The three of us—me, Jackie, and John L.—are on the road doing production work in an upscale, ritzy neighborhood that’s loaded with big homes and fancy mansions. But oddly enough, on that particular night we’re doing a high-rise apartment building. It’s the only one in the area. Most of the guys didn’t really like doing high-rise work because there’s too many people around and, more importantly, the difficulty in getting out of the place if the cops catch wind of ya. But we had gotten a tip on a doctor who lived there.
Anyway, we’re doing this apartment and it’s near the bank of elevators, which is good so we can hear if anybody is coming. We get in with no trouble and start going through the place, grabbing anything that looks of value—cash, jewelry, silverware—and then Jack whispers, “Hold it! I hear the elevator.” Well, we all figure this is a 10 or 12 story building; what are the chances of somebody stopping at this floor? Don’t you know, the damn elevator stops at the floor we’re working on and we hear a couple people get off—a man and a woman. So we’re looking at each other, trying to reassure ourselves there’s no way in hell they’re coming to the apartment we just cleaned out. We’re listening to them walk down the hall, the side of the building we’re on, unfortunately, and hope they keep going right past the apartment door me, Jack, and John L. are hiding behind. Ain’t it our goddamn luck, but they stop right at our door. It’s their goddamn apartment we just emptied.
We hear the guy going for his keys and putting it in the lock, but then he stops. He knows something is wrong, something doesn’t feel right. Well, we ain’t even breathing at this point and look at each other like, can it get any worse? We’re wondering, is this guy armed? Are we gonna have to hurt somebody here?
He suddenly pushes the door open, but all we see is his hand and arm, and believe me the guy musta been a big son-of-a-bitch because his hand was huge. Right away I’m thinking somebody is gonna get hurt. Jackie and I are little guys, but John L. is pretty good size and can handle himself in a scuffle. No sooner is the thought outta my mind when the guy steps around the door, and John L. immediately gives him a forearm shiver to the throat that clears the guy right off his feet, pins him against the wall, and then drops him to the floor. His wife or girlfriend starts screaming her head off, and we grab our things and tear ass outta there. We got away, but the people in the building probably got a pretty good scare. I never did like doing apartment buildings. I did them, but they weren’t one of my favorites.—GEORGE “JUNIOR” SMITH
THEY WERE ALMOST ALL there in Kensington that morning: the smooth scam artists, the ballsy burglars, the crafty “safe” men, the hardened gunmen who specialized in “walk-ins.” They were there to say a last goodbye to one of their own. The normally unruly, rough-hewn characters who survived on a fluid combination of wits, nerve, and societal indifference had gathered at Gniewek’s Funeral Parlor for a melancholy farewell to a neighborhood guy, a beloved member of their criminal fraternity who had finally succumbed to a self-destructive lifestyle and a long battle with lung cancer.
Danny Gundaker, a consummate burglar, loyal partner, and trusted friend, was making one last journey. The men who had shared his zest for life (and the attraction of an unoccupied home) assembled in small groups in the building’s foyer and on the pavement outside, recalling raucous misadventures, wild parties, and outrageous incidents. They recounted the time Danny was shot in the face and shoulder by police in Florida during a burglary gone bad, the time Danny broke both his ankles jumping off a roof while trying to escape from a county jail in Maryland, and the time he ran into a backyard clothesline while fleeing the police and tore the scalp off his head. Despite his recurring misfortunes, Danny was “a class act,” a “standup guy,” fearless, with “balls like ingots.” They were all going to miss him.
After each of the nearly three dozen mourners had paid his last respects to Gundaker, and just before they closed the casket, two formidable-looking men came forward and placed on top of the smartly dressed corpse a few objects: a three-foot-long brute, a pair of burglar’s gloves, and a set of home alarm turnoff keys. A few of the mourners may have missed the significance of the gesture, but most of those gathered readily understood, smiled, and nodded. They didn’t know for sure where their friend Danny Gundaker was headed, but they seemed to agree that wherever his journey ended, he’d probably feel more comfortable with the tools of his trade at his side. As they all knew, Danny was all business as a burglar. And a true professional never wanted to be caught unprepared when an attractive opportunity presented itself.
One night we’re doin’ a bowling alley up on Roosevelt Boulevard and Adams Avenue. We’re inside and decide we’re gonna have to burn the safe, which takes a little time and casts off a good bit of light. We’re all tense, tryin’ to be as quiet and inconspicuous as possible, when all of a sudden there’s a big bang like a goddamn explosion. It scares the shit out of everybody, and we all duck for cover and try to figure out what the hell happened. When we don’t hear any sirens or see any cops come barging in, we look out into the middle of the building where all the dust and debris seem to be, and there’s a guy lying on one of the bowling lanes moaning his head off. Once we realize it ain’t the cops, we go over to see what the hell all the commotion is about. We get on the eighth or ninth lane, put our flashlights on the guy moaning in pain and the big hole that’s now in the ceiling of the joint. It turns out the guy flat on his back is Steve Zagnojney. He’s another burglar from the neighborhood, and we always called him Steve the Mechanic. He’s screaming that he broke his leg when he fell through the roof and needs a doctor bad. What could we do? We had to forget about burning the safe and took Steve to Frankford Hospital. But that’s what it was like in those days. While we’re tryin’ to open a safe and make a few bucks, another Kensington crew decides to burglarize the same damn bowling alley. But one of their guys, Steve the Mechanic, who goes about six-two, 250 pounds, falls through the roof while we’re burnin’ the safe. None of us made any money that night.—JOHNNY BOGGS
THEY WEREN’T OFF the Delta jetliner more than a few seconds before Junior stopped at a concourse newsstand and purchased a copy of the Houston Chronicle.nd a map of the city. He was never one to waste time when working: the newspaper and map took priority over both a necessary pit stop in the men’s room after the long flight and a cold beer at an airport restaurant. Junior and his three friends were in Texas on business; some things, especially a refreshing libation, could wait.
