Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

Only it wasn’t foolproof. Leon Schell figured out a way to beat it. They brought in a canvas sheet, probably rolled up to get it under the light beams, then unrolled it and stretched it on a collapsible metal wire frame and snapped it up into position in front of the camera eye. Painted on the side facing the camera was a perfect picture of the vault door and the surrounding part of the basement room. Except for the momentary flick on the viewing screen when they snapped the canvas into position — the kind of flick you’d get on any television screen when an automobile passes — there was nothing to indicate that there were three men in the room in front of the vault. To make certain that no stray light struck the back of the canvas they hung a heavy black cloth on it.

There were four infra-red light beams crisscrossing the area immediately in front of the vault door. Larry Coster took care of them by rigging up new invisible light sources close to the relays so that the light beam was never interrupted; then he neutralized the alarm system on the vault itself. He hooked up relays and induction coils and pulse generators all over the side of the vault and then tied them in to the lead in wires. When he was finished they could have carted the thing off to Central Park if they wanted to without setting off the vault alarm.

All that might have taken them as long as five hours — they still had almost sixty hours to get it open. But Monk didn’t need that long, it might have taken him somewhere between twenty and thirty hours, counting resting and eating time, as nearly as we could figure it. That meant that they were probably finished shortly after midnight Sunday evening leaving them a day and a half to get out and away.

And they cleaned the vault out, but good. They took everything, cut and uncut diamonds, mounted stones and necklaces, rings, bracelets, and even several dozen diamond studded watches. The insured value of the loot was over a million and a half, they could probably get close to a million for it if they could get rid of it in the European market.

When we were reconstructing the job Tuesday morning we got our only lucky break. Somehow, impossibly, Larry Coster had left a full set of fingerprints on the front surface of the vault door. There was no way to understand that kind of stupidity or carelessness after what they had done, but whatever the reason, they were there. It was a blessing for us, and it hung up Larry Coster for this job high and dry. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that he was smoking or eating when Monk swung the big door open. If he was smoking or eating he probably had his glove off his right hand, and in the excitement of seeing what they had he accidentally touched the front of the door. I didn’t care why, I was just mighty grateful that he did.

That simplified things tremendously for us. We knew who pulled the job, and, as important, we knew who didn’t. The Safe and Loft Squad detectives were all for putting out a nation wide alarm for Larry Coster, but I was able to talk them out of it. If we did that, it would tip our hand. The only chance to get the three of them was to let them think we were completely stumped. The newspapers carried a subdued account of it, with no figure mentioned, and only that the police had commenced an investigation.

Knowing how Leon Schell’s mind worked, and how he planned things, the logical thing to expect them to do was to try to run the stuff out of the country. There were several reasons for this, but the most important one was money. If they could get the stuff to the European market they would net twice as much as they could here. But getting it out of the United States and then into Europe wasn’t easy, only someone like Schell would try it. For the amount involved we were almost certain he would.

There are only two ways to move stolen jewelry across borders. One way, of course, is to smuggle it, but it was almost inconceivable that they would try to do that — it’s much too risky and uncertain. If they were caught either leaving here or entering any foreign country they would blow the whole job, netting exactly nothing but trouble for their efforts.

The other way is the way that would appeal to Leon Schell. If they could enlist the services of a man big enough in the jewelry industry to move it for them, get it through customs on both sides as a legitimate shipment by disguising it with false documents to cover its movement, they would be in the clear. It meant an extra cut, but they would not only be a lot safer but still ahead in the final take from the job. And because Monk had hired me to carry for them several days before I was positive that’s what they planned to do.