St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 94

$28,500 Awaits Winner of 'Cash Crosswords Puzzle No. 37 See Page ZH rv I II Published Every Day-Weekdays and Sundays in the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Section Pages I-10H lobbed Brink's he Men Brick Quadrangle All Gone to Grass Committed Biggest Holdup on Reeord-ew Booh Tells How Crime Was Solved L3 sunaay, May toi Jack Rice who ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY was founded in 1818 and by the time I got there, several years later, it claimed to be "The oldest university west of the Mississippi." The university had another good claim but did not advertise it. The Arts College quadrangle was paved with SlM': h.

0 I 7 1 I Bnaml i LJ I if kU L-J I .4 Li bricks and was the hardest campus on either side of the Mississippi. Also the Yangtze and the Rhine. In late spring the quadrangle was the hottest campus in education, and in snow or rain it was the slipperiest. There was no way to wring college glamour from that brick yard, no matter how much F. Scott Fitzgerald a freshman had read.

Some tried. They claimed in the spring that there were grass shoots, blown in from Washington University, between the bricks. They were the who read T. S. Eliot.

There was no hiding beauty so deep they couldn't JACK RICE JOSEPH (SPECS) O'KEEFE Eight defendants in Brink's trial who rectived lift sentences. From left: MICHAE V. GEAG AN JAMES I. FAHERTY, THOMAS F. RICHARDSON, JOSEPH F.

McGINNIS, ANTHONY PINO, VINCENT COSTA, ADOLPH MAFFIE, HENRY BAKER. Of three others indicted, two had died and on pleaded guilty. find it. I did considerable loafing in the brick quadrangle because man had to get his money's worth from college. The tuition was $125 and no amount of learning justified such high prices so in May I went out for a quadrangle tan, a mixture of sunburn and brick dust from the oldest, hardest quadrangle west of the Mississippi.

There was always another loafer or two in the quadrangle, burning up his $125, skipping classes. We stood beside the iron railings until our shadows had cooled them, and then sat on the railings, just like the pictures In Life of the men in Harvard's fair and grassy Yard. We did not know what the Harvards were discussing. We did not know they were planning 25 years ahead, dividing up the government. BANDITS pOMMERffiAl, STREET ENTERED -wa SECOND jHTCR HF HMT FIOOR By Carl R.

Hahlwin Of the Pml-Dittpatrh Slnff. TIME WAS RUNNING OUT for the law enforcement agencies which had worked so hard to break the sensational Brink's robbery case. It was late fall of 1955 and the deadline for prosecution of the Boston robbers was Jan. 17, 1956, the date the six-year statute of limitations would close the books forever. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had a pretty good idea who the criminals were but the bureau lacked proof.

The robbers themselves were well aware of this lack and were confident they would continue to enjoy the fruits of their crime. The fact that two of their num Artht'f diagram IV I 'MOKty BAGS V-wwfc-. ''I "'1 6 Ly ftj i i -'J SO WHEN we could have been Young Democrats waiting for Jack, getting in line, we frittered away our time and talked about life as it went past in the quadrangle. I was in the quadrangle the other day, for the first time In years. St.

Louis University and I both are older now, and the university is wiser and greener, too. The quadrangle bricks are gone. The quadrangle Is all green grass and trees and benches. I have heard about the new tuition prices, from a man holding down a night job on the side to get his boy through barber college. I sat In the quadrangle to listen to the serious talk of today's youth, loo impressed by the high value and cost of education to fritter.

TWO HORN-RIM MEN on the next bench were discussing dietetics. "Some of that dog food isn't bad," said one horn-rim man. "Not too bad. It's like ham salad, spread over bread." A professor walked by and a covey of students rose up from the grass. They said, "Hi, professor." He said hello.

He tried to hurry his pace but he wasn't fast enough. Two members of the covey caught him. They said, "When are we going to have history on the Quadrangle, Professor?" I remembered the tone, the sweaty try for favor. They were B-plus students, trying for an A-minus. The natural A students and the natural students didn't move.

They knew what they had and were content. That's how it was on the brick quadrangle, too. A girl went by in flat heels and a youth stopped his exercise in physics, spinning his Yo-Yo, and said, "Hi, Sweeney." A girl went by in high heels and he said, "Hi, Mary." He watched her and added, "Her feet hurt." That's how it was on the brick quadrangle. The girls in high heels got extra respect, because they contributed grace no matter how their feet hurt. A lithe blond avrl in a blue dress and a new-quadrangle tan, all sun and no brick dust, walked onto the grass.