They traveled light. There was little baggage: Tommy’s large suitcase and a small overnight bag for each crew member. By the time they had hailed a taxi and were on their way to a nearby motel, Junior had pretty much decided on the location of the evening’s activities by scanning the Chronicle.s Real Estate section for quarter-and half-million-dollar properties. All that remained was to cross-check that location against the addresses of area synagogues and ritzy country clubs in the motel’s telephone directory—a match and they’d be on their way.
While Junior and Bruce did their research in a Ramada Inn motel room, Tommy and Mickie went about their business; after years of working together, they had the operation down like clockwork. They first took a taxi to the nearest Avis car rental agency and signed for two mid-sized automobiles. Tommy drove one car back to the motel and immediately began installing the police scanners, walkie-talkies, and batteries he had brought with him from Philadelphia. Mickie took the second car to a nearby mall in search of a Sears or a large automotive shop. When she returned with three pairs of gloves and a collection of chisels, pliers, crowbars, flashlights, and short-handled sledgehammers, Tommy installed the same electronic gadgetry in the second car.
Their assignments complete, the four Philadelphians decided to take a ride. It was their first trip to South Texas and they were interested in seeing some of the local sights, particularly an area called the Village which the Chronicle.eclared one of the most beautiful and affluent sections of Harris County. After a brief ride along Houston’s North Freeway, they turned off the highway, noticed the swift decline in office buildings, strip malls, and vehicular traffic, and began navigating through open country roads bordering expansive brown fields. Soon they were driving through quiet, attractive neighborhoods with stately homes surrounded by lush, green grass, well-tended shrubs, and the occasional gazebo and faux wishing well. Impressive, opulent mansions became more frequent, and Cadillacs, Lincolns, and sporty foreign models like Jaguars filled the driveways. The place reeked of money. Though no one mentioned it, each crew member focused on those homes displaying two items the average tourist would no doubt have overlooked: a small mezuzah and an equally small key-controlled alarm mechanism near the front door.
“I think we did okay,” said Bruce to no one in particular. “This place looks like my kind of town.”
“Yeah,” replied Junior, “I think we’re gonna be fat tonight.”
After driving slowly through the area for another 10 minutes, they returned to their motel. Second story work wasn’t kid’s play. It was damn serious stuff, demanding more than a modicum of physical ability and nerves of steel. Though burglary was a year-round activity, those frigid January nights when fingers and toes went numb and noses and eyes ran uncontrollably were sheer hell for the Philly-based crew. At those painful times, Florida and the other Sunbelt states appeared decidedly more inviting. That was why they were now along the Texas Gulf Coast and not trudging through the snow in Newport, Greenwich, or Scarsdale. If things went well later that night, Houston might get placed right up there with their favorite winter haunts such as Miami, Tampa, and Saint Pete.
Back at the Ramada Inn, they needed to kill a couple of hours while waiting for nightfall. Mickie luxuriated in a warm bubble bath while Junior and Tommy played a few hands of poker. Bruce contented himself with a crime novel he had swiped from an airport newsstand. Finally, anxious to go to work, Junior threw the playing cards into the trash and told the crew that it was time to get dressed. The three men were attired in their customary business suits; Mickie wore a gray pantsuit with contrasting white blouse and modest bow. As always, a black wig completed her costume. With Junior and Mickie in one car and Tommy and Bruce in the other, they drove to the closest restaurant and had a light meal. Other than Mickie’s comment on the number of people wearing Stetson hats and cowboy boots and Junior’s reminder to Tommy to go easy on the beer, conversation was practically nonexistent.
Back in the cars, they promptly headed for the wealthy Houston suburb known as the Village. Once in the target area, they slowly traveled along Pine Forrest, Hunters Trail, and Country Squire Roads, all the while noting apparently unoccupied homes, particularly those adorned with a tiny red light by the front door. Junior finally decided that a spot along Coach Road would be the best place to park the second (or “drop”) vehicle. With the whole crew in the main car, they were now ready to strike.
In a matter of minutes and with little debate, the foursome decided on a handsome three story colonial at 5927 Pine Forrest Road as the evening’s first piece of work. Junior was let out of the car, walked up the driveway, and rang the doorbell. After a few seconds he could be heard knocking on the front door, and a few seconds after that he was seen moving to the rear of the structure. When he returned to the front door, he gave his partners the thumbs-up sign, and Bruce and Tommy—the latter with walkie-talkie in hand—promptly joined him. Mickie took the wheel, turned on the communications equipment, and slowly drove off. The three men would be in the house less than 15 minutes, but it was a highly profitable 15 minutes.
