Final Confession (14 page)

O
N MAY
2, 1966, summerlike weather came to the Boston area. Three men emerged from a room at the Fenway Motor Inn at two
A.M
. They were dressed in black. Half an hour later a maroon sedan registered to someone other than its driver moved along Highland Terrace in Dedham. The sedan stopped briefly at the corner of Highland Terrace and one of the men got out. Then the car turned around and parked down the street, heading in the opposite direction. A few seconds later, the man who had alighted from the sedan walked into the driveway of 42 Highland Terrace.

The street was quiet. The man walked around the garage twice, then bent down and opened the garage door with an object he pulled from his pants pocket. Inside, he clicked on a small flashlight, barely illuminating the car in the garage. Less than thirty seconds after the flashlight went on, it went off. The man quietly closed and locked the garage door and walked back to the nearby waiting car. The scene was now set.

At approximately nine-thirty that same morning, the man who had opened the garage door some seven hours earlier still sat in the front seat of the same maroon sedan. He watched as Walter Bain kissed his wife at their front door and entered his
garage from outside. The three men sitting in the parked car waited anxiously to see if the diamond broker noticed anything out of the ordinary. Their answer came a minute later. Bain drove out of his garage as usual, and headed in the direction of police headquarters.

Tony waited until Bain turned off Highland Terrace before he headed in the opposite direction. He arrived at headquarters a couple of minutes before Bain, thanks to a series of shortcuts he'd mapped out while clocking this job.

The Cresta team watched as Bain entered empty-handed and returned ten minutes later carrying what they estimated to be about $250,000 in uncut diamonds. Bain looked around cautiously, unlocked his car door, and placed the diamonds in the backseat.

“That was the key for me,” Phil said. “If he'd placed the diamonds in his trunk that day, we might have just gone to breakfast.” From observing the man over the previous two weeks, Phil knew Bain sometimes put his diamonds in the trunk, other times in the backseat. On that Monday, Bain put his diamonds in the backseat. That decision would cost him dearly.

Bain drove to the Charles River and onto the VFW Parkway. Not long after entering the parkway, Bain later told MDC police, his car's engine suddenly seemed to skip. He thought little of it until the skipping grew worse. When he stopped at the edge of the parkway, Bain saw a maroon sedan pull up in front of him. Two men got out and approached his car, while a third stayed behind the wheel of the sedan. The two men tried unsuccessfully to open Bain's car doors. Then the one at the driver's door pulled a gun from his pocket and aimed it at Bain's face. Bain opened the door. The gunman pushed him across the front seat. When Bain unlocked the back door the other gunman grabbed his briefcase with the diamonds. They then forced Bain's hands over his head and handcuffed him, ran back to their sedan, and headed toward Boston.

Bain jumped from his car and tried to flag down a passing motorist. But nobody would stop for a man who was handcuffed
and waving like a maniac. After ten futile minutes, Bain dashed across the VFW Parkway and into West Roxbury's Veterans Hospital. There, hospital workers listened to his story and called the police. Both MDC and Boston police responded. Neither the Boston nor the MDC officers could open the unique handcuffs that bound Bain. He was taken to a Boston locksmith who, after several failed attempts, was finally able to free him. Meanwhile, Boston police found the maroon sedan believed to have been used in the robbery. It had been abandoned on the grounds of the Blue Hills Country Club in Canton.

In the
Boston Globe
's evening edition of May 2, MDC police reported that, as in the previous highwaymen robberies, they suspected a foreign substance had been put into the gas tank to make the car stall on the parkway. As in all the other highwaymen robberies, there were no clues or witnesses, even though hundreds of cars had driven past Bain's stalled car and the maroon sedan at the time of the robbery.

The next day, however, a front-page story in the
Globe
told a different story. MDC Lieutenant Neil Cadigan told reporters that an electronic device was found on the engine of Walter Bain's car. It probably had been used to disable it. The secret was finally out, although it didn't make Walter Bain or the Baumgold company any happier. Baumgold had been hit three times by the highwaymen. Their losses far exceeded half a million dollars.

