November 25, 2024 • 50 mins
We’ve had this author on before when he talked about his book on serial poisoner Dr. Thomas Neill Cream. Today, Dean Jobb tells us about a different kind of criminal, a man known as the “prince of thieves.” Arthur Barry stole from the rich in the Jazz Age and then offered a detailed confession when he was caught. How did he get away with it for so long? It’s all in the book: A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The way you described it was look it was the
times it was easy come, easy go, and as well,
he knew that his next job could be his last.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:50):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. We've had this author on
before when he talked about his book on serial poisoner
(01:10):
doctor Thomas Neil Cream. Today, Dean Job tells us about
a different kind of criminal. A man known as the
Prince of Thieves. Arthur Berry stole from the rich and
the jazz age and then offered a detailed confession when
he was caught. How did he get away? With it
for so long. It's all in the book A Gentleman
and a Thief, The Daring Jewel Heists of a jazz
(01:33):
age rogue. Tell me where you think we should start
with this story. Do you feel like we have a
lot of information about Arthur Berry, who's the center of
your book.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Barry was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, factory town in central
Massachusetts and Irish extraction. Large family found it certainly when
he went looking for work as a young man. Given
he was known to a bed brushes with the law
and Worcester, he had trouble getting a job. There was
also some prejudice against Irish Americans. He sort of attributed
(02:09):
his life of crime to the fact that he looked
much older than his age, so he ended up getting
a job as a teenager, only thirteen or fourteen. Of
all things, he was a courier carrying suitcases full of
nitro glycerin to safecrackers, so he was seen as someone
who could pass as a student heading to college or
(02:31):
just an innocent young man. And this fellow who distilled
a nitro glycerin for safecrackers recruited him and that was
his entry into crime. He did some break ins and
was ultimately caught for some petty crimes and put in reformatory.
But his big break, I guess for one of a
(02:53):
better word, was the First World War. He enlisted and
became a medic, was known as a first aid man,
so he was sent overseas, and while his job was
to save lives, he was actually in the thick of
every battle. These first aid men had to risk their
lives to try to retrieve horribly wounded men from the battlefield.
(03:17):
He was gassed, he was shot, He was recommended for
a medal for bravery. He was a hero. He came
back a war hero, only to find that because his
return was delayed, he was kept overseas for almost a
year and an occupation of Germany. By the time he
got home he couldn't get a job. And that's when
(03:38):
ultimately he described making the decision how was he going
to make a living? And the only thing he knew
really was how to break the law. And he didn't
want to rob banks because he didn't want to have partners,
and he didn't want to use guns, and he didn't
want to hold up people in the street. And he
thought most elegant way to make money was simply be
a sneak thief break into their houses at night. No
(04:01):
one's hurt. He doesn't even have to confront his victims.
And that's ultimately what he not only started to do
but mastered.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Where did he lose sight of his moral compass? I'm
always interested in that answer. Is it that he grew
up around people like this and he didn't know anything differently?
I know we've kind of talked a little bit about
the lack of opportunity for him, but man, that just
seems like what happens to someone or to Arthur Berry,
(04:29):
to make them say it is okay to take from
people when it doesn't belong to me. Do you have
any idea?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, yes, because I deal with this in the book,
because at one point he says, a woman who can
walk around with a quarter of million dollars with a
pearls in her neck doesn't have to worry about where
her next meal is coming from. He was quite mercenary
abote it in the sense that he said, look, these
are rich people. The jewels are insured, often insured for
(04:56):
inflated prices. People are flaunting this wealth. I'm just going
to relieve them of it. And since he wasn't a
violent man, and since he wasn't, you know, his mo
was to not confront victims, you know, to sneak into
their houses. If he did end up in a bedroom
where there was someone by surprise somebody was there, or
(05:19):
he was interrupted mid robbery, he was very gentlemanly, very polite,
put them at ease, you know, just here for the jewels,
don't worry. So he was a different kind of criminal
in that sense. So his moral compass isn't quite the
same as a totally law abiding person, but he's got
some standards that keep him from tipping over into a
(05:41):
more violent, scary kind of crime. One thing I talk
about in the book is jewelry is the ultimate luxury item.
I mean, you can have one hundred thousand dollars sports car,
but you can still drive it. But jewelry is just
something to be you know, you're blak. Is just something
to be displayed and fussed over, or it's the ultimate
(06:06):
way of displaying your wealth. And I think that says
something about the kind of warped but understandable code he had.
I'll just take things that people can definitely live without, you.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Know, when I spoke to the author about the Dallas,
Texas thief, and I sort of framed it as, did
he think of this as a victimless crime, like what
you're saying? Arthur Berry was saying, it's bling, it's you know,
you're showing this off, And she said, I know that
people will think that, except that her burglar stole some
very very sentimental items from people like that had been
(06:43):
in their family for hundreds of years. So it's not
all the showiness. It's the sentimental part of it. And
on top of that, it is the feeling of invasion
that somebody is sneaking around your house, which frankly is
my worst nightmare, somebody in the walls or someone sneaking
around the house, regardless of their intent so interested in
(07:04):
the cat burglar. But at the same time, it's also
just horrifying to think that someone could be around the
corner and you don't you don't know what their intention is,
even if it is just to steal and leave and
not hurt you.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
No, absolutely, and there's certainly elements of that in Barry.
At times he was stealing sentimental items in some cases
just just throwing them away because they know they had
sentimental value, no value to him. And certainly there is
the intrusion, the violation of privacy, and you know, I
(07:36):
don't make light of that at all. That was a
definite element here. I mean sometimes he was and many
of his break ins he became known as the supper
time burglar or the dinner burglar, because people would be
even entertaining down below in their dining room and he's
going through their bedrooms. He morphed to having in a
(07:59):
car helpless carrying guns. He said he never wanted to
use them. He never did, and actually sometimes confronting people
in their bedrooms because one of the problems he had
as a dinner burglar is the jewels he was looking
for might be worn downstairs. He couldn't get access to them,
so there was that horrible violation of privacy. And as well,
(08:23):
he would often he was meticulous planner. He would get
up in a tree or break into an unoccupied estate
next door to some long island estate so he could
watch the comings and goings and get a sense of
when was the time to do his break in. So
(08:44):
very intrusive that way as well. But on the other
hand he was often identifying as targets because they were
women who were showing up in the society pages of
the newspapers. I mean he called society writers his on
winning accomplices, because he would see a photo of some
rich oilman's wife with her resplendent in her pearls, and
(09:07):
then he knew who to start finding out where they lived,
stake out their mansion, maybe crash a garden party as
a posing like a guest in a tuxedo, which he did,
and then he would wander the house and try to
get a sense of where the jewels might be when
he came back, and sometimes even leave windows open so
(09:28):
it would be easier to do.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
In the nineteen twenties. And this is in New York.
What is the process for then fencing whatever jewelry you've stolen?
Is there like a route that a diamond ring would
take so that it was not identified and could go
on the black market somewhere?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
He talked a bit about that. He talked about no
shortage of fences, and he talked about in detail of
the first time he went to a jeweler down on
the Bowery, which was known for underhand or underworld diamond
and gem exchange. And how easy it was to fence,
he said after years later, after he was caught, he said,
(10:12):
you know I had fences, so that would have taken
the Statue of Liberty off my hands, didn't matter how
hot or big it was. But a lot of his
loote he never explained exactly where it went, but it
was quite common for gems to end up in Antwerp,
where there was a huge diamond trade, but it was
(10:32):
affected by the war. New York really in these years
became one of the big centers of the diamond trade.
Barry once said that basically, if you want to find
out where my loot went, just look at some woman
wearing some fine diamond jewelry. It's probably been recut or
reset and it's probably something I already stole.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Well, let's go set the scene for one of these
really good break ins. What's the one that you like
to dig into the most? I know, who are these
people and when do they leave? And how does he
get in? And all of that.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Oh, there are so many. He robs a Wall Street
player named Jesse Livermore, who's a legendary make fortunes Lose
fortune guys of the era whose books on how to
play the stock market are still in print. He robs them.
He robs Jesse Donahue, who is the heiress of the
(11:26):
Woolworth five and dime chain and credibly one of the
wealthiest women in the United States. He robs her suite.
But I do think his most audacious robbery is in
nineteen twenty four, and it's during the visit of the
Prince of Wales, the future Edward the Eighth to Long Island,
which is a spectacle. He's supposed to be there vacationing
(11:50):
it's not an official visit. He's feted by all of
the rich families on Long Island, which coincidentally, of course,
is Barry's hunting ground. And Barry goes to an oilman's mansion,
an oilman named Cosden, who is hosting a party for
the Prince, and he goes there to scope out the
(12:11):
jewels because he figures royalties a good magnet for jewels,
and ends up meeting the Prince and taking him, believe
it or not, on a tour of Manhattan Speakeasi's that night.