Among the items taken were 10 albums containing Graf Zeppelin and other early airmail stamps, as well as early plate locks; an enormous coin collection including full mint sets for a half-dozen different years and 10,000 pennies, many dating back to the Civil War; silver goblets; two diamond tie tacks; a Rolex watch; and several pieces of expensive jewelry. The owner, more than a little stunned that the thieves had gotten around his sophisticated alarm system, would later inform the FBI that the items taken were worth well over $50,000.
After Mickie was notified that the job was complete, the goods were transferred to the drop car, and Mickie drove the trio to back to Pine Forrest Road, where they entered and cleaned out another home. They walked out with 12 demitasse and 12 silver bouillon spoons, a four-piece sterling silver Royal Danish serving set, 10 pairs of gold earrings, a platinum necklace topped off with a two-and-one-half carat diamond, a gold watch with six diamonds, two mink stoles, and more.
After a quick trip back to the drop car, Mickie then took the men to 314 Hunters Trail, where they repeated the drill despite the state-of-the-art Westinghouse alarm system with a backup directly wired to the Village Police Department.
The next stops were 1125 North Country Squire Road (cash, jewelry, silverware, and several mink coats) and 815 Creek Woodway (a heart-shaped platinum diamond band encrusted with five diamonds, a gold watch with 16 rubies and nine diamonds, a gold ring with two center diamonds, a pair of gold earrings inlaid with a diamond and pearl, and, for good measure, a tourmaline mink jacket and matching hat).
The trunks of both cars were now filled with every imaginable expensive item, from Hummel figurines and silver candelabra to fine jewelry and mink coats, not to mention the two hundred pounds of coins that stressed the automobile’s suspension system. In a little less than two hours, Junior Kripplebauer, his wife, Mickie, Tommy Seher, and Bruce Agnew had broken into four homes, cleaned out at least a quarter-million dollars worth of goods, and administered a long-lasting trauma to the community’s psyche. For this K&A crew, it was just an average night’s work.
Their work, of course, was production work, a home burglary system that had been perfected over two decades and was still pulverizing the nation well into the late 1970s.
LOCAL AND STATE POLICE officials were pinballing between embarrassment, frustration, and annoyance. It was the summer of 1959, and communities in central Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region were being ravaged by an astute and crafty group of burglars who appeared out of thin air, entered homes and businesses at will, avoided detection, and left law enforcement authorities slack-jawed and mystified. Out of nowhere, it seemed, residents of Lycoming, Clinton, Berks, Union, and Columbia Counties were being besieged as if a plague of locusts had descended on them. From the homes of prominent doctors to commercial cattle dairies, citizens all over the region were caught in the undertow.
Weeks went by before the first lead surfaced: a description of a suspicious automobile and unfamiliar, well-dressed men driving through the countryside. Finally, in early July, Pennsylvania state police made an arrest in a Williamsport motel room and confiscated several thousand dollars in cash, a rare coin collection, an assortment of expensive jewelry, and “a complete set of burglary tools.” But their catch was less impressive—at least numerically—than the army they had expected to find. Instead, it turned out to be a particularly industrious “road company of four Philadelphia criminals.”
It was no ordinary road company, however. It was a crew of supremely gifted and accomplished burglars: Hughie Breslin, 28; Jimmy Laverty, 27; Harry Stocker, 36; and Effie Burkowski, 33. Though the distraught victims would probably have taken little solace from the fact even if they had known it at the time, their central Pennsylvania communities had been pillaged by the best. The four Kensington burglars were the equivalent of Ruth and Gehrig’s ’27 Yankees in the world of burglardom.
Pennsylvania’s heartland was by no means the only recipient of the K&A Gang’s affection. As Jimmy Laverty says, “From the earliest days, we did jobs outside the city.” “Let’s go find some virgin territory” seems to have been a constant refrain of the gang members.
Initially, says John McManus, the novice Irish burglars followed the Jewish businessmen of Kensington Avenue back to their homes in Northeast Philadelphia and suburban Cheltenham. “We’d see a guy get in his Cadillac after closing his shop and follow him back to his house. We didn’t have nothing against the Jews, but the Jews had a lot and we didn’t have anything.” The abundance of “gold, diamonds, and cash” discovered in Jewish residential targets would be the centerpiece of the gang’s livelihood for many years to come.
It wasn’t long before affluent communities such as Chestnut Hill in Northwest Philadelphia, Elkins Park and Rydal north of the city, and Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Radnor along the well-to-do Main Line were also receiving the burglars’ attention. “I’ve probably been in every house in Chestnut Hill,” says Jackie Johnson matter-of-factly. Others had their own favorite hunting grounds. “La La (McQuoid) loved the Main Line,” recalls Johnson. “He didn’t like to travel too far.”