The three highwaymen were out of business after the Walter Bain robbery. “I let them have the staller,” Phil explained, “because I knew it was our last highwaymen robbery. I also knew how dangerous it was to be out on the VFW Parkway during rush hour traffic with guns drawn and masks on. I told Angelo before the job that it would be in and out—no worrying about the staller, no dillydallying. When we found the door of Bain's car locked, I was afraid Bain was going to play the hero and maybe get shot. I was glad he opened the door when he saw Angelo's gun in his face. Once the door was open, I knew we'd get the loot, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about the
MDC and Boston cops who are always patrolling the parkway. I kept looking for a cop car, but we were lucky. I've always have said, ‘Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.'”

The ex-highwaymen drove directly to New Hampshire. The next day Phil, with his loaded briefcase, headed for a plane to Chicago. When he got to Logan, he saw a huge headline in the
Record American
that read, $150,000
HUB JEWEL HOLDUP
. Louie Diamonds had assured Phil that Bain would be hauling more like half a mil. For a while Phil wondered if they'd taken too great a risk for so small a haul. But then he reminded himself of past reports he'd read—how the marks and their companies used one figure for the paper, another for the insurance companies, and then they had the real figure, which wasn't even close to the other two. It was all a game, and usually it was the insurance companies who were the big losers.

But not this time. Bain had been telling the truth. Chicago verified that he'd had only about $150,000 worth of diamonds. Louie Diamonds had given Phil an inflated estimate. Phil never dealt with him again.

Phil said, “It was kind of weird to be waiting for a plane and listening to everyone talk about the ‘big robbery.' They all had their own opinions on this and that, and I found it very amusing to listen to the different scenarios. One guy, who couldn't stop talking about the highwaymen robbers, asked me and a few others where we thought the jewels and the highwaymen were right then. The guy didn't know it, but the jewels were about five feet away from him, tucked into a false bottom of my suitcase, and he was talking to one of the highwaymen. It was like that time in Southie at the Transit Cafe when all the wise guys were trying to figure out who the highwaymen were and we were sitting right in front of them.”

D
ESPITE CRESTA'S EFFORTS
to keep violence to a minimum during his crimes, violence erupted on a sizzling hot Tuesday, July 26, 1966. The temperature was approaching 90 humid degrees as the staff of the VA Hospital in Jamaica Plain was going to lunch. It was exactly 12:22
P.M
. when Bernard Fisher and Donald Bettano, of Armored Banking Services of Lynn, pulled their truck into a small alcove near the main lobby of the hospital. As usual on a Tuesday, the guards were bringing $68,000 cash so that the hospital could cash its employees' paychecks the next day.

Fisher, the first guard, walked toward the front entrance of the hospital as his partner, Bettano, moved toward the back door of the truck to lock it. Each had three bags of money in his hands. The men would normally go into the hospital together, drop off the six bags of cash, return to the truck, unlock the back door, and bring in more bags of cash. But this day was different.

As Bettano started to lock the back door, a blue panel truck came roaring up the hospital driveway and screeched to a halt directly behind him. According to witnesses, three men dressed
in black and wearing ski masks bolted from the blue truck and began to open fire. Two of the bandits were carrying submachine guns, while the third had a handgun. Fisher, hearing the screeching tires, turned quickly and reached for his .38-caliber revolver. He was immediately cut down by bullets fired by the man with the handgun. Bettano, seeing his partner wounded on the ground, tried to finish locking the armored truck's back door. He didn't succeed. The same gunman who shot Fisher wheeled and fired, hitting Bettano somewhere near his back. He fell to the ground.

Within a matter of seconds, the same robber was standing directly over Fisher, whose gun was lying a few feet to his right. Fisher tried to get up but collapsed. The masked gunman kicked Fisher's gun about ten yards down the driveway, then reached down and took the three moneybags lying on the pavement. He said something to Fisher; then, walking backward and keeping the gun pointed directly at the guards, retreated only slightly.

The other two robbers, by that time, had put their submachine guns away, taken Bettano's three moneybags, and opened the back door with Bettano's keys. The smaller of the two moved the blue panel truck so that it was back-to-back with the armored truck, and remained at the wheel. The robber in the armored truck then began to throw the remaining bags of money into the back of the panel truck. The one who had shot the guards just stood there pointing his gun at both Fisher and Bettano.

Within a matter of seconds it was over. The man in the back of the armored truck jumped into the back of the blue panel truck and shut the doors. The driver beeped his horn once. The one standing over the wounded guards turned and jumped into the front seat, and they were gone. The blue panel truck sped along the overpass on South Huntington Avenue toward Brookline.