So he befriends the Prince of Wales, and then a
few days later he comes back to the mansion and
steals jewels from the oilman and one of his guests,
(12:35):
who was Lady mount Batten. Because of the mount Batten's
the cousin of the Prince of Wales, we're staying in
the mansion. So he managed to rob royalties. This was
a huge international story. Tens of thousands of dollars worth
of jewelry swipe, a huge embarrassment in the midst of
this sort of semi official royal tour, and no one
(12:58):
knew who did it until ultimately, decades later he owned
up to it.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
How did he not get caught? Actually, probably the better
question is how long was it before he got caught?
Was he just really that good or it sounds like
he might have had some close calls.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Well, he really was that good. He started about nineteen
twenty and the next seven years. It's hard to get
an accurate figure. I was able to trace a lot
of his robberies from the press at the time, which
of course at that point wasn't tied to him. No
one knew he did it. In today's money, about sixty
(13:37):
million dollars worth of jules. He's only through fences, only
getting maybe ten percent of that. He was really that good.
He never left a fingerprint, always wore gloves. He would
borrow a ladder from the estate, from a garage or
the estate next door. Particularly planned his exit's, watched for
(14:01):
the comings and goings of security guards. Knew how close
the nearest train station was, because often he wouldn't drive away,
he would just go to the nearest train station, jump
on the train. He was operating in Long Long Island
and in Westchester County, where there were a lot of
estates of very wealthy New Yorkers. He knew the timetables
(14:24):
of the trains. He knew how close the nearest police
station was. He was able to estimate, Okay, if I'm
caught and there's a call, how much time do I have.
He was so good and so smart that, yeah, that's
one of the reasons he was able to go so long.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
At what point do you think the police in New
York are making the connection that you have some wealthy
people who are targeted, and we can talk about some
of those people in a little bit. How long does
it take for the police to make a connection when
the police, I know, are starting to deal with prohibition
and probably some organized and all of the immigrants coming
(15:01):
in and out of New York, and they're busy, But
do you think they've made this connection at some point?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Well, this was another aspect of how smart Barry was.
He targeted a lot of estates in Nassau County on
Long Island, everything from Wall Street big wigs to established
families like the Vanderbilts lived out there. No great Cops
and robbers story is complete without the cops. And there
is a fellow out there named Harold King who rises
(15:28):
to detective just as Barry is starting to rob all
these homes, and he knows there is a connection. He
knows there's somebody pulling these dinner time robberies, and he
always seems to be one step behind, but its very
clear he wants to catch this fellow. Barry is smart
(15:49):
when they finally, like, for instance, at one point, they
start putting patrol cars full of armed police out on
the roads of rural Nassau County around some of these
estates to try to catch him. He simply disappears, and
he surfaces in Westchester County north of New York, same
kind of layout and simply picks up where he left off,
(16:11):
and he becomes known as the latter thief in Westchester County,
and when the heat gets put on there, suddenly Nassau
County gets targeted again. And he only committed he committed
a major robbery at a hotel, the Plaza Hotel in
New York in nineteen twenty five, But otherwise I found
no evidence that he actually went into the city. So
(16:32):
he was dealing with smaller county police forces not as
well organized. That made it a little easier, I think
for him to keep one step ahead.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
And of course, you know, we talk about this with
modern cases, jurisdiction issues when counties don't talk, and certainly
in the nineteen twenties, you would definitely have that. What
about the media, are they picking up on anything. I
know this is happening in far flung areas in Manhattan,
but this seems like a pretty sexy story for New
York City media.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Oh No, the newspapers covered his crimes. But as I said,
as I was doing my research, I had to piece
together from a confession and confessions he made of who
he robbed to then go back and find those those
crimes because of the stature of a lot of the victims. Yeah,
the press coverage there was a lot of press coverage,
(17:25):
great interviews with victims who'd almost caught him. Some of
the victims shot at him, you know. So it was
a dangerous job he had taken on. The New York
Daily News feasted on this kind of any chance to
expose the upper crust of New York society. And so yeah,
(17:46):
there was a lot of press coverage of his crimes.
But of course nobody knows. Sometimes they're linked together. But
as this shadowy Ladder burglar, and for a long time
the west Chest in Nassau County, authorities never put together
that they were all looking for the same person. It
was like there was a different burglar doing similar things
(18:10):
in the neighboring county.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Were burglaries unusual in this time period? Or was this
sort of part of the course for folks like the
Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers, the wealthier people. This is of
course before Adt and Brinks. But were burglary is something
that were unexpected in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
No, and Barry even had a way to circumvent guard
dogs and alarm systems. Guard dogs he would simply feed,
and plus he also had a pet dog. So the
dogs would smell his dog and be put at ease.
And this policeman, Harold King, would showed up at one
estate and the dogs were snarling at him, and he's like,
(18:50):
how could this burglar have done this? Another method Barry
used was he would dress up in overalls and go
to a door and fly us a card of the
security system and say we're here to do maintenance, and
then they would be allowed some servant would allow them
into the closet where all the very rudimentary burglar alarms
(19:12):
were and he'd simply take the main bell, bend back
the hammer that would hit it. Suddenly the alarms deactivated,
and he did that on several occasions. He also liked
when Pinkerton's or some of these other detective and alarm
firms of the time would post a sign. He was
always grateful for the warning that he would then have
(19:34):
to deal with an alarm system.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Did the Pinkertons ever enter into the story into your.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Book, Well, they do in the sense that they're involved
in a couple of the investigating a couple of the burglaries.
There are some other private detectives who become a nemesis
for Barry, but Oddly, one of the detectives, William Burns,
becomes involved because he his agencies looking into it, and
(20:02):
Barry tells the story that he spotted him driving by
one day. He recognized William Burns, who was quite famous.
He'd been head of a precursor of the FBI in
the Department of Justice briefly and was a well known figure.
So Barry followed him home, broke in and stole from
him back, almost as a lark, just to show he
(20:26):
could do it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Was he not scared of being caught, or was he
just that sort of confident, or maybe he didn't care
because he knew at some point he would be caught.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, he cared, and that's why he took on an
accomplice because he started to you know, as there were
more and more crimes and he wasn't the only jewel
thief burglar of the era. He realized he could run
into a watchman who was walking at different rounds than
he caught in his planning, could be a dog he
couldn't do it, could be a homeowner who pulled a
(20:58):
gun on him and he had no time to react.
So he did realize it was a dangerous game and
the way he described that. Now, one thing we haven't
talked about is where a lot of this money went.
And Barry was a gambler.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I was wondering about his life. That was my next question.
Tell me about his personal life around all of this.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
He was like one of these Broadway figures. I think,
like Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. I mean, he
ran crap games, He ran current games, even ran his
own gambling club at one point under an assumed name.
For him, it was, you know, Broadway Chorus girls, gambling
high stakes, blowed tens of thousands of dollars in a night,
(21:40):
never think anything of it, and then go out and
steal more. And the way he described it was look,
it was the times. It was easy come, easy go.
And as well, he knew that his next job could
be his last, so it was live for the moment.
And this is why he's such a product of his time,
(22:00):
that whole generation that we know through the Great Gatsby
and other great works of the twenties. Anything goes, devil
may care ethos that pervaded the nineteen twenties because of
the horror of war, of the pandemic of the Spanish
flu pandemic. I mean, people realized how fragile life was,
(22:24):
and the times were good. There was plenty of money.
Barry knew how to get plenty of money, so he
lived accordingly.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
How much do you think his experience in the war,
which sounds terrible, not surprisingly, how much do you think
that played into his life later on in this attitude.
I mean, is this maybe a little PTSD coming out
and that's what's happening or what do you think?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, no, I mean I think he certainly knew what
a gun could do, so that might have put him
on edge. I think he had endured a risk to
see this as a manageable risk, and again that would
maybe play into the care, the care and the planning.
I mean right down to the fact that he would
(23:11):
wait for a time nights when there was no moon
so it would be darker. And you know, I'm reading
this in the research and I'm thinking, well, is that true?
And then I looked at some of his long island crimes.
They were all a month apart on new moons. So yeah,
that's so this was the kind of care and planning
he took. I think he was scarred to some extent
(23:34):
by that. But I don't want to overdo that because
throughout his life interviews, he gave a memoir published decades
ago that he cooperated with just his own words. I mean,
you really get the sense of this fellow who was
a product of his time. It's like and even said,
you know it was the times, why not live? Well,
(23:54):
he didn't have a trust fund, he didn't have jewelry
unless he went out and stole it, and he he
wasn't playing the stock market, so he had to find
some way to get into this frenzy of easy money
that defined his time.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Well, I could be wrong, but my reading of the
other book you did about Doctor Cream, I could not
find anything redeemable about Doctor Cream. Did you find anything
that you felt like would be relatable to a reader
about Arthur Berry? Just based on saying sort of this
is a victimless crime and maybe trying to justify it
(24:31):
to himself a little bit, Do you feel like there
was anything redeemable? Did he do anything for anyone else
other than himself?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well, this leads to where the story goes, because, Okay,
as good as it was to this point, what happens
after he's caught in nineteen twenty seven really gives a
measure of the man, because I maybe we should as
good a time as any to talk about that. In
the mid twenties, he meets a woman named Anna Blake,
(24:59):
a recent widow, and it suddenly becomes a love story.