She gat quickly, her skirt fanning out around her. She'd not have done that on the old quadrangle. I felt a pain, somewhere between envy and age. I know, as an old D-minus man, that I could not last out the fall term at today's college pare, but I also know I'd return every spring, to see what I was missing. i 5 job of loading money.

The see. ond vehicle, an automobile, was to be used to block pursuit. Five dry runs were made. Vincent Costa, Pino's brother-in-law, would watch the Brink's headquarters through field glasses. On each of the dry runs he signaled at the last minute that something was wrong.

He had trouble seeing through Brink's dirty windows, Casta finally gave the "go ahead" signal on the night of Jan, 17, 1950 and seven men piled out of the truck in front of Brink's. They were O'Keefe, Gusciora, linker, Maffie, Michael Geagan, Faherty and Thomas Richardson. The seven strolled through a playground next to the office of the money-handlers and O'Keefe opened the front door. Inside, the robbers removed their chauffeurs' caps and donned the rubber masks. They silently climbed the stairs to the second floor as O'Keefe opened more doors in the darkness.

The last door opened Into the vault. The room was brightly il luminated and five Brink's em plnyes were working inside. "We took out our guns an'l spread out fast, in front of the wire screen that separated us from them," Specs recalled. "There they were, the five of them counting money, checking papers, sorting checks, working around the main vault. The vault was wide open, It was kind of shocking.

They hadn't noticed we were with them. "For a little bit they all kept working. Then they looked up, looked through the wire at us. It was terrible in a way. To say they frore isn't enough.

Thev suffered from a great case; of shock. You could see it on their faces. They seemed to be saying 'This can't be happening to us! This can't be happening to "But it sure was." The seven men spent 20 minutes In the vauii, tying up the employes hand and foot, and gathering up the hags of money. It was determined later that they obtained $1,218,211 In cash and $1,557,18.1 In checks, money orders and other securities. A hasty split of the money was made and the gang dispersed to establish alibis.

O'Keefe made the mistake of entrusting his $98,000 to Maffie, Bad lurk overlook Gusciora and O'Keefe as they were returning in June 1950 from a trip to St. Louis, where Gusciora visited the National Cemetery at Jefferson Barracks. It was a sentimental visit to the grave of a brother, an Army Air Force pilot who had been killed in the Ploesti raids of World War II. The pair was caught red-handed in Pennsylvania after stealing pistols from a hardware store. Without their knowledge, the FBI had alerted local police that Specs and Gus were "in travel status." Both men received prison terms and were to be dogged by the law until the final break in the Brink's case.

The books are closed now and all the Brink's robbers have paid or are paying for their crime. Pino, McGinnis, Maffie, Geagan, Costa, Faherty and Richardson are serving a multiplicity of lift terms. Banfield was dead before Spec's confession, Gusciora died of a brain tumor on the eve of the trial and Baker died in prison after sentencing. O'Keefe is free, but it is an uneasy freedom. He evaluates his future this way.

"It figures that some day I'll get hit." holdup, left, and a defective leaving vault which robbed previous day. through the garage," Specs re-, called. "Getting into the garage was as simple as getting into your own home. I opened the door with an ice pick and instinctively we waited for an alarm to sound. There wasn't any, The door wasn't even bugged! We couldn't believe it." Gusciora and O'Keefe wandered through the Brink's building that first night, O'Keefe opening drain with a piece of celluloid and the ice pick.

They finally found a burglar alarm on the main vault, and it was different from any the veteran burglars had ever seen before. The two burglars prowled Brink's many times befor the holdup and at no time wer delected, O'Keelc estimates that he was Inside the building more than JO times, often in rooms next to where armed guards were lolling about. "There was a lot we had to learn about the place In general, firs," aays O'Keefe. explaining the many surreptitious visits. "The amount of business in the place, for example.

There were the figures, big as life, right on the clip board hanging near the vaults just how much money was in, down to the penny. It was crazy. "Later, and before the big grab, Gus ami 1 would drop in there at night, if we were in the neighborhood, just to look at the clip board and see how business was doing. 'How about them cheap Gus sahi one night, studying the board. 'Only three hundred thousand in The robbers obtained keys for all the doors by removing the lock cylinders in the dead of night, rustling them to a locksmith and having keys made.

