Final Confession (8 page)

Augie Circella was now married to Phil's sister Mari. A professional dancer, she had met him when dancing at the Follies Burlesque Theater that Circella owned. Circella, of course, was the man who would help Phil with the Parker House heist later that same year.

Circella called Phil three days later to say he had an interested party, familiar with Rideout's work, who would buy the entire lot for $100,000. Phil was floored. “A hundred large, Augie? You sure?” Phil asked in disbelief. “Not enough, kid?” Augie replied smoothly. You want me to go back and squeeze 'em?” “No, no, Augie. Those numbers are just fine,” Phil said, knowing full well what methods Augie used to squeeze people. He hadn't expected more than $50,000. “Think you can get the stuff out here?” Augie asked. “For a hundred large, I'll walk it there,” Phil answered, laughing.

The next day Phil, Angelo, and Tony each rented a brand-new Lincoln Continental. They parked two of them in South Boston, and headed toward Jackie's garage in Everett in the third. Jackie the Wolf, at Phil's insistence, had moved his car out of his garage and parked it on the next block.

Jackie walked home that day just in time to see a large black Lincoln Continental turning onto his street. Phil was driving, Angelo was riding shotgun, and Tony was in the backseat. Phil pulled the car into Jackie's garage and they went to work. They took every removable panel off the car. They took out the backseat, placed stamps and coins in the car's panels and behind the backseat, and then reassembled the car. All the particularly valuable items were hidden inside the car's frame. When
they finished with that car, they drove it to a warehouse in South Boston, parked it, and returned with an identical Lincoln Continental. To the casual observer—or to any nosy Everett neighbor—it looked as if the same car that pulled out of the garage an hour earlier had returned: same people, same car. They made three trips to the garage in three different cars, then drove the cars to Chicago.

All the way to the Windy City, they kept within eyesight of each other just in case of trouble along the way. There was none. They returned to Boston two days later, a lot richer. They returned the rental cars at Logan Airport, then headed over to Everett once again. This time Phil drove his own Bonneville into Jackie the Wolf's driveway. When they left, the Wolf was also a richer man, to the tune of $5,000—which he used to pay off Angiullo.

Phil, Angelo, and Tony took separate vacations after the Rideout score. Tony and Angelo both used the time to see family in Italy. Phil went to visit his sister in Chicago for a month or so.

Tilley, one of Boston's Finest's favorite robbery suspects, was never again questioned about the Rideout robbery. Rideout continued his weekly Wednesday haircuts, never knowing that they were responsible in any way for the theft. Jackie the Wolf started gambling again and got himself into another jam. This time Phil Cresta did not intervene. Jackie the Wolf disappeared in 1969. His body has never been recovered.

Not much bothered Phil after the successful Rideout job, but he was deeply irritated that Tilley knew they'd pulled it. Phil decided to lie low for a while to see what the fallout would be and whether or not there would be a “Tilley factor.” Phil wasn't pleased that Tony had been stupid enough to bring Tilley in as a go-between, but he'd known that Tony would never be mistaken for a Harvard graduate. “Tony is Tony,” Phil later explained. “What you see is what you get. He could make a dynamite ‘sangwich' and drive a getaway car, but he wasn't going to be a contestant on
Jeopardy!
”

While “vacationing” in Chicago, Phil kept a close eye on the
Boston papers. The Rideout case, after that first media barrage, seemed to slip from the radar screen. In mid-July 1965 Phil decided that the heat had cooled enough for him to return home. He took in some Red Sox games, but was getting itchy for some action of his own. Within a week of his return to Boston, both Angelo and Tony were also back. “We were like the Three Stooges, just hanging around, driving each other crazy,” Phil recalled. “We had some serious money in the bank, but life wasn't always about money. There's no way I can describe the feeling you get when you take down an armored car for half a mil or open a vault and see all that soon-to-be green staring you in the face. It's like it's us against them.”

O
N JULY
26, 1965, one of the team's best informants came calling at McGrail's. Phil said later that he remembered the exact date Cushman came with the news on this potential target because July 26 became an unofficial holiday to the Cresta team only a year later. The informant's name was Cushman and he was a small-timer from South Boston. He had done a few years at Walpole and was well liked by both cops and robbers.