At the hospital, nobody moved for at least thirty seconds, until the shock of what had happened in front of their eyes wore off. Edward Sezinsky, who saw the robbery from a second-floor
window, recalled, “Everything happened in seconds. There was one long burst that might have been from a machine gun, and then two shots, which sounded like they were from a handgun. I looked out the window and saw two guards lying on the ground. One was just in back of the armored truck and the other one was about fifteen yards from the hospital's front door. There was a gun lying next to the guard who was near the front entrance. I saw one bandit go over to the guard and kick the gun away. I thought he was going to shoot him for sure. One of the other robbers was already in the truck and he kept throwing bags into the blue paneled vehicle. The third guy was sitting behind the wheel just looking around. He acted as if he'd just stopped for a red light. Those guys were very cool and very professional. After the last bag was thrown from the armored truck, the driver beeped his horn, which must have been a signal, and they were gone. Talk about professionals! Nobody had time to think, and by the time anyone came to their senses, the thieves were already over the bridge. Those guys, whoever they were, really knew what they were doing.”

The FBI didn't agree with that assessment, however. The banner headline in the
Boston Globe
on July 27 read,
ROBBERS LEFT “SUBSTANTIAL” CLUES
. Boston Police crime laboratory technicians said they'd obtained a substantial amount of physical evidence from the paneled truck, which they found abandoned less than a mile from the crime scene. All evidence, according to the
Globe
, was immediately turned over to the FBI because the crime had been committed on government property. According to the Boston Police, the pattern of the VA Hospital robbery was exactly the same as that of a $147,000 armored car robbery that had occurred only four days before in Bedford. The only difference was that there were no shots fired in Bedford.

The FBI, in that same
Globe
story, said that in both robberies a stolen panel truck was used. In both thefts three men, all dressed in black and wearing ski masks and all very professional, waited until they saw one guard leave the truck before they approached it. Two had submachine guns and one had a handgun.
The three men in Bedford matched the descriptions of the three VA Hospital robbers. In the Bedford case one of the witnesses heard one of the robbers call another “Lennie.” In the VA Hospital robbery, according to an eyewitness, the name “Red” was used.

Some witnesses told the FBI and the Boston Police that a white sedan followed the panel truck out of the VA Hospital parking lot and onto South Huntington. Another report, which was featured in the
Boston Globe
, said that shortly after the robbery two men were seen getting into a sports car on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury. Other witnesses told the FBI that a car carrying three other men was parked on South Huntington Avenue and followed the robbers as they pulled onto the bridge.

Police recovered twelve shells from the VA Hospital parking lot. The hospital director, Dr. Francis Carroll, stated, “I was in my office around twelve-thirty, when I first heard what sounded like gunfire. I looked out the window and saw two men lying on the sidewalk. Two bullets thudded into the wall above our switchboard. The bullets barely missed our receptionists. Three bullets ripped through hospital windows on the ground floor, but nobody inside was injured, thank God.”

In addition to the hospital personnel who witnessed the daylight robbery there were dozens of motorists who stopped to watch, as well as pedestrians and hospital visitors. Two boys from Worcester had just arrived at the hospital to visit a sick relative, and found themselves right in the middle of a shootout. One said they were no more than twenty feet from the armored truck. He told the FBI that the gunman who shot both guards did so without any warning and before either of the guards went for their guns. (He apparently didn't see Fisher's weapon on the ground.) He said he ran into the hospital to get to a telephone to call for help and was met by hospital workers. He told them not to go outside because two people had already been shot.

A woman who refused to give her name stated that she was visiting her husband on the ninth floor and looked out the window to see one guard lying facedown on the ground and the
other lying on his back. At first she thought people were making a movie and the guys lying on the ground were just acting. But then she saw a blue truck move along the driveway with a machine gun sticking out the back window, and she knew it was not just a movie.

Fisher suffered a fractured leg and Bettano was treated for a single bullet wound to the hip. Neither guard had life-threatening injuries. Fisher, who was a World War II veteran, said he'd be back on the job as soon as his leg healed. Bettano, who had worked for the armored car company only three months before that July afternoon, wasn't so sure he'd go back to that line of work.