Few others, however, had such reservations. “We’d go out on the road for a few days or a week,” says Ray Mann, “and do pretty damn well.” In fact, year after year more and more road companies were coming out of Kensington and traveling the new superhighways and the bucolic back roads of America, searching for “virgin territory” in some remote, pastoral corner of New England or, just a stone’s throw away, across the Delaware River. “New Jersey was made for burglars,” says Jimmy Laverty. “You could drive down the street of most neighborhoods and almost tell how the job would go and if it was worth it by how the houses were lit and the way the shrubs were cut.” Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, Moorestown, Princeton, and other Jersey bedroom communities soon became regular haunts of K&A gang members. Some crews ventured up into Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and beyond, visiting Bethlehem, Allentown, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, and Scranton, while others headed west along the Pennsy Turnpike to Lancaster, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh.
During the 1950s, as Sears, Burke, Breslin, Laverty, McQuoid, Stocker, and company became more proficient in their chosen profession, their excursions stretched to distant locales as far west as Ohio and up and down the East Coast, from plush Connecticut suburbs to Virginia tidewater estates. But wealthy towns in North Jersey and Long Island became “favorite areas” for most Kensington crews. Jimmy Laverty, for example, was especially fond of the Oranges, Teaneck, and Tenafly in New Jersey and ritzy Long Island towns like Sag Harbor, Oyster Bay, and East Hampton.
“We were doing good in Pennsylvania,” says Laverty, “but New York was a whole other story. There was little jewelry in Hazleton, Scranton, and Wilkes-Barre. It was mostly cash. How many opera houses do you have up there? Any woman up there with a nice ring probably never takes it off. In New York there’d be $15,000 in cash lying around a house, plus a safe with more cash and all sorts of fine jewelry, expensive artwork, and silverware. The New York bedroom communities were a wealth of stuff. We hit every town of consequence up there.” Laverty was not alone in his fondness for the area. “We really hit Long Island,” says Fancy Frank Mawhinney. “We’d look for a house that looked unoccupied and that was it.” Westchester, Scarsdale, the Hamptons, and many other affluent New York towns soon became the Promised Land for a growing number of K&A road companies.
For Donnie Johnstone, a Kensington boy who learned the business in the fifties from the likes of Sears, Effie, and Jimmy Laverty, there was a comforting regimentation about the business. “We’d leave on a Wednesday and come back on Sunday,” says Johnstone. “First we’d find a motel to stash our stuff and then go out and do two or three houses in a row and then move to another neighborhood and do two or three more. You’d just keep driving until you found a nice neighborhood. That was production work. Usually we’d eat dinner at three in the afternoon and then start doing production work at 4:30. We were usually done and back at a bar by nine.”
K&A burglary teams quickly learned to home in on elite neighborhoods, drawn by “well-known private country clubs that were usually surrounded by large, wealthy homes,” Johnstone recalls. Street smarts, experience, and a ruthless entrepreneurial spirit contributed to a sound and fruitful geographic targeting system. “We’d go into a town,” says Jimmy Laverty, “and look up the private country clubs in a phone book. Most of the homes around these fancy clubs belonged to doctors. And the doctors were predominantly Jewish. All of them had cash.”
“Jewish neighborhoods were good,” says Jimmy Dolan. “Jewish women had to have jewelry. They loved to show their jewelry off.” For many years, according to Dolan, “jewelry was the meat of the game.”
Whether the goal was cash, jewelry, coin collections, or artwork, Jewish residences were considered a bonus. An impressive home with a manicured lawn and well-tended shrubs situated in an upscale neighborhood was always inviting. Add a mezuzah on the doorframe, and the Philly crews found it irresistible. “My eyes would light up and my heart would beat a little faster when I went up to the house to see if anybody was home and saw that mezuzah on the door,” says Johnny Boggs. He’d curl his index finger in the crude shape of a hooked nose to signal to his partners in the car that the house belonged to Jews.
To a man, however, the gang members insist that their voracious appetite for burglarizing Jewish households had less to do with anti-Semitism than with practical financial concerns. They viewed themselves as businessmen looking for the best return on their labor. “That’s where the money was,” as con man and prison escape artist Willie Sutton is said to have replied when asked why he robbed banks. For the K&A burglars, Jewish homes contained the cash, jewelry, furs, expensive silverware, and other items of value they were looking for. Years of persistent, dedicated effort across large swathes of the nation had confirmed who had the goods.
“The worst thing we could see when we entered a home,” says 80-year-old Billy McClurg, “was a crucifix on the wall. We immediately knew there wouldn’t be anything of value to steal. The worst thing you could smell upon entering a house was wine. Italians may have money, but many of them don’t keep it in the house.” Known as “Billy Blew” to all his confederates, McClurg says the crews he worked with targeted “Jewish neighborhoods” almost exclusively. “We’d drive up to a town like Scranton or someplace in upstate New York and look in the phone book for Jewish synagogues. Those were the neighborhoods we wanted. That’s where the money was.”
In fact, some gang members sound like demographers or sociologists. German families,” according to Jimmy Laverty, “had beautiful homes and substantial bank statements, but they weren’t flashy and had little jewelry. They never left money lying around the house. You’ll never get 10 cents out of a German’s house.” The homes of “gentiles” in general were less attractive to the burglary community. “She’s got a diamond she’s never taken off and the guy gets paid by check,” says Laverty bluntly. Lawyers, surprisingly, were equally unappealing. They had all their “money invested. It was never in their house.” For Laverty, as well as most of his accomplices, the homes of Jews and some Italians were the most rewarding. “They’re flashy people and love jewelry. They had the money.”