“Cushman should've been a comedian,” Phil said. “He was a big red-faced Irishman who weighed about 250 pounds. He always had a grin on his face, as if he found everything in life funny. Cushman reminded me of an oversized leprechaun,” Phil said, laughing, “and he always had about ten new jokes. He was the only guy I knew who could tell Jerry Angiulo Italian jokes and make him laugh.

“One day,” Phil recalled, “Cushman walked into the European Restaurant on Hanover Street in the North End and spotted Angiulo having dinner with some of Patriarca's mob from Providence. Cushman walked over to the table and asked, ‘Hey, Jerry, what happened when the Italian stopped paying his garbage bill?' Angiulo squinted and shrugged. Cushman looked
him straight in the eye and said, ‘They stopped delivering.' Everybody looked at Angiulo to see his reaction, but there was none. Cushman then inquired, ‘Jerry, did you hear about the Italian who locked himself out of his car on Hanover Street?' Angiulo just glared. ‘It took him three hours to get his family out.' Angiulo smiled; the others didn't. ‘One last one and then I gotta go,' Cushman assured him. ‘Why do they bury Italians with their asses sticking out of the ground?' Nobody stirred. ‘So their relatives will have somewhere to park their bicycles when they come to the cemetery.' Angiulo began to laugh, and with this cue so did the others, although most of them didn't appreciate Cushman's humor. As Cushman walked away Angiulo said, ‘That guy kills me.' One of Patriarca's men, of Italian descent and unappreciative of Cushman's jokes, growled, ‘I'd like to kill
him
.' With this, the whole table erupted in laughter.

“I don't know of anyone in the world who could pull a stunt like that, except Cushman,” Phil marveled. “He'd tell Irish jokes to Irish cops, Catholic jokes to priests. Nobody was spared, and 'most everyone loved him. That was why he was one of the best ears we had on the street. He was able to get close to many people without raising any antennas.”

But Cushman scared Tony, who felt that anyone crazy enough to tell Angiulo those kinds of jokes was too crazy for him. Angelo explained away Tony's fear of the Irishman by simply saying, “Tony just didn't get the punch lines.”

Whether you loved him or hated him, Cushman was a welcome sight as he marched into McGrail's that day. Now that the heat was off in regard to the Rideout job, the team was looking for a new lead and Cushman had a reputation for giving information on high-paying scores. There was nothing remotely funny about Cushman when it came to information. He could play the clown, and that's all some people saw. But those people were deceived. Cushman was a shrewd businessman.

And business was the reason he was sitting with the Cresta crew that July afternoon. After the obligatory jokes and some pleasantries, Phil asked what he had. “Sit down,” Cushman said
to Tony, who responded by asking why. “Just sit the fuck down, that's why,” Cushman barked. Tony grabbed a chair and sat at the end of the booth rather than next to the Irishman. He looked at Cushman through suspicious eyes and asked, “Are you happy now?” Cushman didn't reply. “Come on, stop stalling. What's the score worth?” Angelo asked. Cushman looked around to see if anyone was listening, and whispered, “Fifty million.” “Dollars?” Tony blurted out. “No. Fucking cannolis, you dipshit,” Cushman spat out. “Is this some kind of a joke?” Phil asked. “Serious business,” Cushman replied, smiling now. “Fifty mil,” Phil whispered. “What are we taking down—Fort Knox?” Angelo blanched, and then said, “I think that's a little out of our league.” “Even if all that loot is in an armored truck that travels through Boston?” Cushman asked, beaming now.

“We'll meet you at the Fenway Motor Inn, room nine, in ten minutes,” Phil said. And he got up to leave, leading the way.

The very next day Phil, Angelo, and Tony clocked the armored truck that Cushman identified as the one carrying up to $50 million. It was driven by two guards. They would stop at all the banks in downtown Boston and pick up six or more moneybags at each bank. The Cresta crew followed that armored truck every day for three weeks; the routine never varied. It seemed too good to be true.