Phil Cresta shot both Bernard Fisher and Donald Bettano. He remembered events differently from the witnesses. “They're all full of shit,” Cresta said when he read the newspaper accounts. “I was the first one out the door, and I saw the guard turn and go for his gun. He had the drop on Angelo, who was heading for the armored truck, so I shot him in the leg. If I wanted to kill that guy, his wife would be a widow right now.” Cresta often said that he never had anything against the guys who were guarding the money. “They were just working stiffs, like us, trying to provide for their families. I understand that. They just had something I wanted, and I was determined to get it. Nothing personal. I hate it when guys try to be heroes. It's not
their
money—I don't understand all the heroics. I shot the second guard when he headed back to the armored truck. I thought he was going to lock himself in the back of the truck, so I took him out before he got there. I didn't aim for his head or even his back. I shot him in the ass. Now how cold-blooded is that?” Phil asked.

His explanation went on, obviously important to him. “We're stickup guys, not killers. We just wanted to get in, get the money, and get out. But sometimes things don't go as planned, so you have to do what you have to do. That's what we did at the VA Hospital. We've pulled hundreds of jobs and ninety percent of the time we never even had to pull a gun, but if you're going
to be in this business, you'd better be willing to use it when it's needed. Every score we did was clocked and mapped to the max. We knew everything about the VA job—we did think they were carrying more money, though. That was a surprise. But sixty-eight large for less than two minutes' work isn't bad. Tony tries to calculate how much we saved in taxes on each score, can you believe that? Like I give a flying fuck about how much we saved on taxes. The boy is stugatz [crazy],” said Cresta, laughing.

In Phil Cresta's opinion, “Sometimes the more witnesses you have the better off you are. We had a white car … we had a red car … we had a blue car. We had a panel truck … we had a sports car. We had a car following us … we didn't have a car following us. Give me a break! The more witnesses, the more pictures they paint, especially when they hear gunshots. Now, how many people do you know who are going to stand there, head straight, taking notes, when a guy in a ski mask is spraying lead all over the area? That was the reason Angelo let go with that round from the semi. Those bullets didn't have anyone's name on them. They were just meant to scare people. And it worked, by the look of all the different accounts of what happened in the papers.

“We called one guy ‘Red'? That never happened. But the feds go chasing down every cockamamy story those hicks swear by, which is fine with me. The feds spent two weeks chasing down every Red in the country, all the while announcing they had substantial leads and they'd soon arrest the parties responsible for the VA robbery. That day never came.

“Regardless of what the feds told the press, they didn't have dick. They knew we pulled the score, but they had no evidence. They made those statements to the press just to save face.”

After the VA Hospital robbery, Phil decided to take another vacation—a long one, this time. “I really didn't want to push our luck,” he emphasized. “We had made over three million dollars between the five highway robberies, a couple of big fur robberies, and a couple of armored car robberies in 1966. I knew, as we
were riding out of the VA Hospital, that it was time to relax. We certainly didn't need the money and I didn't need the aggravation of everyone from Hoover to Angiulo chasing us down. Two things I always tried to guard against were complacency and greed. Those two qualities have put more people in jail or in their graves than any police force in the country. We'd just made over three million and nobody had any proof we were the perpetrators. That was the way I wanted to keep it,” Phil proudly said.

The Cresta crew went to the farm for a few days as the entire Boston police force and the FBI tried to prove who pulled the VA Hospital job. It was there Phil brought up the subject of taking a break, hoping Angelo and Tony would agree.

After counting the money from the hospital job, Phil nonchalantly said, “You know, guys, I was thinking of taking a sabbatical. What do you think?”

The silence was deafening. Finally Tony responded, “You're the boss, Phil. If you want to hit this sabbatical company I'm with you, but I was hoping to take a little rest.”

Angelo and Phil both started to laugh, and Tony joined in, though he had no idea what they were all laughing at. After a few minutes, Phil said, “Tony,
sabbatical
is not the name of an armored car company. It means to take a break—take a vacation.”

“Why the fuck didn't ya jest say that, for crissake, Phil? I don't know these big words,” Tony said, a little annoyed.

They spent the next week at the farm. Phil relaxed by trying to open new safes and locks that had just been introduced to the market. Tony, still under 110 pounds, relaxed by eating. Angelo went downtown to take in a few double features. It would be a whole year before they resumed their profession.