“Most gentiles didn’t have too much,” adds Donnie Johnstone. “But when you saw a mezuzah on a door, it meant a half a score at least and possibly a home run.” Most of the old Kensington burglars flatly admit that Jewish homes were the core of their business, and some claim mezuzah-adorned properties represented 90 percent of their trade. “Hell, we’d cross over into Jersey,” says Donnie Abrams, “get a phone book and look up the fucking Jews. And that’s where we went. We’d look up all the Jews, see a mezuzah on the door, and hit ’em.”
WITH THE EXCEPTION of carpenters and mechanics accustomed to working on heavy machinery, most people encountering a #9714 screwdriver might mistake it for a simple household implement bulked up by steroids. In actuality, they have come upon one of the most valuable pieces—arguably the centerpiece—of a Kensington burglar’s weighty arsenal. The sturdy steel screwdriver, three feet long, three-quarters of an inch thick, was as indispensable to the Kensington burglar as a typewriter was to an author or a calculator to an accountant. Nicknamed “the brute,” the hefty crowbar-like hunk of metal was an all-purpose device that could, for starters, shatter a well-built door lock (assuming that the burglars didn’t already have the keys to it).
“It was the basic tool of a burglar,” says Jimmy Dolan, “and one store owner got rich selling them.” “We used to buy five or 10 at a time,” recalls Jackie Johnson. “That was a key piece of the equipment,” adds Donnie Johnstone. “Not many doors could stand up to it.”
Not every hardware store bothered to carry the ominous-looking screwdriver, which could easily be mistaken for a relic of the Crusades. However, for one automotive parts shop on Kensington Avenue in the 1950s and 1960s, the #9714 screwdriver was one of the most popular items.
“We had a run on them back then,” recalls Jay Tipton, who began working at Morris Auto in 1953. “Our regular mechanics who came into the store never bought them, just members of the K&A Gang.” At the time Tipton didn’t know the “articulate, clean-cut” customers who appeared fixated on the unusual tool, but one day in the early sixties a couple of city detectives came into the store to ask about it. “The cops said that burglars were leaving the tools at the scene of the crime and asked if we could identify any of them,” says Tipton. “They had mug shots of people and I did recognize some of them.” Once Eugene Steinberg, the store’s owner, realized how the tools were being used, he told his staff “not to purchase the 9714 any more. It was a good seller,” says Tipton, “but the boss said not to order it any more.”
In fact, a professional burglar’s bag contained an array of nifty tools and gadgets: gloves, flashlight, short-handled sledgehammer, crowbar, punch, L-shaped pliers, rattail files, sandpaper, and an assortment of chisels and keys. Later, walkie-talkies, police scanners, power drills, and acetylene torches would come into play. But for the 30-odd years the K&A Gang functioned, the brute was a particular favorite. In most cases, it was the first piece of equipment a burglar used on a piece of real estate. Generally, once a road crew had determined that a house was unoccupied, one of the team would go up to the front door and firmly wedge the brute between the lock and the doorframe. Within seconds of leaning on it, he would hear cracking; soon he could see wood splitting as the lock was torn away from both the door and the frame. As Donnie Johnston says, very few “doors could stand up to it.”
Once inside, the men would assume their positions. As adrenaline coursed through their veins and the anticipation built, the searchers went about their individual assignments. Given a choice, most crew members would have preferred the more glamorous (and usually more rewarding) job of searcher, especially the one who had the honor of hitting the master bedroom. The expectation of discovering a cash-stuffed wallet, an envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills, a jewelry box filled with diamond brooches, or a gem-laden necklace would send anyone’s heartbeat racing, let alone a professional thief’s. Each home, each bedroom, each chest of drawers, each jewelry box was a new heart-thumping adventure. As Jimmy Dolan says, “The excitement of it all was tremendous. It was incredible. You never knew what to expect.”
For the K&A burglar, the master bedroom was the equivalent of King Tut’s tomb or a buccaneer’s buried treasure—all sorts of good things were hidden there. It was where they hoped to make a big score, to get rich. “Ninety percent of the time the money could be found in the master bedroom,” says Laverty. “People are creatures of habit. They love to be near their money—in the closet, the wall safe, in back of a drawer, under the mattress. But almost always in the bedroom.”
Once on the verge of making the big score, like fortune seekers caught up in the nineteenth-century California Gold Rush, the Irish burglars displayed their individuality, their own personal treasure-hunting styles. Just as some 49ers tunneled deep into the mountains for gold while others sat by a stream and methodically panned for it, some K&A men were heavy-handed and destroyed the homes they rummaged through while others had a more delicate touch and tried to show some consideration for their victim’s property. Jimmy Laverty, for instance, prided himself on being a thoughtful, “meticulous person.” Ninety percent of his victims, he claims, “never even knew their place had been robbed. Most didn’t realize until they looked for a ring or favorite brooch a few days later.”