The cylinders were returned before they were ever missed. O'Keefe and Jaw Maffie apent one night in an armored truck parked in the garage to observe movements of the guards. The alarm on the main vault continued to worry the gang. Mc(Hnnis, utilizing his wide acquaintanceship, sent an electrical installation expert to Washington to atudy patent applications for burglar alarms in the Patent Office. Speca and Gus even stole blueprints of the "bug" from the Boston ADT office so the gang could study them! The blueprints were returned before they were ever missed, of course.

The Brink's robbery had been planned as a burglary in the beginning, but the burglar alarm continued to worry the gang and it was decided that an armed robbery was the only way. It was determined that Brink's had to be robbed shortly after 7 p.m. At Dbat time there would be a minimum of guards and an open vault. Reconnaissance continued until the late winter of 1949 and the days grew longer. Then came daylight saving time.

The robbers reluctantly put aside their plans until 1950. i Spring, summer and fall rolled around and the robbery plans were reactivated. Pino, whose favorite reading was the comic adventure strips, chose rubber masks in the likenesses of Captain Marvel and his son, Captain Marvel Jr. He went to Chicago especially to purchase the masks. Pino also decided that the seven men to enter Brink's would wear chauffeur's caps, Navy pea jackets and rubbers.

Specs, the non-conformist, purchased crepe-sole shoes for the occasion. Two vehicles were stolen, Joseph Banfield, the gang's handyman, fashioned a door In the side of a truck which had a rlb-and-canvas top. This was to make easy the of holdup. holdup was postponed for almost a year because of daylight saving time. The robbers wanted to strike In the early night hours but needed the protecting cloak of darkness.

The robbery was the brainchild of Anthony Pino, known to his associates as "The Pig." O'Keefe describes him as "obese, sloppy, but thorough and smart in protecting himself and arranging things. A great angle man. Pino had an avid hunger for money." McGinnis, the strategist, shared Pino's greed. O'Keefe pegs him as "a real cold fish, a rough egg," who had a wide assortment of acquaintances hi all strata of society; wore a sweater, chino trousers and $4 Ilavy shoes; wouldn't give a dime to a starving friend and owed his start in life to a friendly prostitute. O'Keefe never had much use for either Pino or McGinnis because he thought they "used" the men who took the chances in robberies they planned.

He was drawn into the Brink's job, he says, only because his good friend, Gusciora, asked him to participate. The robbery was conceived in 1947 and after months of planning in 1948 it had to be abandoned. As Considine puts it: "Just days before the tediously rehearsed strike, the men read a flabbergasting news story in their papers. "Brink's had moved! The whole operation, its employes and treasure, simply moved away from Federal street. The better part of a year's work in the realm of sophisticated crime went down the drain." Dismay turned to jubilation a short time later, however, O'Keefe said the robbers themselves could not have selected a hetier new location.

Brink's moved to a large garage at Prince and Commercial streets and renovated the place into offices, counting rooms and vault rooms. "We Gui and I went in ber, Joseph James O'Keete and Stanley Gusciora, were in prison did not disturb them. Specs and Gus were old pros and they would not squeal. Specs had even served a prison sentence once for another man'a crime rather than put the finger on the guilty one. Some of the confidence might have deserted the Brink's rob-bprs, however, had they been aware of the deep bitterness which was eating like a cancer in the mind of Specs O'Keefe.

His world was closing in on him as he sat in his lonely cell in the Hampden County Jail in Springfield, Mass. Members of the gang might have forgotten Specs but he had not forgotten them. He was in jail, had been for some time, and they were free men. Not only free, they were living in luxury on proceeds of the $1,218,211 cash robbery, the biggest holdup on record. Jazz Maffie, who claimed to have lost or spent all of O'Keefe's $98,000 share, had become an affluent bookie.

Specs, in his casual, trusting way, had left the $98,000 with Maffie for safe keeping. The others who had failed O'Keefe included Joseph MrGin-nis, Anthony Pino, Henry Baker successful business men all. They had invested their loot profitably but now were ignoring O'Keefe's pleas for financial assistance. What was he to do? The agonizing thoughts that crossed the mind of this master burglar, who had led seven masked men through five locked doors to Brink's money-filled main vault, are related to author Bob Con-sidine in Random House's exciting book, "The Men Who Robbed Brink's." O'Keefe's sister and brother-in-law had gone broke trying to keep him out of jail in the mere than five years since the "perfect crime." FBI agents had questioned and re-questioned all his relatives. They were hounding him.

