The Art of the Heist

One

The feeling of being alone in an empty museum is always the same. There’s a rush to it, an elevation of the senses that’s not unlike the pleasant high of cocaine. You’re not hyper, just mildly elated, drunk on the notion of having the run of the place, on the idea that all these treasures are yours to take. It’s a sweet feeling, one I’ve never gotten tired of, not on my twentieth heist, nor my fiftieth, nor my hundredth.

I love fine art and objects of cultural significance. Over the years, I’ve found many ways to obtain them, some legal, some not. I’m a collector, specializing in Asian art and weaponry, especially Japanese swords. I find handcrafted pieces to be exquisite, especially those made by highly skilled craftsmen. Despite what my record might lead one to believe, I’m not particularly fond of European art. Given the option, I’d choose a Ming vase or a fourteenth-century katana over a Rembrandt any day. I’ve purchased much of my collection legitimately, at auctions or estate sales or from reputable dealers. But I’ve also obtained many fine works by, shall we say, less legitimate means. I’ve used fraud, breaking and entering, and brute force.

To be successful at not just one of these methods but all requires a certain combination of love of adventure and plain recklessness. It’s what landed me in jail for the first time in my life, in 1965, and it’s also what got me out.

You know the story about the guy who breaks out of jail using a fake gun? You’ve heard it: some con whittles a pistol out of a block of wood or a bar of soap, then blackens it with shoe polish and uses it to muscle his way past the guards. They say that’s how John Dillinger broke out of Indiana’s “escape-proof” Crown Point jail in 1934.

I know what you’re thinking: it’s a great story, but there’s no way it’s true. If anything, it’s one of those urban legends that get more outrageous with time. For starters, no one in their right mind would have the guts to pull such a stunt. Even if someone was crazy enough to try, they sure as hell wouldn’t get away with it. Maybe something like that could happen in the movies, or on TV. But in real life? No way.

Well, that’s where you’re wrong.

How can he be so sure? you’re wondering. It’s easy. See, I am that guy. In the summer of 1965 I broke out of the Hancock County jail in Ellsworth, Maine, using nothing more than a bar of soap, a razor blade, and some boot polish. It wasn’t as difficult as you might think. These things never are. All you need is a plan. A plan and the balls to go through with it.

As far as lockups go, the Hancock County jail was no better or worse than similar facilities I would encounter over the years. The building, constructed in the late nineteenth century, was a large brick structure situated just back from Ellsworth’s Main Street, between the courthouse and the town library, on a high embankment overlooking the Union River. The front portion of the building served as the sheriff’s house. At the time of my incarceration, the sheriff’s entire family, including his wife and teenage stepson, lived there. As was often the case in these small-town facilities, our meals were cooked by the sheriff’s wife. The rear of the building housed the sheriff’s offices, with the jail itself, a warren of damp, low-ceilinged cells, in the basement directly below.

Maine in 1965 was not exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. For the previous several years I’d been making my living singing and playing guitar in rock-and-roll clubs around the Boston area, mainly in the suburb of Revere Beach. Revere was traditionally an Italian neighborhood, and many of my acquaintances were real bad guys, mobsters who made my fellow inmates at the Hancock County jail look like kindergartners. The Ellsworth group was a motley collection of downeasters, local hicks who’d been brought in for relatively minor offenses like drunk driving or vagrancy. The worst of the bunch were there on charges of domestic assault.

I was twenty-two at the time. Though by no means a seasoned criminal, I already had two museum heists under my belt. Compared to these, the crime that landed me in the Hancock County jail was unimpressive. I’d been caught robbing a house in Sullivan, Maine, something that would have been a relatively minor offense had I not shot at the arresting officer and fled the scene. This act of brazenness had made me a celebrity among my jailmates.

As much as I enjoyed my star status, I was desperate to get home. There wasn’t much to do at the little jail except play cards and read pulp paperbacks, diversions I’ve never really enjoyed. More important, all my possessions, including an extensive collection of art and antiques-some of which I’d procured by unconventional means-were back at my apartment in Revere. Among them were a number of Japanese swords, several Chinese vases and Japanese bronzes, some Asian watercolors, Paul Revere silver, and a particularly valuable Frederic Remington bronze statue of a cowboy on horseback that had belonged to my grandfather. These valuables represented my bank account-one I’d have to tap into if I was going to make bail and beat my current rap-and I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of leaving them unattended, especially considering the lax attitudes of many of my Revere acquaintances when it came to the issue of ownership. In short, I needed to get out, and fast.