Other burglars, he says, were just interested in finding the spoils and getting out with the goods. “Effie pulled drawers open and dumped them on the bed. Everything got thrown, tossed, and trashed when Effie worked. It looked like a cyclone had hit the house. When I went through a place,” says Laverty proudly, “there was never a mess.” Colder-hearted practitioners would argue that the goal was to get as much as you could as quickly as you could. Neither the homeowners nor the cops were giving out merit points for neatness.
All the Kensington burglary crews were conscientious about weapons, however. No one was to carry a gun while doing production work, and a weapon discovered during the course of a job was to be discarded, preferably where no one could find it. “First thing,” says Jimmy Laverty, “I would open the night table drawer, and if I found a gun there, I’d take it and throw it in the toilet tank. You didn’t want the owner coming home and getting to the gun while you’re in there. No one wanted trouble or a shootout.”
This became a cardinal rule of the gang. “We never carried a gun,” says Donnie Abrams. “If you found one while on a job, then you’d immediately hide it if you had any brains. You’d hide it behind a couch, a toilet, anywhere.” Even a decade later the rule was still in effect. Jimmy Dolan, an Effie Burke recruit in the sixties, says, “It was automatic; you never carried a gun. You do and it opens all kinds of fucking doors; maybe you’ll use it, maybe you’ll just get more fucking time for carrying it. There was no good reason to be carrying a gun. We wanted to make money and enjoy ourselves. We never wanted to hurt anybody. We wanted to spend money, but not get anybody hurt.”
An additional reason for the gang’s disdain for weapons came from their growing understanding of the nuances of the criminal justice system. Getting caught with a gun meant stiffer penalties. As Jackie Johnson says, “As long as no one got hurt, you were okay and a lawyer could do something for you.” “You didn’t carry a gun because you were fairly sure that no one was home,” brags another burglar. “You could do a hundred burglaries and you’d only get 11 and a half to 23 months back then.”
The gang’s “no weapon rule” became well known in the law enforcement community and was much appreciated by street cops. Though Philly and suburban police were being run ragged by Kensington’s Irish Mob in the 1950s, they learned that its modus operandi.xcluded any form of violence. “The guys never had a gun,” says John Del Carlino, a city detective who pursued the K&A Gang for over two decades. “They didn’t want to hurt anybody.” In fact, it wasn’t unusual for the first police officers who arrived at a burglarized home to relax and holster their revolvers when they realized it was a K&A job. They knew they were dealing with the cream of the city’s crop of burglars: the place was probably cleaned out, but they could be reasonably sure that no one had been hurt in the process.
Another tenet of production work that served the gang well over the years was dressing for success. Everyone, whether he was the driver who never left the car or the lookout man stuck by a window, had to be appropriately attired, preferably in a business suit. It was important to blend into the neighborhoods they were pillaging. Normal street clothes or the factory work outfits that were so common in Kensington would have been spectacularly conspicuous in upscale Merion, Scarsdale, and Sag Harbor.
Burglary garb as projected on cinema screens around the country was similarly disdained. Carole Heidinger recalls the time Effie Burke was about to take a crew on the road and a new man he was breaking in “came dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and black slacks like a Hollywood movie.” Effie took one look at the guy and “rolled on the floor laughing.” Real burglars—K&A burglars—were professionals, and looked like professionals.
“We were always well dressed,” says Jimmy Dolan. “We looked fuckin’ right. We wore business suits and even carried briefcases.” “You never wore dungarees in case you got stopped,” says Georgie Smith. “We wore top-notch suits. I bought expensive Botany 500 suits.” “We always worked in suits and ties,” adds Donnie Johnstone. “We had to look well dressed and respectable.”
The ploy usually worked. A nattily attired businessman with briefcase in hand was unlikely to draw any attention walking up to a fashionable home. Why would a casual observer suspect that the well-dressed gentleman at the front door—possibly an insurance salesman or business associate—was actually the point man for an experienced, aggressive criminal organization that had just ripped off the more valuable possessions from a half-dozen families in the neighborhood?
Despite the crews’ fealty to the tenets of production work, however, they were studiously opposed to any more rules or regulations than necessary and rejected the notion of modeling themselves after the other ethnic crime faction in town—the Mafia. In fact, the ever-growing number of Kensington burglary teams were nothing more than a loose confederation of mostly Irish, blue collar, high school dropouts who looked at production work as a career alternative to life as a roofer, factory worker, or cop. There was never any interest in building a rigid, hierarchical outfit as the Italians had done. Kensington Irishmen hated bosses. Installing an all-powerful Angelo Bruno–type figurehead as the capo di tutti capi.“boss of all bosses”) of the K&A Gang would have been nearly impossible. There were crew chiefs like Willie Sears, Effie Burke, John Berkery, and Junior Kripplebauer who knew the score and had lots of experience, but an elaborate chain of command with a single overlord was against their nature. They weren’t interested in constructing a strict, paramilitary-type operation where orders were given and followed to the letter. K&A men were more free-flowing and democratic. Each crew member had a vote and could veto a job if he chose to. Freedom and organizational fluidity appealed to their carefree, relaxed work ethic. If the Mafia was the model for the traditional organized crime operation, Kensington second story men were quite content to represent disorganized crime.
