Because the money in the cooler was in various stages of decomposition, an accurate count proved most difficult to make. OKeefe was the principal witness to appear before the state grand jurors. WebRobbery Seven of the group went into the Brink's building: OKeefe, Gusciora, Baker, Maffie, Geagan, Faherty, and Richardson. In the late summer of 1944, he was released from the state prison and was taken into custody by Immigration authorities. In its determination to overlook no possibility, the FBI contacted various resorts throughout the United States for information concerning persons known to possess unusually large sums of money following the robbery. During the period in which Pinos deportation troubles were mounting, OKeefe completed his sentence at Towanda, Pennsylvania. By fixing this time as close as possible to the minute at which the robbery was to begin, the robbers would have alibis to cover their activities up to the final moment. 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 OKeefe claimed that he left his hotel room in Boston at approximately 7:00 p.m. on January 17, 1950. Banfield drove the truck to the house of Maffies parents in Roxbury. Eight of the gang's members received maximum sentences of life imprisonment. OKeefe and Gusciora reportedly had worked together on a number of occasions. The robbery remained unsolved for nearly six years, until estranged group member Joseph O'Keefe testified only days before the statute of limitations would have expired. Before his trial in McKean County, he was released on $17,000 bond. Binoculars were used in this phase of the casing operation. An official website of the United States government. The last false approach took place on January 16, 1950the night before the robbery. Yet, when he was Underworld rumors alleged that Maffie and Henry Baker were high on OKeefes list because they had beaten him out of a large amount of money. From their prison cells, they carefully followed the legal maneuvers aimed at gaining them freedom. They spent about twenty minutes inside the vault, putting money into large canvas bags. The robbers did little talking. The mass of information gathered during the early weeks of the investigation was continuously sifted. There was James Ignatius Faherty, an armed robbery specialist whose name had been mentioned in underworld conversations in January 1950, concerning a score on which the gang members used binoculars to watch their intended victims count large sums of money. Each of them had surreptitiously entered the premises on several occasions after the employees had left for the day. The truck found at the dump had been reported stolen by a Ford dealer near Fenway Park in Boston on November 3, 1949. Burke traveled to Boston and shot O'Keefe, seriously wounding him but failed to kill him. This man, subsequently identified as a small-time Boston underworld figure, was located and questioned. After continuing up the street to the end of the playground which adjoined the Brinks building, the truck stopped. All were denied, and the impaneling of the jury was begun on August 7. Other members of the robbery gang also were having their troubles. All five employees had been forced at gunpoint to lie face down on the floor. OKeefe was enraged that the pieces of the stolen Ford truck had been placed on the dump near his home, and he generally regretted having become associated at all with several members of the gang. 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. (McGinnis trial in March 1955 on the liquor charge resulted in a sentence to 30 days imprisonment and a fine of $1,000. Here, we look at the people involved and where they are now. He was granted a full pardon by the acting governor of Massachusetts. While on bond he returned to Boston; on January 23, 1954, he appeared in the Boston Municipal Court on the probation violation charge. He, too, had left his home shortly before 7:00 p.m. on the night of the robbery and met the Boston police officer soon thereafter. The gang at that time included all of the participants in the January 17, 1950, robbery except Henry Baker. OKeefe did not know where the gang members had hidden their shares of the lootor where they had disposed of the money if, in fact, they had disposed of their shares. He had been released on parole from the Norfolk, Massachusetts, Prison Colony on August 22, 1949only five months before the robbery. Despite the fact that substantial amounts of money were being spent by members of the robbery gang during 1954, in defending themselves against legal proceedings alone, the year ended without the location of any bills identifiable as part of the Brinks loot. They were held in lieu of bail which, for each man, amounted to more then $100,000. Even before Brinks, Incorporated, offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the persons responsible, the case had captured the imagination of millions of Americans. Two weeks of comparative quiet in the gang members lives were shattered on June 5, 1954, when an attempt was made on OKeefes life. As a government witness, he reluctantly would have testified against him. He was through with Pino, Baker, McGinnis, Maffie, and the other Brinks conspirators who had turned against him. At the centre of The Gold are the detective Brian Boyce, played by Hugh Bonneville, and Kenneth Noye, played by Jack Lowden. In the succeeding two weeks, nearly 1,200 prospective jurors were eliminated as the defense counsel used their 262 peremptory challenges. OKeefe had left his hotel at approximately 7:00 p.m. Pino and Baker separately decided to go out at 7:00 p.m. Costa started back to the motor terminal at about 7:00 p.m. Other principal suspects were not able to provide very convincing