His demands for return of his share of the loot had been answered by three attempts on his life. Johnny Carlson, one of his last underworld friends, was missing. The grapevine said Johnny had been wrapped in a concrete shroud and dropped in deep water because he had aided O'Keefe. Specs was serving 27 months for an eight-year old rap that had been revived only because of his connection with the Brink's job, Pennsylvania was waiting, ready to pounce on him with a 3-to-12-year term for burglary. Specs O'Keefe decided on a final plea to the gang.

He composed carefully worded letters to McGinnis and Pino, the "brains" and the "arranger" of the big heist, and let them know they had everything to lose if they did not heed his request for money. Saloonkeeper McGinnis, a man of means even before the robbery, had the most to lose and he sent Wimpy Bennett to see O'Keefe. Wimpy said tha boyi It I I i. 1 1 Vif t- I I "i I 1 I 't i 1 charge at time of Cash ler in were graciously prrparod to kick in $5000 to Mrs. O'Kfefe.

They would "take care of" Specs later, he said. Specs sent the messpngrr back with word that the offer was not nearly enough. He promised trouble if he did not get his full share of the Brink's haul. Negotiations ended within a week or two. McGinnis, Pino and the others had decided to sit tight.

Not knowing the processes of O'Keefe's mind, they apparently guessed that he would not stick his own neck in the noose by talking to the authorities. Their guess was a monumetal. blunder. The trou- bled O'Keefe had become ripe for plucking by the persistent FBI O'Keefe began to respond to FBI questioning on Dec. 27, two days after his most miserable Christmas.

Specs didn't let the cat out immedi-ately, but indicated only that he knew something about the Rrink's robberv. He tried to make a deal to protect the only brinks roooer wno nau ic-mained true to him, Gusciora. Gus was languishing in a Pennsylvania prison. The FBI wanted all or nothing. The intensive questioning of Specs continued as the fateful Jan.

17 loomed only days away. Specs continued to brood and finally he began to talk. The long untold story of the Brink's robbery started to pour from his lips on Jan. 6, 1956. Two FBI agents ppent four days with him, checking details and pinning facts down.

Other agents were nislred to Boston to follow the many leads. The story O'Keefe told was a detailed account of classic crime that rivals in imagination and scope the greatest crimes of history. Few criminals would have bad the patience displayed by the Brink's robbers. Two years of reconnaissance, research and labor went Into the rob- Lawrence Galton More for Your Money GOOD YEAR FOR HOME BUYERS: For two eeasons, could be one of the best times to buy or build a home in years. One recent survey finds building costs no longer spiraling up; in some areas, they're even down a bit.

And interest rates move downward so mortgage costs can be cut substantially. The drop in borrowing charges, which started early in the year, spreads to more and more areas. Cuts of half a percentage point are not uncommon; in a few places they may run to a full point. On a 25-year, $15,000 loan, even a half point reduction means a saving of $1350 bringing the total cost of interest down from $14,025 to $12,675. Something to keep in mind: As lenders competitively shave interest rates, there may be some variations; shopping around for your mortgage is much in order.

TRENDS AND TIP-OFFS: Women at work still don't do quite as well as men when it comes to promotions but discrimination is decreasing. Of almost 2000 firms surveyed, nearly half now report they don't give promotion preference to men over women when qualifications are equal. Only one-third currently maintain different pay scales for men and women. Coming this fall: Men's suits made of a wool that "gives." A new process lets the cloth stretch as the wearer moves, then return to original shape. DO-IT-YOURSELF MARCHES ON: No longer much talked about, do-it-yourself nevertheless booms, getting more and more converts, plus more special new materials afwell.

Lumber and building supply dealers report 44 per cent of their business is with homeowners. Currently 70 per cent of all interior painting is do-it-yourself; and so, too, 55 per cent of all screened-in-porches and patios. Among important new developments for do-it-yourself work: an easy-to-apply coating for preserving and reconditioning blacktop driveways; an inexpensive new type of plastic-protected wood paneling; and, likely to be most significant, plastic pipe that can handle hot water and is a breeze, in comparison to metal pipe, for nonprofessionals to work with. 4 I I I if i j. Mode! shows how Brink's robbers were dressed, including Halloween mask.

bcry before it ever was attempted. Brink's, moved Its Bnstn'n headquarters from one building to another as the robbers were planning, and the.