“WE’D WATCH THOSE MOVIES where a guy wearing a stethoscope was trying to open a safe and we’d just laugh. We knew it was ridiculous. Those of us doin’ the real thing on a daily basis knew it was bullshit. It was Hollywood’s version of reality. Somebody out there started that crap about burglars using stethoscopes and they never changed it. We just laughed.”
Donnie Johnstone’s scorn for the Hollywood safecracker gingerly turning the combination lock as he listens for mechanical levers and shifting pins is fairly representative. If a K&A burglar ever handled a physician’s stethoscope, it was only because he had just rifled a doctor’s home and lifted the diagnostic device as a toy for one of his children. The thieves were searching for cash, coin collections, jewelry, and furs. The discovery of a safe in a commercial or residential property only whetted their appetites. The goal was to get into it as quickly as possible. Stethoscopes were of no value to high school dropouts attacking a ponderous, 5,000-pound safe. Their game plan rested more on muscle and persistence than on faint sounds detected with supersensitive medical instruments. For real, everyday safecrackers, a sturdy chisel, a star punch, a #9714 screwdriver, and a short-handled sledgehammer went a whole lot further than any flimsy listening device.
According to Jimmy Dolan, Hollywood’s stealthy, ear-to-the-safe burglar was dated at best and total baloney at worst. It was the “early safes from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s that you could hear a tumbler drop,” says Dolan, “but the precision safes made in later years made it near impossible to hear or detect anything. You would need space-age equipment.” Dolan learned the business from the best street burglars in the country, and if they had anything in hand, it was a pair of work gloves and a brute. They’d also have a severe backache from hauling the heavy steel and concrete box to a friendly garage or deserted field where they could really get at it.
Traditionally, burglars with a specialty in cracking safes were called “yeggs” or “yeggmen,” a nineteenth-century term of disputed origin that is all but forgotten today. Some etymologists attribute the word to the name of the first burglar to use nitroglycerin on a safe. Others claim it is of gypsy, Chinese, or German derivation, referring to “chief thief,” “beggar,” or “hunter,” respectively. Many yeggmen, posing as either hobos or sophisticated dandies, rode the rails during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and specialized in robbing banks in remote but wealthy western towns. Safecracking methodologies varied. Some yeggs used cumbersome but relatively silent jackscrews to crack open a safe, while others gravitated to the dicier proposition of blowing a safe with dynamite or nitro. Though the latter would usually get the job done, the volatile mixture of table salt, sodium bicarbonate, distilled water, glycerin, and nitric and sulfuric acids could ignite unexpectedly and blow off one’s hands and face.
According to experienced members of the K&A Gang, there were only so many practical ways to open a safe, and none of them incorporated the use of delicate medical equipment or unstable chemical compounds. A construction worker’s tool kit or a demolition man’s arsenal of gadgets was considerably closer to what Kensington “safe men” actually used. In reality, there were five tried and proven ways to crack a safe. Each had its proponents, but most burglars generally followed the same familiar drill: start with the quickest and easiest method and move through the list until they got what they wanted.
“Back-dialing would be the first thing you’d try when you came upon a safe in a home or business you were burglarizing,” says Junior Kripplebauer, one of the better K&A box men. It “only worked 10 percent of the time,” but it was well worth the modest amount of time and effort invested. Very simply, a burglar would slowly turn the dial on the safe’s locking mechanism in a counterclockwise direction as he gently applied pressure to the door handle. If the last person to use the safe had closed the safe door but hadn’t turned the dial past zero, there was a chance, albeit a small one, that the locking mechanism had not been triggered and the safe remained unlocked. For back-dialing to be successful, one thing was required that a burglar didn’t carry in his bag of tricks: the cooperation of the last person who used the safe.
Such carelessness—and it occurred in both private residences and large business establishments—was the best gift a crew could receive. “People left the dial on the last number of their combination and it would just open up when you pulled the handle,” says a grateful Donnie Johnstone. He and Kripplebauer admit that when that happened—which was “very seldom”—the burglars felt that the last person who had used the safe deserved a cut of the proceeds.
Punch-dialing required substantially more time and energy, but was still one of the easier ways to crack a locked safe. The burglars would use a star or center punch and a short-handled sledgehammer to drive the safe’s dialing mechanism back into the box. If done properly, according to Kripplebauer, “the tumblers would be knocked loose and everything would fall to the bottom of the safe, allowing the bars that lock the door to move. Once the bars were free to move, you could open the door.” If the safe was well made or the punch-dialing was done haphazardly, it was possible to botch the job. But for a good burglar who knew his stuff, says Kripplebauer, punch-dialing would do the trick at least 50 percent of the time.
If it was determined that the safe’s locking mechanism was too sound or punching it proved unsuccessful, the job then called for an exhausting, all-out wrestling match, better known in the trade as “ripping,” “peeling,” and “tearing” the safe apart. Peeling a safe was a physically demanding, time-consuming process—one that was more safely done in the friendly confines of a deserted warehouse or in a desolate country field (cemeteries, junkyards, and abandoned train tracks were also favorite workplaces). Taking an hour or more to rip a safe apart in its accustomed home was a risky proposition, although it was known to happen. Moving several hundred pounds or several tons of steel and concrete was no easy assignment. Many a victim’s home, and many a burglar’s back and automobile, were wrecked in the process.
