Even after all these years, it’s still unclear just how far federal officials went to protect Deuce, or just what he gave them in return.
Documents requested under the federal Freedom of Information Act show “no disposition” in his file under the alias “Robert Dempsey” for the robbery at Degler’s coin shop. “No disposition” is bureaucratic-speak for “got away scot-free.”
One thing is clear, however, and it’s that Deuce’s crime spree didn’t stop after the federal marshals picked him up at the airport in Minneapolis.
Deuce’s now unclassified FBI file shows him escaping from a state prison in Canon City, Colorado, on October 28, 1985; twenty-one days later he was robbing a bank there. How many other robberies he may have committed that year, state and federal authorities are either unable or unwilling to say.
And, however unlikely, how many other robberies he committed after he was officially declared dead on October 3, 1992, also remains an open question, at least as far as his sister, Dorothy “Dot” Cameron, is concerned.
Whether it was Deuce, his ghost, or, perhaps more likely, a figment of her imagination, Dot swears on her mother’s soul that she saw Deuce at his mother’s funeral and briefly chatted with him, more than two years after prison officials in Minot, North Dakota, claimed he had died of a heart attack while in their custody.
Deuce, who was fanatic about keeping himself in shape, would have been fifty-one years old at the time.
Would a federal government or state agency ever fake a death to protect a valued snitch? After all, FBI handlers had looked the other way for years while Whitey Bulger ran a ruthless criminal organization. But faking a death would take it to another level.
But to the reporters who had interviewed him numerous times, and at great length, shortly after the Bonded Vault heist; who had stayed in contact with him through the years he was bouncing from prison to prison and, unbeknownst to them, still robbing banks and ripping off coin dealers; who, joined by other reporters four decades later, still felt compelled to answer so many still-unanswered questions about his last great heist; to them Dot’s claim that he was still alive continued to nag.
Crazy as it seemed, they figured it wouldn’t hurt to spend a bit more time just to be certain they had left no stone or, if need be, no grave unturned.
For one thing, Deuce’s kin appeared genuinely shocked when two reporters first showed up at their doorsteps in Lowell, Massachusetts—more than seventeen years after Deuce had officially “died”—to see if they could fill in details about Deuce’s early life.
“Dead? The bastard’s dead? No way,” his brother declared.
“Hey,” he shouted to his wife in their house. “These guys are saying Bobby’s dead.”
“No way!’ his wife shouted back from inside the house.
How was it possible that no one in the federal marshals service or, for that matter, anyone at the federal prison in Minot, North Dakota, had ever told any of his many brothers and sisters, or even his mother, that Deuce not only was dead but had been in the ground for seventeen years?
Was it just some bureaucratic screwup that no one ever bothered to tell them?
But a few weeks later, even when presented with a copy of Deuce’s death certificate, the family was still skeptical.
“When did they say Bobby died?” his sister Gert asked.
“October 3, 1992.”
“No, that’s impossible,” said Gert. “Dot saw him at Betty’s (his mother’s) funeral.”
“When was that?”
“1994.”