Now it's pretty clear that she doesn't know what he
does for a living, and she's actually a political operative
in the Tammany Hall organization and she's quite well respected.
They get married. For two years they're married, all seems
(25:20):
to be going well. She doesn't pry into his business.
She thinks he makes his money gambling. But then in
nineteen twenty seven, he's caught and worse, Anna Blake is
caught with some small a small amount of jewelry that
Barry had stolen and given to her. So he confesses
(25:41):
to save her from being charged and goes to prison,
and he's facing twenty five years in prison. He even
says as he goes in, by then, you know we
won't have cars, we'll all be driving airplanes. Well that
that didn't happen, but a few years in. By nineteen
twenty nine, he's in some of the toughest prison is
a New York state and he finds out Anna has
(26:02):
cancer and he's afraid above all else that she's going
to die and he won't be there for So he
plans a prison break and he breaks out and gets
shot twice bus his ankle jumping off a wall, gets
out with four other guys and sparks one of the
bloodiest riots they've left, but one of the bloodiest riots
(26:25):
in New York prison history is sparked by this, and
it gives him some time to live with her as
a fugitive.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Ok. We have to go back and talk about this
in more detailed, Diana. So he is turned in by someone, Right.
He is stealing from people for about off and on
for seven years, right, and we're saying upwards of sixty
million dollars worth of jewels, and he has caught. Do
you from the confession? Now, I'm glad to know what
(26:55):
the sources from his confession. Did you get a sense
that this was a relief a little bit that he
was caught or was he devastated because of course you
know he has Anna.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Now, well, I don't think he was happy about it
because he knew he was going away for a long time. Yeah,
but he did the noble thing. He loved her so
much he did not want ertaint it by this, so
he made a deal with the District attorney in Nassau County.
He said, look, I'll tell you what I did, but
you got to let Anna go. And they were convinced
(27:27):
that she didn't know. And there was really good detailed
the police in the room when he confessed, and the
DA actually did accounts of this, and it was pretty
clear that she was beyond mortified and shocked when she
found out what he really did for a living. But
she stuck by him, so he never stood trial. He
pled guilty, was all over in a few minutes in
(27:48):
a courtroom, twenty five years a twenty five year sentence,
and he was looking at being well into his fifties
before he ever got out. And I was about eight
years older than him, so he knew that there was
no guarantee. She'd promised to wait for him, and she
did visit him in prison, but for the first few
years there was no way of knowing when the ordeal
(28:10):
would end.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Well, tell me a little bit about Anna nineteen twenties
and she's a political operative for Tammany Hall Democrats. That
number one seems like a surprising job. To me, but
maybe you can describe a little bit about what she did.
And number two, was she affected by everything that happened
once it was revealed she.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Was part of a new wave or a wave of
women who became involved in politics after women got the
vote in the early nineteen twenties, so they were able
to vote for the first time, and then in the
nineteen twenty presidential election, so the political powers that be
recognized the power of women in politics, and Anna became
(28:52):
a pole captain. So she was responsible for several blocks
in southern part of Harlem. Her job was to be
the eyes and ears for the political boss if someone
had a problem, if somebody needed a job. And yeah,
I mean it was patronage and corruption. And she worked
for a fellow named Jimmy Hines, who a decade later
(29:16):
went to prison for racketeering and collusion with gangsters. But
this was all in the future. There's no evidence that
she was any more than a good, loyal, democratic porty functionary.
But how this affected her job, well, Jimmy Hines, of
all people, totally disowned her, even though she clearly worked
(29:36):
for him for years and then because of what's about
to happen, with Arthur Berry's return, she drops off the map,
so she stops doing that so she can be with him.
And of course she's under suspicion of knowing what Berry's
up to and where he might be after he escapes,
(29:57):
So that's kind of the end of her. But she
was fascinating because it was such a wonderful window into
the role of women in politics in the twenties. And
that's one thing I was really glad to do, was
to make her a full character in this. She hadn't
been in the bits that had been written about this,
but I found a tell all series she did for
(30:20):
King Features, one of these syndicated and full of photos
all about her background, how she reacted to all this.
It was just wonderful stuff, and it made her such
a big part of the story. And she was written
out of history so much that when I talked to
Barry's relatives, I mean some of them had never even
(30:41):
heard of her, and they never knew he was married.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
So it was recovering her as a character. You know.
It's like I said, I started out telling a true
crime story and it turns into this tragic love story.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
So she sort of disappears from the pages you know,
of history, and I think it's wonderful. I always try
to find good female characters in a story. We often
write about men committing crimes, and sometimes there against women,
and many times that there against women. And so when
we have someone there who is another character that you
can develop, particularly like what you did shining a light
(31:16):
on I did not know that women were becoming more
involved with politics in nineteen twenties New York. So that's
really fascinating. So let's pick back up with Arthur Barry.
He is sent where to prison once he pleads guilty
and takes the plea deal.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
He's initially sent to sing Sing, the notorious prison on
the Hudson, and that actually is is it's the closest
major prison to New York City, so Anne is able
to visit him. But then he ends up sent to
Auburn in the Finger Legs area, much more distant, much
harder to get to, and and he's in there in
(31:53):
nineteen twenty nine, when Anna well, he can tell her
health isn't good, and she doesn't want to tell him.
When he finally discovers she has cancer, you know, cancer,
nineteen twenty nine you know, the prospects weren't good. I
don't know a lot of the details more than that,
really what kind or what intervention was taken. It's just
(32:16):
over the next number of years her health was precarious
at times. And this resolves Barry again, sort of like
a knight in shining armor, to decide he's going to
risk everything to be with her. He didn't care about
his freedom, He just wanted out to be with her.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, before we get to the way he gets out,
tell me about Sing Sing, because I've written about Auburn,
and we've also Paul Holds and I and Buried Moones
have tackled his story about Auburn State Prison. And I
will want to ask you some questions about what their
system was when Arthur Barry was there, because they had
an unusual system in the eighteen hundreds. But tell me
(32:57):
why Sing Sing when he was there, Why Sing Sing
was so notorious.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
There was a warden called Laws who was there in
the twenties who was a real progressive ward and progressive
in penalogy. So the conditions weren't as die or as
draconian as they were in the nineteenth century, but the
facilities were, I mean Barry was in a three foot wide,
(33:23):
six foot deep stone lined coffin basically that passed as
a cello. There was moderate modernization underway, a new prison
was being built on the hill above the old one,
but Barry wasn't there for any of that, so he
was at the tail end of some of the worst
of it. And of course Sing Sing was the sight
(33:44):
of a death house and the electric chair, so you know,
he was there when some other notorious murderers were executed,
but he was only there for a couple of years.
But actually in his time there he became the protege
of a fellow named Chapin, who had been a newspaper
(34:05):
editor in New York who'd murdered his wife. And Chapin
became known as the Roseman of Sing Sing and because
he landscaped it and just took a desolate prison yard
and turned it into a garden worthy of the kind
of estates that Barry would have robbed. And so Berry
worked with him for a few years at Sing Sing
(34:28):
before his transfer. And Auburn was again very old institution.
We're talking nineteenth century constructions, so it was still a
pretty brutal. It was a really brutal place to be. Now.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I don't know if it was like this in nineteen twenties,
but my third book actually was about Edward Ruloff, who
was in Auburn State prison in the eighteen forties, and
Paul Hols and I tackled a case about a black
man who was erroneously imprisoned for stealing a horse at
the exact same time that Edward Rulolf was there. And
(35:07):
for those two stories I was able to piece together
just horrific, what a draconian, terrible place. When both of
these men were there. They had the silent system where
every man got his own cell, but no one was
allowed to speak ever, or you were severely beaten, which
Edward Ruloff, as a scholar, loved, the man I think
(35:29):
it was Thomas Jennings hated. So it was the worst
of the worst. Do any of these things ring a
bell with you? For nineteen twenties when Arthur was there,
I know he was only there for a few years.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Right. The Auburn system, which is what it became known
as because it was pioneered there, is exactly as you've
described it. But by the nineteen twenties that was over
the men weren't wearing striped uniforms, they weren't walking in lockstep.
There was no rule of silence. But what they really
had was overcrowding. The prison was horribly overcrowded. Men were
(36:04):
sleeping in the hallways, and the facilities were a century
on a date. So it was just it was more
the conditions were bad. Any infraction of rules minor or
otherwise instant of exile to solitary confinement.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
So tell me before his escape, how Arthur had spent
his time there. Was he doing work? Was he getting
along with everybody? Did you get an impression about how
he felt about Auburn?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Well, he he was the kind of guy I could
get along with anyone, you know, don't forget. I mean
he was he was charming enough to pass as some
kind of gentleman who had been invited to the party
of the rich and famous. So he was very adept
at that, you know, no sense that he didn't get
along with other people. He worked in the carpentry shop
(36:57):
at one point. Really his time in alle because at first,
because of the separation, it was really difficult for Anna
to visit as often, and the bigger concern became her
health started to make it hard for her to visit too.