They met up to four times a week with Cushman, who was all business, no jokes. They knew a score this big would set them up for life. Phil wanted to make sure every issue was considered before they even thought about the robbery itself.

A week before the robbery was scheduled to take place, Cushman showed up at the Fenway Motor Inn and announced that he had some good news and some bad news. Angelo said, “What's the deal, jokeman?” “One of the guards who drives on the route is going on vacation next week.” Phil moaned, then said that they didn't need to change plans. “We'll just wait a week till he comes back,” Angelo said. All this time Cushman stood there, not saying a word. Finally he announced, “Whoa, whoa, take it easy. Do you want to hear the good news now?”
They all stared at him. “This armored truck company is so cheap they're not replacing him.” He let what he had said sink in. Phil looked at Angelo and they both looked at Tony.
“Get the fuck outta here, Cushman,”
Tony yelled. “You telling me these guys are letting one guard carry fifty million dollars?” Smugly Cushman responded, “That's what I'm telling you.”

“Well then, we've got ourselves a ball game,” Phil said, breaking the silence.

The next Monday morning, after the three of them had breakfast at the Hayes Bickford's in South Station, they headed toward the Bank of Boston on Water Street and waited for the armored truck to make its daily delivery. Sure enough, just as Cushman had told them it would, the truck had only one guard inside. The guard had to make four trips into the bank, twice the number he and his partner normally made. The Cresta team couldn't believe what they were seeing. They met that night with Cushman and Phil asked, “Are you sure they're moving that much money?” “Absolutely,” a grinning Cushman responded. Phil looked around and announced, “We take him on Saturday.” Nobody responded; there was nothing more to say.

The group had one final strategy session, without Cushman, on Friday, August 20, 1965. All was now ready. They left the Fenway Motor Inn at 5:30 on Saturday morning, August 21, and headed toward North Station.

At 6:50 an armored truck owned by Armored Car Carrier Corporation headed west on Causeway Street, then took a left up the ramp onto the Southeast Expressway. Traffic was light that morning as the driver, working alone, headed south, oblivious to the light blue car that followed closely behind him. As the truck approached the High Street off ramp, the driver felt a small jolt, for the front right bumper of the blue car had struck the rear left bumper of the armored truck. The driver of the truck, seeing that the High Street off ramp was less than fifteen feet away, headed down the ramp and pulled over to exchange papers with the driver of the blue car.

As he started to get out of the truck, the driver was confronted by two masked men who produced guns and forced him back into the cab of the truck. “What do you want?” the frightened driver asked the gunmen. “Money,” one said. “I don't have any,” the driver pleaded. “We heard different,” one of the gunmen replied.

The smaller of the two bandits then jumped into the passenger side of the truck. As soon as he was in, he pointed his gun at the driver's head and asked if he knew where the Columbia Point project was. The driver did. He was told to proceed slowly to the Columbia Point Housing Development on the border of South Boston and Dorchester. The other bandit drove the blue car and followed the truck. At one point during the ten-minute trip the driver looked in his rearview mirror. He was told if he did that one more time, it would be the last thing he ever did. The robber in the armored truck kept his mask on during the entire trip and crouched down to avoid detection by anyone driving by. At seven on a Saturday morning, traffic headed out of Boston, as they were headed, was extremely light.

The armored truck and the blue car trailing it left the expressway at the Columbia Station exit, went around the rotary, and down Mt. Vernon Street into the Columbia Point project. The two vehicles proceeded to the very end of the street before turning into a vacant lot—a “greenie,” as it is called in Boston. A man was sitting behind the wheel of a car parked there. Once the truck pulled to a stop the driver was tied with baling wire, gagged, blindfolded, and then retied to the truck's steering wheel by the person who had ridden with him. One robber then began to transfer the sixty-four bags from the truck to the car parked in the greenie. Wearing surgical gloves, he and the other two bandits made the transfer in less than five minutes. It was not yet seven-thirty in the morning when the bandits finished their task and drove away.