I’d been formulating a plan for doing so almost from the beginning, paying close attention to the jailhouse rhythms, looking for an opportunity to make my escape. By my fifth day there I was pretty sure I’d found one.

Small-town lockups inevitably rely on trustees to do many of the facility’s more menial tasks. Trustees are inmates, usually harmless repeat offenders, town drunks and vagrants, who tend to prefer the routine of life in lockup to the stress of fending for themselves on the street. Many of the men who become trustees are not bad people, just incapable, for whatever reason, of getting along like the rest of us. They see the jail as a kind of home and the jailers as family. The tasks they are assigned-cleaning, delivering meals-give them a much-needed sense of purpose.

Some trustees, however, enjoy what they do a little bit too much. These men generally have just enough smarts to understand power and enjoy its perks but not enough to acquire authority in the outside world. Most of them have been bullied and pushed around their whole lives and, given even the smallest amount of power, are eager to push back. The trustee in Ellsworth was such a man.

He was small of build, no taller than five foot six, somewhere in his early forties, with dark stringy hair and the clothes of a tramp. I never learned his real name, but everyone at the jail called him Bowwow, and this is what he answered to. One of his main tasks, and the one he most obviously enjoyed, was locking us into our cells in the evening. During the day we were allowed to congregate outside our cells. But at eight o’clock every night we’d hear a jangling of keys as the deputy sheriff came down the steps with Bowwow behind him.

“Okay, Bowwow,” the deputy sheriff would then announce, handing the trustee his keys, “lock ’em in the cells.”

And Bowwow, gleefully accepting his privilege, would lock every cell, looking us each in the eye and smiling as he did it.

My plan was not a complicated one. I’d heard the Dillinger story myself, and I figured if he could make it work, so could I. The last thing I wanted was to be involved in assaulting another peace officer, and I was banking on the fact that a fake gun would provide sufficient distraction for me to break out without causing serious physical harm to anyone.

I was not at all unfamiliar with firearms. My father and grandfather were both avid gun collectors, and I myself had been collecting firearms since I was a boy, saving my pennies to buy antique derringers instead of candy or comic books. The derringer was the gun I chose for my model, mainly because it was small enough to be realistically sculpted from a bar of soap, the only material available to me at the time.

During the afternoon of the day of my planned escape, I set to work fabricating my soap pistol. Given the crude tools and materials I had to work with, no one could have expected genius. Nonetheless, I managed to produce a reasonable facsimile of a derringer using my jail-issue razor blade. With the addition of a coat of boot polish, lent to me by a fellow prisoner, the gun looked surprisingly real.

That evening, just before the eight o’clock lockdown, I turned to my jailmates, who were gathered in the common area playing cards.

“Listen,” I announced, “in about one minute I’m gonna open the door and walk out of this place. Anyone want to come along?”

The men stared at me with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

Tucking the soap derringer into the waistband of my pants, I bent down and double-knotted the laces on my boots, pulling them tight. It’s details like this that can mean the difference between success and failure. I’d heard from one of the other prisoners that there was a path behind the jail that followed the river downstream. My hope was to make a run for it along this path, and I didn’t want to risk getting tripped up by a loose bootlace.

As I straightened up I heard Bowwow’s footsteps on the stairs and the familiar jangling of the deputy sheriff’s keys. The two men reached the common area and stopped.

“Okay, Bowwow,” came the deputy sheriff’s familiar pronouncement. “Lock ’em in the cells.”

Bowwow turned to me, leering. “Get in your cell,” he snarled.

Taking a step toward the deputy sheriff, I drew my little derringer. “Look, pal,” I said, waving him toward the nearest cell, “I don’t want to shoot you.”

Bowwow’s jaw dropped.

The deputy sheriff looked at the little pistol, then back at me. He himself was unarmed, having removed his gun before coming downstairs to the cells, as is standard prison procedure. I could tell what he was thinking. I’m not a large person, and taller, bigger men like him always think they can take me. That’s where I have the advantage.

“Oh no you don’t,” he said, grabbing my wrist with both his hands. It was the worst thing the man could have said to me.

I’ve always been the kind of person who hates being told what to do. A pronouncement like this is nothing more than a challenge to me, one from which I have so far never backed down.

Immediately I dropped the soap gun. I easily disengaged myself from the man’s grasp and tagged him once in the chest. I didn’t hit him hard-I truly didn’t want to hurt him-but hard enough that he stumbled backward into the cell behind him, landing asprawl on the cement floor.