He spent a lot of his time figuring out how
to get out of Auburn and enlisting a few men
(37:20):
to help them.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Well, let's go through that. Tell me, you know, and
in as much detail as you can, tell me what
ends up happening, what's the day like, and what is
his preparation like for this.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
What very figured out was that there was a sort
of a built in vulnerability to the prison. A couple
of guards on a Sunday when the most guards we
hit the day off were between the inmates and the
armory where all the guns were stored in case there
was a breakout. So enlisting what was known as a trustee,
(37:53):
an inmate who was seen as not a threat and
not an escape threat, they got him to knock on
the door and he was allowed into this sort of
outer guard room, and then Barry and three of his
friends rush in and overpower the guards helped themselves to
some guns. So now they've got to get out. Whether
(38:15):
this was planned or not. One of the men went
to a balcony and the prison yard was full of
inmates who were just you know, enjoying stretching their legs
or playing pickup baseball or whatever in the yard, screams
at them, holds up a gun, screams at them, and says,
now it's your chance join us. So that's what sparked
the riot. Wow, Barry and his companions head for the
(38:39):
front gate. They use a guard as exactly where Barry's
standing was not clear, but he's part of the group.
They're using a guard as a human shield. The guards
on the wall are hesitant to take shots because they
can't tell friend from foe. Some of the inmates of
grab bits of yards uniforms. This all ends with Barry
(39:03):
trying to figure out whether to jump when he shot twice,
and the decisions made for him, and he goes over
the wall. He gets away, but I'll leave the rest
of that to your imagination. Do you read the book?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
So he gets away, and then he ends up reuniting
with Anna, who is a long way away. I mean,
what is that travel like? To get from where Auburn
is to wherever she is?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
He stole a car for part of it, took a train.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
He was banged up, bleeding from being shot.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Nobody challenged him. He said he had a cover story
that he'd been in a barroom fight. I'm not clear
if he ever had to use it, but he got
back to New York and she had a place waiting
for him. He laid low there. They ended up in
New Jersey and ultimately in a rural part of New
(39:56):
Jersey where he thought he'd be safe. And for a
number of years, even though the police were watching Anna
figuring they could find Anna, they could find him, they
were able to sort of carry on some of the
Anna later described it as the best years of their lives.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Were you surprised that Anna was okay with this some
woman who is obviously progressive and working for Tammany at
the time, and her career is ruined by her husband,
and then you know, this happens. It just seems like
this is not part of her moral compass either.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Well, as I said, it's a love story. She never wavered,
she never wavered in her support. Wow. Yeah, she'd been
horribly betrayed. He lied to her, He put her in
jeopardy of going to prison. She forgave all that. The
depth of devotion is amazing, and the risks she was
willing to take, I mean, she could have been charge
as an accessory or harboring a fugitive after he got out.
(40:53):
The way she put it was, you know, anytime I
can spend with him, I'll do it. I'll do what
it takes. And I mean other than harboring a fugitive
her husband, I mean she didn't break the law otherwise.
I mean she was a you know, she didn't fundamentally
change from being a law abiding person. But she made
it clear that this was her priority, and he done
(41:16):
this for her, and she would do what she could
for him.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
I'm curious did anybody else escape along with him, and
if so, what happened to those folks?
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Well, the three more escaped, and within weeks or a
couple of months, they were all rounded up. And that
left Barry Yeah as the one who seemed to have
made a clean break of it. And just the speed
with which some of the other escapees were caught probably
(41:45):
reflected how well he planned not just the break in,
but what he would need when he get out, and
of course having Anna to help him.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Now give me the times here, So when does he
go into prison and when does he escape?
Speaker 2 (42:00):
That timel like he goes in in the summer of
nineteen twenty seven. He escapes in the summer of nineteen
twenty nine. So he's in Sing Sing and in Auburn
at that point for a little over.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Two years, and she has cancers starting in I'm assuming
nineteen twenty nine, and that's why he tries.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
To leave exactly. Yeah, that's as best as I can determine.
This is why he escapes in nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
So he is reunited with her. They have wonderful years.
It sounds like together. When do things change for him
where we now have this confession He just my chance.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Is spotted, And part of what catches him is he's
a bit of a stranger in rural New Jersey at
a time when every citizen of New Jersey and policemen
and law enforcement official is looking for the Lindberg kidnapper,
and he gets on the radar that way, he's actually
(43:01):
accused of being the kidnapper, because of course he was
an expert break and enter artist. He never kidnapped anyone.
So there's a flurry of press attention saying is that
Lindbergh kidnapperr been caught, But that's ultimately how he was exposed.
But before he was arrested, they knew who he was,
but he got on the police radar. He was using
(43:24):
another name. He was calling himself Jim Toner, but ultimately
was arrested in nineteen thirty two sent back to prison.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
So he was out for three years. And how was
Anna's health during this time?
Speaker 2 (43:38):
At times, well, she sort of helped nurse him after
his gunshot wounds. She makes it clear that there were
times when she was so ill he had to do
everything for her as they were living this life under
the radar. But she came through that and she lived
till nineteen forty.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Again, I just don't know the details. There's not a
lot of d tale about what she had and how
she dealt with it. It sounds like most of the time
she was in pretty good health because, as I said,
she would later say, it was the best cheers of
their lives together.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Now, under what circumstances do we have Anna's side of
the story? You said she did she write a memoir
or something.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, she did a syndicated series of features for one
of the syndicates, and so every week for seven or
eight weeks, there was a different aspect of her story
Their lives together. The headline was my life of love
and fear as the wife of the great jewel Thief,
(44:41):
something like that. It was the same headline every time,
and you know, full of photos of their lives together,
very candid stuff. It was material I saw nowhere else.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
What motivated her money? They must have paid her a
lot of money for that.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I suggest that she probably was. I mean by then,
I mean, you know, the press had everything from her
fact she was older than Barry, to her looks, to
actual accusations that she was like a gangster's accomplice. She'd
(45:16):
endure it a lot from the press, so it must
have taken quite a bit for her to want to
tell her side. But I think it also speaks of
her courage and her determination that despite you know, the
way this can be twisted against her, that she defended
herself and Barry as well well.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I always think it's interesting when criminals write not Anna
but Barry, When criminals write up their story and you
know they're trying to take control of their narrative. What
do you think Arthur Berry's motivation was to write this
book or to be involved with this book. Do you
think that there was a narrative that he wanted to
(45:57):
control here.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
This would be the one in the early six teasing
me the memoir. He wasn't really a memoir. It was
a journalist named Neil Hickey did the book, and it's
not really ghost written. It's based on extensive interviews with Barry. Well.
Barry tried to live down his past, and he actually
went back to his hometown of Worcester after his eventual release,
(46:21):
and that's where we get sort of the redemption arc
of the story. From then on, he's a model citizen.
He's elected by his fellow veterans as head of one
of the local veterans association. He's declared Veteran of the
Year in Worcester. At some point he had told his
story to a couple of feature writers. He appeared in
(46:44):
Life magazine, which described him in the mid nineteen fifties
as the greatest jewel thief who ever lived. And that's
how I discovered his story. I found that article, it's
digitized online, and I thought, this is a great story.
And then Neil Hickey did a couple of features for
him for a magazine and that led to the relationship
(47:04):
where they expanded it into a book. So I think
by then he had proven himself to have lived it down,
to have lived down is past, and he comes out
of the he comes off as sort of this exotic
living embodiment of the nineteen twenties excess, you know. And
(47:25):
I think the fact that he never hurt anyone. I mean, yeah,
he broke out of prison, but he's the one who
got shot, right. I just think he made him this
kind of likable rogue. And so he goes on to
even being on Johnny Carson when the book's being promoted,
and Johnny Carson asking the question everyone always asked, you know,
(47:49):
what happened to the loot? He always insisted there was
no loot, He had no buried stash waiting for him
when he got out. There's no evidence he did. And
he's said he very candidly said, no, I blew it
all and I wish I'd saved it.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
What do you think is the theme of your story?
What do you want people to walk away with by
the time they reached the very last page of the book.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Well, I hope they'll think of it as what it is,
which is an incredibly amazing romp through the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties. I hope they'll be engaged by his audacity,
his skill. You know, there's some bizarre, stranger than fiction
moments here that are absolutely true. But I also think
(48:38):
that in the true crime, especially historical true crime, can
do more than just this is what happened. It's what's
to tell us about the time. And Barry is such
a product of the time. You know, he even said himself,
you know, I could have made a mint on Wall Street.
I was a smart guy, I knew my way around,
I was charming. I just picked a different kind of business.
(49:02):
But he was very much a product of that live
for the day, live in the moment attitude that pervades
the writings of Scott Fitzgerald, that pervaded the decade, and
his story then goes into the nineteen thirties, where suddenly
it's darker, sort of rollicking crooks like Barrier now replaced
by public enemies like Bonnie and Clyde and Dillinger, you know,
(49:25):
who are killing people. And the mood darkens, the economy darkns,
life darkens, and all of that excess of the nineteen
twenties is gone, all that luster, and people are paying
the price economically in their lives and so is Barry
because now he's in prison.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
If you love historical true crime story, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget. There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi.