accounts of their activities that evening. Using the outside door key they had previously obtained, the men quickly entered and donned their masks. This occurred while he was in the state prison at Charlestown, Massachusetts, serving sentences for breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony and for having burglar tools in his possession. Nonetheless, several members of the Brinks gang were visibly shaken and appeared to be abnormally worried during the latter part of May and early in June 1954. Even with the recovery of this money in Baltimore and Boston, more than $1,150,000 of currency taken in the Brinks robbery remained unaccounted for. They moved with a studied precision which suggested that the crime had been carefully planned and rehearsed in the preceding months. On January 12, 1956, just five days before the statute of limitations was to run out, the FBI arrested Baker, Costa, Geagan, Maffie, McGinnis, and Pino. After weighing the arguments presented by the attorneys for the eight convicted criminals, the State Supreme Court turned down the appeals on July 1, 1959, in a 35-page decision written by the Chief Justice. Through long weeks of empty promises of assistance and deliberate stalling by the gang members, he began to realize that his threats were falling on deaf ears. During November and December 1949, the approach to the Brinks building and the flight over the getaway route were practiced to perfection. Thirteen people were detained in the hours following the robbery, including two former employees of Brink's. While some gang members remained in the building to ensure that no one detected the operation, other members quickly obtained keys to fit the locks. Pino admitted having been in the area, claiming that he was looking for a parking place so that he could visit a relative in the hospital. From the size of the loot and the number of men involved, it was logical that the gang might have used a truck. As the truck drove past the Brinks offices, the robbers noted that the lights were out on the Prince Street side of the building. Among the early suspects was Anthony Pino, an alien who had been a principal suspect in numerous major robberies and burglaries in Massachusetts. A detailed search for additional weapons was made at the Mystic River. Several hundred dollars were found hidden in the house but could not be identified as part of the loot. OKeefes reputation for nerve was legend. A second shooting incident occurred on the morning of June 14, 1954, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, when OKeefe and his racketeer friend paid a visit to Baker. At approximately 7:00 p.m. on January 17, 1950, members of the gang met in the Roxbury section of Boston and entered the rear of the Ford stake-body truck. [17], Immediately following the robbery, Police Commissioner Thomas F. Sullivan sent a mobilization order for all precinct captains and detectives. The robbers killed Peter Paige at the Nanuet Mall in front of a bank. When the employees were securely bound and gagged, the robbers began looting the premises. WebThe robberys mastermind was Anthony Fats Pino, a career criminal who recruited a group of 10 other men to stake out the depot for 18 months to figure out when it held the This was a question which preyed heavily upon their minds. During his brief stay in Boston, he was observed to contact other members of the robbery gang. The casing operation was so thorough that the criminals could determine the type of activity taking place in the Brinks offices by observing the lights inside the building, and they knew the number of personnel on duty at various hours of the day. Others fell apart as they were handled. Executive producers are Tommy Bulfin for the BBC; Neil Forsyth and Ben Farrell for Tannadice Pictures; and Kate Laffey and Claire Sowerby-Sheppard for VIS. Both denied knowledge of the loot that had been recovered. The month preceding January 17, 1950, witnessed approximately a half-dozen approaches to Brinks. One Massachusetts racketeer, a man whose moral code mirrored his long years in the underworld, confided to the agents who were interviewing him, If I knew who pulled the job, I wouldnt be talking to you now because Id be too busy trying to figure a way to lay my hands on some of the loot.. On January 12, 1953, Pino was released on bail pending a deportation hearing. Other information provided by OKeefe helped to fill the gaps which still existed. On October 11, 1950, Gusciora was sentenced to serve from five to 20 years in the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary at Pittsburgh. Five bullets which had missed their mark were found in a building nearby. In a series of interviews during the succeeding days, OKeefe related the full story of the Brinks robbery. (Burke was arrested by FBI agents at Folly Beach, South Carolina, on August 27, 1955, and he returned to New York to face murder charges which were outstanding against him there. [14], Seven of the group went into the Brink's building: OKeefe, Gusciora, Baker, Maffie, Geagan, Faherty, and Richardson. In addition to mold, insect remains also were found on the loot. other securities in the 1950 Brinks heist. Extensive efforts were made to detect pencil markings and other notations on the currency that the criminals thought might be traceable to Brinks. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Brink%27s_Robbery&oldid=1134169121, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 January 2023, at 09:19. A search of the hoodlums room in a Baltimore hotel (registered to him under an assumed name) resulted in the location of $3,780 that the officers took to police headquarters.

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