With the deputy sheriff down, I turned to Bowwow. The trustee was still standing there, his mouth wide open. I can’t remember if I pushed him or tagged him, probably the latter, since I’d been entertaining this idea since my first night there. If anyone ever deserved to get hit, it was Bowwow.

In any case, down he went. And up I went, leaving the homemade derringer, which had served its purpose, behind.

“You can wash your face with that,” I called out as I sprinted up the stairs to the sheriff’s offices and out the side door of the jail.

I was working on blind faith, hoping that the description I’d been given of the jail grounds and the river path had been accurate. It was a good hour past sunset, the lights of the town blazing against the black of night. I headed across the small jail yard toward the short retaining wall that ran along the top of the high riverbank. Beyond the wall the ground fell away sharply to the river. Far below, phantom lights skimmed the water’s black surface. Cars passing on the Route 1 bridge just a few dozen yards downstream. House windows. The lights of the jail itself and of the library next door. In the distance I could hear the roar of an upstream dam.

I turned eastward and ran, following the wall as I’d been advised to do, scanning the dark bank for the promised path and seeing nothing. I could hear footsteps behind me now, and two distinct voices, those of the deputy sheriff and the sheriff, who had no doubt been enjoying a quiet evening with his family just moments earlier.

“Halt!” A voice I recognized as the deputy sheriff’s called out, far too close for comfort.

I paused for an instant on the wall, briefly considering my choices. Downstream lay the Route 1 bridge, where I could already see car lights massing in the darkness; upstream, the dam and the woods beyond. Suddenly, my options were strikingly clear: I could take my chances in the river or stay dry and end up back in my cell, presumably as a much less welcome guest than before. It took me only an instant to make my decision. Propelling myself forward into the darkness, I leaped from the wall to the embankment below. I hit the loose ground and scrambled downward, stumbling over roots and rocks, fighting the underbrush, finally making my way to a large boulder perched just above the water.

“Halt!” A second voice this time: the sheriff’s.

I paused again, flexing my feet in my boots, feeling the rock against my soles. And then I jumped.

As my body arced toward the river I heard the sheriff once again, his words perfectly clear, punctuated by the darkness. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. “He dove into the goddamned river!”

No kidding.

Then, in an instant, I hit the water.

To call that river cold may be the greatest understatement of my life. Frigid doesn’t even cut it. January-in-the-north-woods-freeze-your-balls-off is closer to how it felt, but even that falls short. Once in the water I went down fast, rocketing into a treacherous tangle of tree limbs and other debris at the bottom of the river. Suddenly, my earlier decision to double-knot my laces, which at the time had seemed like brilliant foresight, was revealed as something less than that, as my water-logged boots pulled me down.

I struggled upward and got nowhere. I had taken a deep breath before I went under, but my lungs were already burning. Groping frantically in the darkness I located the tops of my boots. I tugged at the laces, fumbling with numb fingers at the stubborn double knots.

I’d like to say I had regrets, that my young life and all I had yet to accomplish flashed before me. I suppose it’s what I should say.

But the truth is that as I lay there at the bottom of the Union River, face-to-face with the darkness around me, fighting the instinct to take a breath, my only thoughts were of the glory of what I’d just done, of what a damn fine story this whole episode would make, and what a shame it was that I wouldn’t live to tell it to my friends back in Revere. Whether it was my desire to tell it firsthand or a lingering affection for all those stolen antiques in my apartment, I’ll never know. But somehow I was able to find the strength to break free of the river’s grasp and pull myself upward.

I came to the surface, gasping and sputtering, cold and already exhausted, but certain I had made it through the worst and was now home free. I just had to reach the opposite bank, I told myself, stretching my arms out, cutting across the powerful current toward the dark swath of woods beyond. If I could only get out of the river, they’d never catch me.

As I neared the shore, however, a light appeared in the trees, the beam of a single flashlight combing the darkness. Treading water, I stopped where I was and scanned the woods. Soon a second light appeared, then a third, then dozens more, as searchers poured into the woods from the road above. Ridiculously, I thought of all the monster movies I’d seen as a kid, the mob with their torches coming for the creature. Only this time it wasn’t Dracula or Frankenstein whose blood they were after, but mine.

I turned in the water, looking back in the direction from which I’d come, once again considering my options. The question now wasn’t whether I would make it back to Revere but whether the story I’d have to tell would be one of triumph or defeat. I sure as hell wasn’t ready to surrender.