(50:22):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by
Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and
Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More
Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The way you described it was look it was the
times it was easy come, easy go, and as well,
he knew that his next job could be his last.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:50):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. We've had this author on
before when he talked about his book on serial poisoner
(01:10):
doctor Thomas Neil Cream. Today, Dean Job tells us about
a different kind of criminal. A man known as the
Prince of Thieves. Arthur Berry stole from the rich and
the jazz age and then offered a detailed confession when
he was caught. How did he get away? With it
for so long. It's all in the book A Gentleman
and a Thief, The Daring Jewel Heists of a jazz
(01:33):
age rogue. Tell me where you think we should start
with this story. Do you feel like we have a
lot of information about Arthur Berry, who's the center of
your book.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Barry was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, factory town in central
Massachusetts and Irish extraction. Large family found it certainly when
he went looking for work as a young man. Given
he was known to a bed brushes with the law
and Worcester, he had trouble getting a job. There was
also some prejudice against Irish Americans. He sort of attributed
(02:09):
his life of crime to the fact that he looked
much older than his age, so he ended up getting
a job as a teenager, only thirteen or fourteen. Of
all things, he was a courier carrying suitcases full of
nitro glycerin to safecrackers, so he was seen as someone
who could pass as a student heading to college or
(02:31):
just an innocent young man. And this fellow who distilled
a nitro glycerin for safecrackers recruited him and that was
his entry into crime. He did some break ins and
was ultimately caught for some petty crimes and put in reformatory.
But his big break, I guess for one of a
(02:53):
better word, was the First World War. He enlisted and
became a medic, was known as a first aid man,
so he was sent overseas, and while his job was
to save lives, he was actually in the thick of
every battle. These first aid men had to risk their
lives to try to retrieve horribly wounded men from the battlefield.
(03:17):
He was gassed, he was shot, He was recommended for
a medal for bravery. He was a hero. He came
back a war hero, only to find that because his
return was delayed, he was kept overseas for almost a
year and an occupation of Germany. By the time he
got home he couldn't get a job. And that's when
(03:38):
ultimately he described making the decision how was he going
to make a living? And the only thing he knew
really was how to break the law. And he didn't
want to rob banks because he didn't want to have partners,
and he didn't want to use guns, and he didn't
want to hold up people in the street. And he
thought most elegant way to make money was simply be
a sneak thief break into their houses at night. No
(04:01):
one's hurt. He doesn't even have to confront his victims.
And that's ultimately what he not only started to do
but mastered.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Where did he lose sight of his moral compass? I'm
always interested in that answer. Is it that he grew
up around people like this and he didn't know anything differently?
I know we've kind of talked a little bit about
the lack of opportunity for him, but man, that just
seems like what happens to someone or to Arthur Berry,
(04:29):
to make them say it is okay to take from
people when it doesn't belong to me. Do you have
any idea?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, yes, because I deal with this in the book,
because at one point he says, a woman who can
walk around with a quarter of million dollars with a
pearls in her neck doesn't have to worry about where
her next meal is coming from. He was quite mercenary
abote it in the sense that he said, look, these
are rich people. The jewels are insured, often insured for
(04:56):
inflated prices. People are flaunting this wealth. I'm just going
to relieve them of it. And since he wasn't a
violent man, and since he wasn't, you know, his mo
was to not confront victims, you know, to sneak into
their houses. If he did end up in a bedroom
where there was someone by surprise somebody was there, or
(05:19):
he was interrupted mid robbery, he was very gentlemanly, very polite,
put them at ease, you know, just here for the jewels,
don't worry. So he was a different kind of criminal
in that sense. So his moral compass isn't quite the
same as a totally law abiding person, but he's got
some standards that keep him from tipping over into a
(05:41):
more violent, scary kind of crime. One thing I talk
about in the book is jewelry is the ultimate luxury item.
I mean, you can have one hundred thousand dollars sports car,
but you can still drive it. But jewelry is just
something to be you know, you're blak. Is just something
to be displayed and fussed over, or it's the ultimate
(06:06):
way of displaying your wealth. And I think that says
something about the kind of warped but understandable code he had.
I'll just take things that people can definitely live without, you.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Know, when I spoke to the author about the Dallas,
Texas thief, and I sort of framed it as, did
he think of this as a victimless crime, like what
you're saying? Arthur Berry was saying, it's bling, it's you know,
you're showing this off, And she said, I know that
people will think that, except that her burglar stole some
very very sentimental items from people like that had been
(06:43):
in their family for hundreds of years. So it's not
all the showiness. It's the sentimental part of it. And
on top of that, it is the feeling of invasion
that somebody is sneaking around your house, which frankly is
my worst nightmare, somebody in the walls or someone sneaking
around the house, regardless of their intent so interested in
(07:04):
the cat burglar. But at the same time, it's also
just horrifying to think that someone could be around the
corner and you don't you don't know what their intention is,
even if it is just to steal and leave and
not hurt you.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
No, absolutely, and there's certainly elements of that in Barry.
At times he was stealing sentimental items in some cases
just just throwing them away because they know they had
sentimental value, no value to him. And certainly there is
the intrusion, the violation of privacy, and you know, I
(07:36):
don't make light of that at all. That was a
definite element here. I mean sometimes he was and many
of his break ins he became known as the supper
time burglar or the dinner burglar, because people would be
even entertaining down below in their dining room and he's
going through their bedrooms. He morphed to having in a
(07:59):
car helpless carrying guns. He said he never wanted to
use them. He never did, and actually sometimes confronting people
in their bedrooms because one of the problems he had
as a dinner burglar is the jewels he was looking
for might be worn downstairs. He couldn't get access to them,
so there was that horrible violation of privacy. And as well,
(08:23):
he would often he was meticulous planner. He would get
up in a tree or break into an unoccupied estate
next door to some long island estate so he could
watch the comings and goings and get a sense of
when was the time to do his break in. So
(08:44):
very intrusive that way as well. But on the other
hand he was often identifying as targets because they were
women who were showing up in the society pages of
the newspapers. I mean he called society writers his on
winning accomplices, because he would see a photo of some
rich oilman's wife with her resplendent in her pearls, and
(09:07):
then he knew who to start finding out where they lived,
stake out their mansion, maybe crash a garden party as
a posing like a guest in a tuxedo, which he did,
and then he would wander the house and try to
get a sense of where the jewels might be when
he came back, and sometimes even leave windows open so
(09:28):
it would be easier to do.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
In the nineteen twenties. And this is in New York.
What is the process for then fencing whatever jewelry you've stolen?
Is there like a route that a diamond ring would
take so that it was not identified and could go
on the black market somewhere?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
He talked a bit about that. He talked about no
shortage of fences, and he talked about in detail of
the first time he went to a jeweler down on
the Bowery, which was known for underhand or underworld diamond
and gem exchange. And how easy it was to fence,
he said after years later, after he was caught, he said,
(10:12):
you know I had fences, so that would have taken
the Statue of Liberty off my hands, didn't matter how
hot or big it was. But a lot of his
loote he never explained exactly where it went, but it
was quite common for gems to end up in Antwerp,
where there was a huge diamond trade, but it was
(10:32):
affected by the war. New York really in these years
became one of the big centers of the diamond trade.
Barry once said that basically, if you want to find
out where my loot went, just look at some woman
wearing some fine diamond jewelry. It's probably been recut or
reset and it's probably something I already stole.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Well, let's go set the scene for one of these
really good break ins. What's the one that you like
to dig into the most? I know, who are these
people and when do they leave? And how does he
get in? And all of that.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Oh, there are so many. He robs a Wall Street
player named Jesse Livermore, who's a legendary make fortunes Lose
fortune guys of the era whose books on how to
play the stock market are still in print. He robs them.
He robs Jesse Donahue, who is the heiress of the
(11:26):
Woolworth five and dime chain and credibly one of the
wealthiest women in the United States. He robs her suite.
But I do think his most audacious robbery is in
nineteen twenty four, and it's during the visit of the
Prince of Wales, the future Edward the Eighth to Long Island,
which is a spectacle. He's supposed to be there vacationing
(11:50):
it's not an official visit. He's feted by all of
the rich families on Long Island, which coincidentally, of course,
is Barry's hunting ground. And Barry goes to an oilman's mansion,
an oilman named Cosden, who is hosting a party for
the Prince, and he goes there to scope out the
(12:11):
jewels because he figures royalties a good magnet for jewels,
and ends up meeting the Prince and taking him, believe
it or not, on a tour of Manhattan Speakeasi's that night.
So he befriends the Prince of Wales, and then a
few days later he comes back to the mansion and
steals jewels from the oilman and one of his guests,
(12:35):
who was Lady mount Batten. Because of the mount Batten's
the cousin of the Prince of Wales, we're staying in
the mansion. So he managed to rob royalties. This was
a huge international story. Tens of thousands of dollars worth
of jewelry swipe, a huge embarrassment in the midst of
this sort of semi official royal tour, and no one
(12:58):
knew who did it until ultimately, decades later he owned
up to it.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
How did he not get caught? Actually, probably the better
question is how long was it before he got caught?
