Word: heist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Lying in the vault were about 50 Ibs. of paper money from the Commerzbank of Frankfurt to the Chase Manhattan Bank. It was a treasure far bigger than the $2.78 million taken in the Brink's holdup of 1950, bigger even than the $4.3 million Purolator heist in 1974 in Chicago. The Lufthansa bandits' haul: about $5 million in American dollars, nearly $1 million in jewelry, as well as an undetermined amount of foreign currency...
...said James Connolly of the Port Authority Police, which patrols Kennedy. "They were so well prepared that they had enough handcuffs for all the employees." All signs point to an inside job. According to police, only three robbers came into the warehouse by van. "Three other members of the heist team got into the cargo building on their own," said one investigator. "I feel someone inside opened the door for them." All six thieves spoke with Brooklyn accents...
Police also believe that an employee may have tipped off the robbers to Lufthansa's treasure. Apparently it was there by a fluke. The money was scheduled to be transferred from Kennedy into Manhattan on the Friday before the heist, but when a Brink's truck arrived to take the money to Chase Manhattan, the Lufthansa foreman was too busy directing another shipment to open the vault. Some investigators think that there may have been a conspiracy to keep the money at the facility over the weekend...
...Boston's Brink's robbers. Far from being a gang of master criminals--as was first supposed--the thieves turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of petty, two-bit bumblers who hung out in Scolley Square, pulling off little jobs and dreaming of the big heist. It seemed poetic justice that these ordinary crooks were the ones to hit the prestigious armored-car company for a million and a half dollars. It was a daring robbery, no one got hurt, and the crooks very nearly got away with it. It's the stuff of legends...
...with Friedkin, since the cast couldn't be better. The Brink's gang is played by a bunch of lovable actors who delight in the roles of these bumbling underdogs. Heading the group is Peter Falk as the mastermind--if you can call him that--of this near-perfect heist. His criminal genius is somewhat in doubt, since the movie opens with one of his novice efforts, the burglary of a sausage factory. After much tool-dropping and other displays of incompetence, the job ends with Falk hiding in a room full of chickens, only to be hauled...