The driver waited for about fifteen minutes, and then began to bang his head on the horn. At first there were only angry demands from nearby residents that the noise stop. After
twenty-five minutes, though, a woman walked from her apartment across the street to the armored truck. She untied the driver and then ran back home and called the police.

Detectives John Halliday and Joseph Montalo of the MDC (Metropolitan District Commission) police were assigned to call the local banks and tell them that there had been a holdup. Halliday asked the driver how much the thieves had gotten. “Nothing,” he answered. Halliday, confused, asked if the truck had been carrying any money. “No, sir,” the guard replied. “Just canceled checks.”

Within thirty minutes of the robbery, the greenie was overrun with the media. The MDC police held a press conference at noon in their South Boston barracks, located only half a mile from the robbery. They described how the truck was stolen; how the driver was bound, blindfolded, and gagged; and how the robbers cleaned out the truck and were gone in less than five minutes. A reporter asked how much was taken. The answer: “Nothing.” Dumbfounded, the reporter asked, “What
was
taken, then?” “Sixty-four bags of canceled checks,” Detective Halliday responded. The room erupted in laughter.

Phil Cresta, back at the Fenway Motor Inn, saw nothing even remotely funny about this news.

Once they had transferred the sixty-four bags that they'd believed contained money, the team left the stolen blue car and jumped into the car that Angelo had driven to a predetermined transfer location. They were giddy with excitement as they drove down Columbia Road and then headed for the Fenway Motor Inn. Phil had never seen so many moneybags in one truck, and he was trying to gauge how much money they had stolen. “Cushman was right on the money, it looks like,” Tony said. “Angelo was very quiet on the ride back to the Fenway,” Phil recalled. “I knew something was bothering him, but I was too caught up in the moment to focus on his problems.”

They rolled into the parking lot at the motor inn a little after eight o'clock. “We backed the car up to my room and took one
bag out of the trunk. They emptied the contents of the bag onto the lone bed in the room and their hearts dropped. “Get another one,” Phil barked to Tony. Same thing: canceled checks, no money. By the time they had emptied a dozen moneybags on the bed, it was clear that there would be no big payday, at least not that day. Phil was livid. Tony was babbling. Angelo said, “I knew it. There's no way they were gonna let one man guard fifty mil, no way. We should kill that fucking mick Cushman.”

At noon they turned on the television to catch the news. The cops and the reporters were laughing at them. Phil could hardly bear it. “Nobody knows about this ever, do you hear me?” he screamed. Phil looked at Tony and said, “If Tilley finds out about this, we might as well get out of town. Do you understand, Tony?” Tony shrugged and never looked up.

“What about Cushman? What do we do about him?” Angelo asked. “Not a thing,” Phil said. “You don't think Cushman will want to take any credit for the stupidest robbery in history, do you? In this business if you got no muscle, you better have good sources. Cushman will be through in this town if word gets out he put this fiasco together,” Phil said.

It got even more embarrassing. The
Boston Evening Globe
's front-page story on August 21 read, “Downtown Boston this morning had history's greatest armored car theft … of canceled checks.” The story went on to say, “The robbery, which took one hour in broad daylight, netted the bandits between $25–$50 million in canceled checks.” The
Boston Herald Traveler
was much nastier. Its front-page story read, “A pair of bandits, who must have spent their early years transmuting gold into lead, bungled yesterday as they tried to pull off what could have been history's largest armored car theft. … The only trouble was that the checks were cancelled and scarcely worth the price of an admission to
The Lavender Hill Mob
. … The bandits may be feeling frustrated right now, but so do the bookkeepers, who will probably have to put in a good deal of overtime in the next few days straightening out the records. One last note … The
Herald
can't confirm it, but there are those who claim that the bandits'
convertible was an Edsel, a discontinued model, easily traceable. With their luck, it figures.”

“If I'd had Cushman in front of me then, I probably would've whacked him,” Phil recalled. “I knew Angelo was out looking for him, even though I asked him to let it go.” Tony and Angelo took all the bank bags to the incinerator near City Hospital and burned them. “We went from the penthouse to the outhouse in a matter of minutes,” Phil said. “It sure was humiliating. I'm just glad nobody knew who pulled the job.”