Was he just really that good or it sounds like
he might have had some close calls.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Well, he really was that good. He started about nineteen
twenty and the next seven years. It's hard to get
an accurate figure. I was able to trace a lot
of his robberies from the press at the time, which
of course at that point wasn't tied to him. No
one knew he did it. In today's money, about sixty
(13:37):
million dollars worth of jules. He's only through fences, only
getting maybe ten percent of that. He was really that good.
He never left a fingerprint, always wore gloves. He would
borrow a ladder from the estate, from a garage or
the estate next door. Particularly planned his exit's, watched for
(14:01):
the comings and goings of security guards. Knew how close
the nearest train station was, because often he wouldn't drive away,
he would just go to the nearest train station, jump
on the train. He was operating in Long Long Island
and in Westchester County, where there were a lot of
estates of very wealthy New Yorkers. He knew the timetables
(14:24):
of the trains. He knew how close the nearest police
station was. He was able to estimate, Okay, if I'm
caught and there's a call, how much time do I have.
He was so good and so smart that, yeah, that's
one of the reasons he was able to go so long.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
At what point do you think the police in New
York are making the connection that you have some wealthy
people who are targeted, and we can talk about some
of those people in a little bit. How long does
it take for the police to make a connection when
the police, I know, are starting to deal with prohibition
and probably some organized and all of the immigrants coming
(15:01):
in and out of New York, and they're busy, But
do you think they've made this connection at some point?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Well, this was another aspect of how smart Barry was.
He targeted a lot of estates in Nassau County on
Long Island, everything from Wall Street big wigs to established
families like the Vanderbilts lived out there. No great Cops
and robbers story is complete without the cops. And there
is a fellow out there named Harold King who rises
(15:28):
to detective just as Barry is starting to rob all
these homes, and he knows there is a connection. He
knows there's somebody pulling these dinner time robberies, and he
always seems to be one step behind, but its very
clear he wants to catch this fellow. Barry is smart
(15:49):
when they finally, like, for instance, at one point, they
start putting patrol cars full of armed police out on
the roads of rural Nassau County around some of these
estates to try to catch him. He simply disappears, and
he surfaces in Westchester County north of New York, same
kind of layout and simply picks up where he left off,
(16:11):
and he becomes known as the latter thief in Westchester County,
and when the heat gets put on there, suddenly Nassau
County gets targeted again. And he only committed he committed
a major robbery at a hotel, the Plaza Hotel in
New York in nineteen twenty five, But otherwise I found
no evidence that he actually went into the city. So
(16:32):
he was dealing with smaller county police forces not as
well organized. That made it a little easier, I think
for him to keep one step ahead.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
And of course, you know, we talk about this with
modern cases, jurisdiction issues when counties don't talk, and certainly
in the nineteen twenties, you would definitely have that. What
about the media, are they picking up on anything. I
know this is happening in far flung areas in Manhattan,
but this seems like a pretty sexy story for New
York City media.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Oh No, the newspapers covered his crimes. But as I said,
as I was doing my research, I had to piece
together from a confession and confessions he made of who
he robbed to then go back and find those those
crimes because of the stature of a lot of the victims. Yeah,
the press coverage there was a lot of press coverage,
(17:25):
great interviews with victims who'd almost caught him. Some of
the victims shot at him, you know. So it was
a dangerous job he had taken on. The New York
Daily News feasted on this kind of any chance to
expose the upper crust of New York society. And so yeah,
(17:46):
there was a lot of press coverage of his crimes.
But of course nobody knows. Sometimes they're linked together. But
as this shadowy Ladder burglar, and for a long time
the west Chest in Nassau County, authorities never put together
that they were all looking for the same person. It
was like there was a different burglar doing similar things
(18:10):
in the neighboring county.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Were burglaries unusual in this time period? Or was this
sort of part of the course for folks like the
Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers, the wealthier people. This is of
course before Adt and Brinks. But were burglary is something
that were unexpected in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
No, and Barry even had a way to circumvent guard
dogs and alarm systems. Guard dogs he would simply feed,
and plus he also had a pet dog. So the
dogs would smell his dog and be put at ease.
And this policeman, Harold King, would showed up at one
estate and the dogs were snarling at him, and he's like,
(18:50):
how could this burglar have done this? Another method Barry
used was he would dress up in overalls and go
to a door and fly us a card of the
security system and say we're here to do maintenance, and
then they would be allowed some servant would allow them
into the closet where all the very rudimentary burglar alarms
(19:12):
were and he'd simply take the main bell, bend back
the hammer that would hit it. Suddenly the alarms deactivated,
and he did that on several occasions. He also liked
when Pinkerton's or some of these other detective and alarm
firms of the time would post a sign. He was
always grateful for the warning that he would then have
(19:34):
to deal with an alarm system.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Did the Pinkertons ever enter into the story into your.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Book, Well, they do in the sense that they're involved
in a couple of the investigating a couple of the burglaries.
There are some other private detectives who become a nemesis
for Barry, but Oddly, one of the detectives, William Burns,
becomes involved because he his agencies looking into it, and
(20:02):
Barry tells the story that he spotted him driving by
one day. He recognized William Burns, who was quite famous.
He'd been head of a precursor of the FBI in
the Department of Justice briefly and was a well known figure.
So Barry followed him home, broke in and stole from
him back, almost as a lark, just to show he
(20:26):
could do it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Was he not scared of being caught, or was he
just that sort of confident, or maybe he didn't care
because he knew at some point he would be caught.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, he cared, and that's why he took on an
accomplice because he started to you know, as there were
more and more crimes and he wasn't the only jewel
thief burglar of the era. He realized he could run
into a watchman who was walking at different rounds than
he caught in his planning, could be a dog he
couldn't do it, could be a homeowner who pulled a
(20:58):
gun on him and he had no time to react.
So he did realize it was a dangerous game and
the way he described that. Now, one thing we haven't
talked about is where a lot of this money went.
And Barry was a gambler.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I was wondering about his life. That was my next question.
Tell me about his personal life around all of this.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
He was like one of these Broadway figures. I think,
like Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. I mean, he
ran crap games, He ran current games, even ran his
own gambling club at one point under an assumed name.
For him, it was, you know, Broadway Chorus girls, gambling
high stakes, blowed tens of thousands of dollars in a night,
(21:40):
never think anything of it, and then go out and
steal more. And the way he described it was look,
it was the times. It was easy come, easy go.
And as well, he knew that his next job could
be his last, so it was live for the moment.
And this is why he's such a product of his time,
(22:00):
that whole generation that we know through the Great Gatsby
and other great works of the twenties. Anything goes, devil
may care ethos that pervaded the nineteen twenties because of
the horror of war, of the pandemic of the Spanish
flu pandemic. I mean, people realized how fragile life was,
(22:24):
and the times were good. There was plenty of money.
Barry knew how to get plenty of money, so he
lived accordingly.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
How much do you think his experience in the war,
which sounds terrible, not surprisingly, how much do you think
that played into his life later on in this attitude.
I mean, is this maybe a little PTSD coming out
and that's what's happening or what do you think?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, no, I mean I think he certainly knew what
a gun could do, so that might have put him
on edge. I think he had endured a risk to
see this as a manageable risk, and again that would
maybe play into the care, the care and the planning.
I mean right down to the fact that he would
(23:11):
wait for a time nights when there was no moon
so it would be darker. And you know, I'm reading
this in the research and I'm thinking, well, is that true?
And then I looked at some of his long island crimes.
They were all a month apart on new moons. So yeah,
that's so this was the kind of care and planning
he took. I think he was scarred to some extent
(23:34):
by that. But I don't want to overdo that because
throughout his life interviews, he gave a memoir published decades
ago that he cooperated with just his own words. I mean,
you really get the sense of this fellow who was
a product of his time. It's like and even said,
you know it was the times, why not live? Well,
(23:54):
he didn't have a trust fund, he didn't have jewelry
unless he went out and stole it, and he he
wasn't playing the stock market, so he had to find
some way to get into this frenzy of easy money
that defined his time.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Well, I could be wrong, but my reading of the
other book you did about Doctor Cream, I could not
find anything redeemable about Doctor Cream. Did you find anything
that you felt like would be relatable to a reader
about Arthur Berry? Just based on saying sort of this
is a victimless crime and maybe trying to justify it
(24:31):
to himself a little bit, Do you feel like there
was anything redeemable? Did he do anything for anyone else
other than himself?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well, this leads to where the story goes, because, Okay,
as good as it was to this point, what happens
after he's caught in nineteen twenty seven really gives a
measure of the man, because I maybe we should as
good a time as any to talk about that. In
the mid twenties, he meets a woman named Anna Blake,
(24:59):
a recent widow, and it suddenly becomes a love story.
Now it's pretty clear that she doesn't know what he
does for a living, and she's actually a political operative
in the Tammany Hall organization and she's quite well respected.
