In 1997, I was a reporter on the crime beat at the Charlotte Observer, just a few years out of college, when a group of North Carolinians who didn’t think things through stole $17 million from an armored-car firm called Loomis, Fargo & Co. When they were arrested in 1998 and their jaw-dropping exploits revealed, I assumed I’d never see anything quite like it again. To this point in my career, that’s been true.
Not that it’s been slow for me. Since then I’ve covered many other fascinating stories, often of national and international significance—the presidential election recount of 2000, the aftermath of 9/11, and the papal funeral and subsequent conclave of 2005, among other things. Unlike those events, the heist, it is safe to say, will never be mentioned in a history textbook. Yet thanks to the foolishness associated with it, and the compelling stories of the people involved, it has a special spot in the memories of Carolinians who followed it in the late 1990s. That’s especially true for the journalists who covered it.
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As the lead reporter on the case for the largest newspaper in the state, I was able to develop sources that helped me tell the most complete story possible at the time. Facing stiff competition from local media, especially the Gaston Gazette, as well as national publications and news shows that occasionally came to town, I was the first to secure in-depth interviews with most of the defendants in prison or at their homes, as well as with the law-enforcement agents who explained their investigative process in detail. Most of the important information gleaned from individual interviews was corroborated through interviews with others, and on the infrequent occasions when accounts differed, I resolved matters through available court documents and further interviews. My work paid off with enough information to fill a four-part series in the Charlotte Observer that was later republished in the Washington Post. This book is the product of many, many more hours of work.
Public interest in the heist has never disappeared. The latest cable documentary appeared on MSNBC in 2014, and now, in 2015, Hollywood is in on it. It’s easy to understand the staying power; this is a captivating tale of greed, broken dreams, and things gone wondrously wrong, a tale that spurs readers, between guffaws and eye rolls, to place themselves in the characters’ shoes and consider how they might have acted differently. I hope you enjoy it.