. And what of McGinnis himself? On the afternoon of July 9, he was visited by a clergyman. Five bullets which had missed their mark were found in a building nearby. Much of the money taken from the money changer appeared to have been stored a long time. Yet, it only amounted to a near perfect crime. This phase of the investigation greatly disturbed many gamblers. And the gang felt that the chances of his talking were negligible because he would be implicated in the Brinks robbery along with the others. 00:29. Immediately upon leaving, the gang loaded the loot into the truck that was parked on Prince Street near the door. Some of the jewelry might. Former inmates of penal institutions reported conversations they had overheard while incarcerated which concerned the robbing of Brinks. The Brink's-Mat robbery the name alone is enough to spark excitement in viewers of a certain age, such as your correspondent became one of the most celebrated cases, and convoluted plots . On October 20, 1981, members of the Black Liberation Army robbed a Brink's truck at the Nanuet Mall. The theft changed the face of the British underworld. Two other men, ex-Brink's guard Thomas O'Connor and unemployed teacher Charles McCormick, were acquitted. Banfield drove the truck to the house of Maffies parents in Roxbury. There was Adolph Jazz Maffie, one of the hoodlums who allegedly was being pressured to contribute money for the legal battle of OKeefe and Gusciora against Pennsylvania authorities. While Maffie claimed that part of the money had been stolen from its hiding place and that the remainder had been spent in financing OKeefes legal defense in Pennsylvania, other gang members accused Maffie of blowing the money OKeefe had entrusted to his care. The amusement arcade operator told the officer that he had followed the man who passed this $10.00 bill to a nearby tavern. The hoodlum was taken to police headquarters where a search of his person disclosed he was carrying more than $1,000, including $860 in musty, worn bills. The Boston hoodlum told FBI agents in Baltimore that he accepted six of the packages of money from Fat John. The following day (June 2, 1956), he left Massachusetts with $4,750 of these bills and began passing them. The serial numbers of several of these bills were furnished to the FBI Office in Baltimore. The robbery. The robbery of 26m of gold bars from a warehouse near Heathrow airport is one of Britain's most notorious - and biggest - heists. During this operation, one of the employees had lost his glasses; they later could not be found on the Brinks premises. David Ghantt was the vault supervisor for Loomis, Fargo & Co. armored cars, which managed the transportation of large sums of cash between banks in North Carolina. Seven months later, however, he was again paroled. Each of them had surreptitiously entered the premises on several occasions after the employees had left for the day. An acetylene torch had been used to cut up the truck, and it appeared that a sledge hammer also had been used to smash many of the heavy parts, such as the motor. The group were led . On the afternoon of August 28, 1954, Trigger Burke escaped from the Suffolk County jail in Boston, where he was being held on the gun-possession charge arising from the June 16 shooting of OKeefe. Many of the details had previously been obtained during the intense six-year investigation. In July 1956, another significant turn of events took place. In April 1950, the FBI received information indicating that part of the Brinks loot was hidden in the home of a relative of OKeefe in Boston. Faherty had been questioned on the night of the robbery. He was granted a full pardon by the acting governor of Massachusetts. A roll of waterproof adhesive tape used to gag and bind bank employees that was left at the scene of the crime. During his brief stay in Boston, he was observed to contact other members of the robbery gang. There had been three attempts on his life in June 1954, and his frustrated assassins undoubtedly were waiting for him to return to Boston. The other keys in their possession enabled them to proceed to the second floor where they took the five Brinks employees by surprise. An immediate effort also was made to obtain descriptive data concerning the missing cash and securities. A gang of 11 men set out on a meticulous 18-month quest to rob the Brinks headquarters in Boston, the home-base of the legendary private security firm. Commonly regarded as a dominant figure in the Boston underworld, McGinnis previously had been convicted of robbery and narcotics violations. There are still suspicions among some readers that the late Tom O'Connor, a retired cop who worked Brinks security during the robbery, was a key player, despite his acquittal on robbery charges at . Local officers searched their homes, but no evidence linking them with the truck or the robbery was found. All efforts to identify the persons responsible for the theft and the persons who had cut up the truck were unsuccessful. LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Jewelry, gems, high-end watches and other valuables worth millions of dollars were stolen from a transport vehicle in Southern California. Faherty and Richardson fled to avoid apprehension and subsequently were placed on the list of the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Brian Robinson was arrested in December 1983 after Stephen Black - the security guard who let the robbers into the Brink's-Mat warehouse, and Robinson's brother-in-law - named him to police. Even fearing the new bills might be linked with the crime, McGinnis suggested a process for aging the new money in a hurry.. 26 million (equivalent to 93.3 million in 2021 [1]) worth of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash was stolen from a warehouse operated by Brink's-Mat, a former joint . More than 100 persons took the stand as witnesses for the prosecution and the defense during September 1956. Occasionally, an offender who was facing a prison term would boast that he had hot information. Three years later, Great Train Robber. At 4:20 p.m. on January 6, 1956, OKeefe made the final decision. Had the ground not been frozen, the person or persons who abandoned the bags probably would have attempted to bury them. OKeefes reputation for nerve was legend. Two of the gang members moved toward the door to capture him; but, seeing the garage attendant walk away apparently unaware that the robbery was being committed, they did not pursue him. More than $7 million was stolen in a brazen holdup at a Brink's armored car service in Rochester in 1993. At the time of their arrest, Faherty and Richardson were rushing for three loaded revolvers that they had left on a chair in the bathroom of the apartment. The Great Brinks Robbery of 1950 met all of these requirementsa great pile of cash disappeared with no evidence, leads, or suspects. Baker fled and the brief meeting adjourned. A man of modest means in Bayonne, New Jersey, was reported to be spending large sums of money in night clubs, buying new automobiles, and otherwise exhibiting newly found wealth. In the back were Pino, OKeefe, Baker, Faherty, Maffie, Gusciora, Michael Vincent Geagan (pictured), and Thomas Francis Richardson. Shortly thereafterduring the first week of Novembera 1949 green Ford stake-body truck was reported missing by a car dealer in Boston. All were denied, and the impaneling of the jury was begun on August 7. Nonetheless, the finding of the truck parts at Stoughton, Massachusetts, was to prove a valuable break in the investigation. Shakur, the stepfather of hip-hop star . (McGinnis trial in March 1955 on the liquor charge resulted in a sentence to 30 days imprisonment and a fine of $1,000.
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