They get married. For two years they're married, all seems
(25:20):
to be going well. She doesn't pry into his business.
She thinks he makes his money gambling. But then in
nineteen twenty seven, he's caught and worse, Anna Blake is
caught with some small a small amount of jewelry that
Barry had stolen and given to her. So he confesses
(25:41):
to save her from being charged and goes to prison,
and he's facing twenty five years in prison. He even
says as he goes in, by then, you know we
won't have cars, we'll all be driving airplanes. Well that
that didn't happen, but a few years in. By nineteen
twenty nine, he's in some of the toughest prison is
a New York state and he finds out Anna has
(26:02):
cancer and he's afraid above all else that she's going
to die and he won't be there for So he
plans a prison break and he breaks out and gets
shot twice bus his ankle jumping off a wall, gets
out with four other guys and sparks one of the
bloodiest riots they've left, but one of the bloodiest riots
(26:25):
in New York prison history is sparked by this, and
it gives him some time to live with her as
a fugitive.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Ok. We have to go back and talk about this
in more detailed, Diana. So he is turned in by someone, Right.
He is stealing from people for about off and on
for seven years, right, and we're saying upwards of sixty
million dollars worth of jewels, and he has caught. Do
you from the confession? Now, I'm glad to know what
(26:55):
the sources from his confession. Did you get a sense
that this was a relief a little bit that he
was caught or was he devastated because of course you
know he has Anna.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Now, well, I don't think he was happy about it
because he knew he was going away for a long time. Yeah,
but he did the noble thing. He loved her so
much he did not want ertaint it by this, so
he made a deal with the District attorney in Nassau County.
He said, look, I'll tell you what I did, but
you got to let Anna go. And they were convinced
(27:27):
that she didn't know. And there was really good detailed
the police in the room when he confessed, and the
DA actually did accounts of this, and it was pretty
clear that she was beyond mortified and shocked when she
found out what he really did for a living. But
she stuck by him, so he never stood trial. He
pled guilty, was all over in a few minutes in
(27:48):
a courtroom, twenty five years a twenty five year sentence,
and he was looking at being well into his fifties
before he ever got out. And I was about eight
years older than him, so he knew that there was
no guarantee. She'd promised to wait for him, and she
did visit him in prison, but for the first few
years there was no way of knowing when the ordeal
(28:10):
would end.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Well, tell me a little bit about Anna nineteen twenties
and she's a political operative for Tammany Hall Democrats. That
number one seems like a surprising job. To me, but
maybe you can describe a little bit about what she did.
And number two, was she affected by everything that happened
once it was revealed she.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Was part of a new wave or a wave of
women who became involved in politics after women got the
vote in the early nineteen twenties, so they were able
to vote for the first time, and then in the
nineteen twenty presidential election, so the political powers that be
recognized the power of women in politics, and Anna became
(28:52):
a pole captain. So she was responsible for several blocks
in southern part of Harlem. Her job was to be
the eyes and ears for the political boss if someone
had a problem, if somebody needed a job. And yeah,
I mean it was patronage and corruption. And she worked
for a fellow named Jimmy Hines, who a decade later
(29:16):
went to prison for racketeering and collusion with gangsters. But
this was all in the future. There's no evidence that
she was any more than a good, loyal, democratic porty functionary.
But how this affected her job, well, Jimmy Hines, of
all people, totally disowned her, even though she clearly worked
(29:36):
for him for years and then because of what's about
to happen, with Arthur Berry's return, she drops off the map,
so she stops doing that so she can be with him.
And of course she's under suspicion of knowing what Berry's
up to and where he might be after he escapes,
(29:57):
So that's kind of the end of her. But she
was fascinating because it was such a wonderful window into
the role of women in politics in the twenties. And
that's one thing I was really glad to do, was
to make her a full character in this. She hadn't
been in the bits that had been written about this,
but I found a tell all series she did for
(30:20):
King Features, one of these syndicated and full of photos
all about her background, how she reacted to all this.
It was just wonderful stuff, and it made her such
a big part of the story. And she was written
out of history so much that when I talked to
Barry's relatives, I mean some of them had never even
(30:41):
heard of her, and they never knew he was married.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
So it was recovering her as a character. You know.
It's like I said, I started out telling a true
crime story and it turns into this tragic love story.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
So she sort of disappears from the pages you know,
of history, and I think it's wonderful. I always try
to find good female characters in a story. We often
write about men committing crimes, and sometimes there against women,
and many times that there against women. And so when
we have someone there who is another character that you
can develop, particularly like what you did shining a light
(31:16):
on I did not know that women were becoming more
involved with politics in nineteen twenties New York. So that's
really fascinating. So let's pick back up with Arthur Barry.
He is sent where to prison once he pleads guilty
and takes the plea deal.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
He's initially sent to sing Sing, the notorious prison on
the Hudson, and that actually is is it's the closest
major prison to New York City, so Anne is able
to visit him. But then he ends up sent to
Auburn in the Finger Legs area, much more distant, much
harder to get to, and and he's in there in
(31:53):
nineteen twenty nine, when Anna well, he can tell her
health isn't good, and she doesn't want to tell him.
When he finally discovers she has cancer, you know, cancer,
nineteen twenty nine you know, the prospects weren't good. I
don't know a lot of the details more than that,
really what kind or what intervention was taken. It's just
(32:16):
over the next number of years her health was precarious
at times. And this resolves Barry again, sort of like
a knight in shining armor, to decide he's going to
risk everything to be with her. He didn't care about
his freedom, He just wanted out to be with her.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, before we get to the way he gets out,
tell me about Sing Sing, because I've written about Auburn,
and we've also Paul Holds and I and Buried Moones
have tackled his story about Auburn State Prison. And I
will want to ask you some questions about what their
system was when Arthur Barry was there, because they had
an unusual system in the eighteen hundreds. But tell me
(32:57):
why Sing Sing when he was there, Why Sing Sing
was so notorious.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
There was a warden called Laws who was there in
the twenties who was a real progressive ward and progressive
in penalogy. So the conditions weren't as die or as
draconian as they were in the nineteenth century, but the
facilities were, I mean Barry was in a three foot wide,
(33:23):
six foot deep stone lined coffin basically that passed as
a cello. There was moderate modernization underway, a new prison
was being built on the hill above the old one,
but Barry wasn't there for any of that, so he
was at the tail end of some of the worst
of it. And of course Sing Sing was the sight
(33:44):
of a death house and the electric chair, so you know,
he was there when some other notorious murderers were executed,
but he was only there for a couple of years.
But actually in his time there he became the protege
of a fellow named Chapin, who had been a newspaper
(34:05):
editor in New York who'd murdered his wife. And Chapin
became known as the Roseman of Sing Sing and because
he landscaped it and just took a desolate prison yard
and turned it into a garden worthy of the kind
of estates that Barry would have robbed. And so Berry
worked with him for a few years at Sing Sing
(34:28):
before his transfer. And Auburn was again very old institution.
We're talking nineteenth century constructions, so it was still a
pretty brutal. It was a really brutal place to be. Now.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I don't know if it was like this in nineteen twenties,
but my third book actually was about Edward Ruloff, who
was in Auburn State prison in the eighteen forties, and
Paul Hols and I tackled a case about a black
man who was erroneously imprisoned for stealing a horse at
the exact same time that Edward Rulolf was there. And
(35:07):
for those two stories I was able to piece together
just horrific, what a draconian, terrible place. When both of
these men were there. They had the silent system where
every man got his own cell, but no one was
allowed to speak ever, or you were severely beaten, which
Edward Ruloff, as a scholar, loved, the man I think
(35:29):
it was Thomas Jennings hated. So it was the worst
of the worst. Do any of these things ring a
bell with you? For nineteen twenties when Arthur was there,
I know he was only there for a few years.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Right. The Auburn system, which is what it became known
as because it was pioneered there, is exactly as you've
described it. But by the nineteen twenties that was over
the men weren't wearing striped uniforms, they weren't walking in lockstep.
There was no rule of silence. But what they really
had was overcrowding. The prison was horribly overcrowded. Men were
(36:04):
sleeping in the hallways, and the facilities were a century
on a date. So it was just it was more
the conditions were bad. Any infraction of rules minor or
otherwise instant of exile to solitary confinement.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
So tell me before his escape, how Arthur had spent
his time there. Was he doing work? Was he getting
along with everybody? Did you get an impression about how
he felt about Auburn?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Well, he he was the kind of guy I could
get along with anyone, you know, don't forget. I mean
he was he was charming enough to pass as some
kind of gentleman who had been invited to the party
of the rich and famous. So he was very adept
at that, you know, no sense that he didn't get
along with other people. He worked in the carpentry shop
(36:57):
at one point. Really his time in alle because at first,
because of the separation, it was really difficult for Anna
to visit as often, and the bigger concern became her
health started to make it hard for her to visit too.