The first step in tearing a safe open was “putting a crimp or dent in a corner of the box between the door and the frame. A chisel would then be hammered into the indentation,” and, as Donnie Johnstone says, “you’d keep banging until you got a bite.” Once a good bite was established, the burglars would continue along the seam, vigorously pounding chisels into the breach with “hammers and hatchets” and widening the gaps. Soon, according to Kripplebauer, “you would hear a pop, pop, pop sound; the popping sounds of rivets breaking and cracking.” Burglars could now dig their brutes into the fissure, “lay back on the bar and listen to what sounded like balloons popping.”
By “banging chisels in every six inches, busting the rivets, and bending the steel cover back,” according to the burglars, you’d actually be “peeling” the safe apart. Once that was accomplished, a sledgehammer and brute would be used to smash and break apart the thick concrete insulation that lines all large safes. After 45 minutes to an hour of frenetic digging, chipping, and banging, everyone involved was covered in sweat, grime, white flecks of “firebrick” (a plaster cast used to insulate the safe’s contents against fire), chunks of concrete, and minute slivers of steel, but the job had been completed. The box was open and the contents theirs.
Though just about all Kensington burglars employed in production work were practitioners of back-dialing, punch-dialing, and peeling a safe, only the more elite teams contained crew members who specialized in the last two safe-cracking methods: drilling and burning. Drilling a safe entailed “high-speed battery-or electric-powered drills with a variety of expensive diamond or carbon tips.” The real secret, however, was not the equipment, but knowing where on a box to drill. An inexperienced, unsophisticated novice could exhaust himself turning a metal box into a block of Swiss cheese and still not get near the safe’s contents.
In the absence of a helpful diagram, a hole would generally be drilled between the dial and the handle. When the hole was large and deep enough, the burglars would chop through the firebrick and concrete insulation to get to the pins and slide-bars connecting the lock, handle, and doorframe. Once again they’d use the drill to sever the exposed rods and bars and hope the door could now be opened without the combination. It didn’t hurt, however, to have a little inside assistance.
Once more, K&A crews showed their ingenuity. By going to friendly locksmiths or directly to the safe manufacturers such as Mosler and Diebolt (some even used the Library of Congress), they were able to acquire schematics that fit right over the face of the safe door. “The schematics clearly showed the soft spots and specified where to drill,” says Kripplebauer. “Drilling worked a good percentage of the time, but had its drawbacks. It was riskier because it’s noisier and takes longer.”
If the box appeared too tough or drilling proved unsuccessful, there was one last way to mount an assault: burning the safe open. Burning targeted the same strategic spots as drilling and was just as labor-intensive, if not more so. But it also carried additional security concerns, such as casting an incredible amount of light on the illegal exercise and the very real possibility of starting a fire. Not every burglar could handle an acetylene torch, oxygen tanks, or super-hot burning rods, and many, as Donnie Johnstone readily admits, “didn’t have the knowledge” for such a delicate and dangerous project. Others—whether through bluster or ignorance—tried to emulate their more experienced Kensington colleagues, with often disastrous results. “I burned a safe one time,” says Don “the Dude” Abrams, “and nearly all the money in it.”
To prevent such a painful outcome, some of the more savvy safe men first burned a hole in the top of the safe and then flooded the contents with water. Wet money could be put in a dryer or hung out to dry; burnt money was gone forever.
Though there are plenty of boxes that resisted break-ins, there were other times when the gods looked with favor on their inept, stumbling efforts. For example, Jimmy Laverty’s crew “once got a tip about a house in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania”—this “old couple that kept a safe filled with cash between their two beds.” The burglars drove upstate to the mountainous coal-mining region one night, successfully entered the home, and immediately tried to punch the safe open, but the box was too tough. They needed to peel the safe but didn’t have the luxury of doing it at the site. They’d have to lug it out of the house and back to Philadelphia—not the easiest of assignments in a small town where everyone knew everyone else and strangers were easily identifiable.
As Laverty tells the story, he and his associates drop the safe out the second story window, and it lands with a loud thud. Just as they are about to push it toward their car and make a quick getaway, a patrol car slowly pulls into the street, and the officer behind the wheel looks directly at them. The burglars freeze, visions of handcuffs, high-priced attorneys, and cold, damp jail cells shooting through their brains. Then, recalls Laverty, “the cop gives us a friendly wave. So we wave back. And what do you know? He drives away.”
The burglars’ luck does not end there. As they continue to “push the safe a couple more times end over end, the door flips open.” They quickly empty the safe’s contents on the sidewalk and hightail it back to their favorite Kensington night spots.
Junior Kripplebauer had a similar stroke of good fortune one night. While burglarizing a large restaurant on Route 1 in southeastern Pennsylvania, Junior and his partners realized they were not going to be able to open the safe. If they wanted the day’s receipts, they would have to take it with them. The safe was so heavy, however, that they lost control of it as it was being eased down a long flight of stairs. It fell noisily to the bottom of the steps, putting holes in several walls and a large dent in the wooden floor, but the door flew open during its jarring decent, and they were now able to pocket the cash and drive off into the night $8,500 richer.