He spent a lot of his time figuring out how
to get out of Auburn and enlisting a few men
(37:20):
to help them.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Well, let's go through that. Tell me, you know, and
in as much detail as you can, tell me what
ends up happening, what's the day like, and what is
his preparation like for this.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
What very figured out was that there was a sort
of a built in vulnerability to the prison. A couple
of guards on a Sunday when the most guards we
hit the day off were between the inmates and the
armory where all the guns were stored in case there
was a breakout. So enlisting what was known as a trustee,
(37:53):
an inmate who was seen as not a threat and
not an escape threat, they got him to knock on
the door and he was allowed into this sort of
outer guard room, and then Barry and three of his
friends rush in and overpower the guards helped themselves to
some guns. So now they've got to get out. Whether
(38:15):
this was planned or not. One of the men went
to a balcony and the prison yard was full of
inmates who were just you know, enjoying stretching their legs
or playing pickup baseball or whatever in the yard, screams
at them, holds up a gun, screams at them, and says,
now it's your chance join us. So that's what sparked
the riot. Wow, Barry and his companions head for the
(38:39):
front gate. They use a guard as exactly where Barry's
standing was not clear, but he's part of the group.
They're using a guard as a human shield. The guards
on the wall are hesitant to take shots because they
can't tell friend from foe. Some of the inmates of
grab bits of yards uniforms. This all ends with Barry
(39:03):
trying to figure out whether to jump when he shot twice,
and the decisions made for him, and he goes over
the wall. He gets away, but I'll leave the rest
of that to your imagination. Do you read the book?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
So he gets away, and then he ends up reuniting
with Anna, who is a long way away. I mean,
what is that travel like? To get from where Auburn
is to wherever she is?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
He stole a car for part of it, took a train.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
He was banged up, bleeding from being shot.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Nobody challenged him. He said he had a cover story
that he'd been in a barroom fight. I'm not clear
if he ever had to use it, but he got
back to New York and she had a place waiting
for him. He laid low there. They ended up in
New Jersey and ultimately in a rural part of New
(39:56):
Jersey where he thought he'd be safe. And for a
number of years, even though the police were watching Anna
figuring they could find Anna, they could find him, they
were able to sort of carry on some of the
Anna later described it as the best years of their lives.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Were you surprised that Anna was okay with this some
woman who is obviously progressive and working for Tammany at
the time, and her career is ruined by her husband,
and then you know, this happens. It just seems like
this is not part of her moral compass either.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Well, as I said, it's a love story. She never wavered,
she never wavered in her support. Wow. Yeah, she'd been
horribly betrayed. He lied to her, He put her in
jeopardy of going to prison. She forgave all that. The
depth of devotion is amazing, and the risks she was
willing to take, I mean, she could have been charge
as an accessory or harboring a fugitive after he got out.
(40:53):
The way she put it was, you know, anytime I
can spend with him, I'll do it. I'll do what
it takes. And I mean other than harboring a fugitive
her husband, I mean she didn't break the law otherwise.
I mean she was a you know, she didn't fundamentally
change from being a law abiding person. But she made
it clear that this was her priority, and he done
(41:16):
this for her, and she would do what she could
for him.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
I'm curious did anybody else escape along with him, and
if so, what happened to those folks?
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Well, the three more escaped, and within weeks or a
couple of months, they were all rounded up. And that
left Barry Yeah as the one who seemed to have
made a clean break of it. And just the speed
with which some of the other escapees were caught probably
(41:45):
reflected how well he planned not just the break in,
but what he would need when he get out, and
of course having Anna to help him.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Now give me the times here, So when does he
go into prison and when does he escape?
Speaker 2 (42:00):
That timel like he goes in in the summer of
nineteen twenty seven. He escapes in the summer of nineteen
twenty nine. So he's in Sing Sing and in Auburn
at that point for a little over.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Two years, and she has cancers starting in I'm assuming
nineteen twenty nine, and that's why he tries.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
To leave exactly. Yeah, that's as best as I can determine.
This is why he escapes in nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
So he is reunited with her. They have wonderful years.
It sounds like together. When do things change for him
where we now have this confession He just my chance.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Is spotted, And part of what catches him is he's
a bit of a stranger in rural New Jersey at
a time when every citizen of New Jersey and policemen
and law enforcement official is looking for the Lindberg kidnapper,
and he gets on the radar that way, he's actually
(43:01):
accused of being the kidnapper, because of course he was
an expert break and enter artist. He never kidnapped anyone.
So there's a flurry of press attention saying is that
Lindbergh kidnapperr been caught, But that's ultimately how he was exposed.
But before he was arrested, they knew who he was,
but he got on the police radar. He was using
(43:24):
another name. He was calling himself Jim Toner, but ultimately
was arrested in nineteen thirty two sent back to prison.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
So he was out for three years. And how was
Anna's health during this time?
Speaker 2 (43:38):
At times, well, she sort of helped nurse him after
his gunshot wounds. She makes it clear that there were
times when she was so ill he had to do
everything for her as they were living this life under
the radar. But she came through that and she lived
till nineteen forty.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Again, I just don't know the details. There's not a
lot of d tale about what she had and how
she dealt with it. It sounds like most of the time
she was in pretty good health because, as I said,
she would later say, it was the best cheers of
their lives together.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Now, under what circumstances do we have Anna's side of
the story? You said she did she write a memoir
or something.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, she did a syndicated series of features for one
of the syndicates, and so every week for seven or
eight weeks, there was a different aspect of her story
Their lives together. The headline was my life of love
and fear as the wife of the great jewel Thief,
(44:41):
something like that. It was the same headline every time,
and you know, full of photos of their lives together,
very candid stuff. It was material I saw nowhere else.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
What motivated her money? They must have paid her a
lot of money for that.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I suggest that she probably was. I mean by then,
I mean, you know, the press had everything from her
fact she was older than Barry, to her looks, to
actual accusations that she was like a gangster's accomplice. She'd
(45:16):
endure it a lot from the press, so it must
have taken quite a bit for her to want to
tell her side. But I think it also speaks of
her courage and her determination that despite you know, the
way this can be twisted against her, that she defended
herself and Barry as well well.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I always think it's interesting when criminals write not Anna
but Barry, When criminals write up their story and you
know they're trying to take control of their narrative. What
do you think Arthur Berry's motivation was to write this
book or to be involved with this book. Do you
think that there was a narrative that he wanted to
(45:57):
control here.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
This would be the one in the early six teasing
me the memoir. He wasn't really a memoir. It was
a journalist named Neil Hickey did the book, and it's
not really ghost written. It's based on extensive interviews with Barry. Well.
Barry tried to live down his past, and he actually
went back to his hometown of Worcester after his eventual release,
(46:21):
and that's where we get sort of the redemption arc
of the story. From then on, he's a model citizen.
He's elected by his fellow veterans as head of one
of the local veterans association. He's declared Veteran of the
Year in Worcester. At some point he had told his
story to a couple of feature writers. He appeared in
(46:44):
Life magazine, which described him in the mid nineteen fifties
as the greatest jewel thief who ever lived. And that's
how I discovered his story. I found that article, it's
digitized online, and I thought, this is a great story.
And then Neil Hickey did a couple of features for
him for a magazine and that led to the relationship
(47:04):
where they expanded it into a book. So I think
by then he had proven himself to have lived it down,
to have lived down is past, and he comes out
of the he comes off as sort of this exotic
living embodiment of the nineteen twenties excess, you know. And
(47:25):
I think the fact that he never hurt anyone. I mean, yeah,
he broke out of prison, but he's the one who
got shot, right. I just think he made him this
kind of likable rogue. And so he goes on to
even being on Johnny Carson when the book's being promoted,
and Johnny Carson asking the question everyone always asked, you know,
(47:49):
what happened to the loot? He always insisted there was
no loot, He had no buried stash waiting for him
when he got out. There's no evidence he did. And
he's said he very candidly said, no, I blew it
all and I wish I'd saved it.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
What do you think is the theme of your story?
What do you want people to walk away with by
the time they reached the very last page of the book.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Well, I hope they'll think of it as what it is,
which is an incredibly amazing romp through the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties. I hope they'll be engaged by his audacity,
his skill. You know, there's some bizarre, stranger than fiction
moments here that are absolutely true. But I also think
(48:38):
that in the true crime, especially historical true crime, can
do more than just this is what happened. It's what's
to tell us about the time. And Barry is such
a product of the time. You know, he even said himself,
you know, I could have made a mint on Wall Street.
I was a smart guy, I knew my way around,
I was charming. I just picked a different kind of business.
(49:02):
But he was very much a product of that live
for the day, live in the moment attitude that pervades
the writings of Scott Fitzgerald, that pervaded the decade, and
his story then goes into the nineteen thirties, where suddenly
it's darker, sort of rollicking crooks like Barrier now replaced
by public enemies like Bonnie and Clyde and Dillinger, you know,
(49:25):
who are killing people. And the mood darkens, the economy darkns,
life darkens, and all of that excess of the nineteen
twenties is gone, all that luster, and people are paying
the price economically in their lives and so is Barry
because now he's in prison.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
If you love historical true crime story, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget. There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi.
(50:22):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by
Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and
Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More
Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod
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