I used to steal jewelry.
Not once or twice but over and over again for more than 10 years. A small fortune's worth.
I walked into high-rise, luxury condominiums with nothing but a smile, nice clothes and a couple of lock-picking tools and walked out with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, gold and other special items. It was like a feeding frenzy for me, going through these homes.
I lived in a high-rise, luxury condominium of my own, drove a pale yellow Cadillac El Dorado convertible with a tan top and cocoa leather interior. Beautiful women were always at my side.
I never worked a five-day week. I was into soap operas in the early afternoon and nightclubbing at night. I drank heavily, partied heartily and exercised compulsively. I did the nightclub scene nightly and when the clubs closed, I headed for the after-hours bottle clubs. With me, the party never ended. I didn't have to get up, didn't have to do anything that I didn't want to do.
I wanted people to know that I was doing something illicit and that I had a lot of money. It was part of my aura. I used to wear a 4-carat diamond ring and spend $3,000 for a bottle of wine.
I bought plain, tempered steel lock-picks and had sterling silver handles put on them. They were bolted on with 14-carat studs. Then I had my initials put on the outside of the picks, which is the height of insanity. Because if I got caught, there was no denying they were my picks.
I was a real super-thief. It was a passion, a compulsion, an addiction. And I got gratification from being so public about what I did. It made me somebody.
I also believed what most conscience-free, career criminals believe: "Everything you own belongs to me."
Chopping Wood
Every minute of a jewel thief's professional life is tense. Slinking around ritzy condominiums, breaking into people's cozy homes, thumbing through their lingerie, uncovering their valuables and then running like hell generate a hot rush of adrenaline, one that most people would consider way too stressful to be repeated. But I loved it. It was those moments that I felt most alive. A dangerous situation upped the high because I knew my ass was on the line, that I might either get caught, shot, arrested — or all three — in the commission of a felony.
I committed many, many daytime condominium burglaries during my career. During that time, I cleared a king's ransom in jewelry sales to fences, jewelry stores and upstanding citizens who just happened to be judges, attorneys, big businessmen and your otherwise average citizen.
This, however, is not one of my success stories.
I worked alone most of the time, but there was a period in the early 1970s when a fellow jewel thief and I worked side by side around the high-end condominium developments of Miami.
On one particular day, Angelo and I were dressed in tennis outfits. Tennis shoes, polo shirts, tennis rackets in hand and, of course, tennis bags, which were helpful because we could put jewelry in them without raising eyebrows.
It was broad daylight, and Angelo and I were cruising A1A in Angelo's lemon-yellow Porsche, looking for a tree from which to pluck a tasty peach.
Without a tip, we just looked for good real estate. My approach from back then is still true today: People feel safe and secure in condominiums. There are cameras; there may be a doorman; there may be a pass gate. But you know what? When a thief works a condominium or expensive apartment building, 90 percent of the time, he will still make money. He may have to enter one or two apartments, but he will profit. The sky is the limit because the basic security measures in these properties are all bark, no bite.
If there are 10 buildings in a line, we will obviously look for the least amount of security and the one with the easiest way to get in and out of with our car.
We looked at each other, and Angelo said, "That one looks good," and that was all there was to it. Strict feeling.
Burglary is generally thought of as a nighttime crime, but ours was a 9-to-5 job. We came calling when homeowners were at the office, shopping, or getting a tan at the beach and the kids were at school. Security systems — human or electronic — are more relaxed during daylight hours.
Entering a building, a daytime burglar always carries out whatever he carried in so as not to draw any attention to himself. Usually, I would put jewelry in my pockets — hiding it on my person — and leave.
There was no gatehouse at this condo, but there was a doorman in the building. We didn't come in contact with him, however, because we picked a lock to a side entrance.
Condominiums — like hotels — have main entrances for guests and locked side doors for residents with pass keys. These offered little resistance to master lock pickers like Angelo and me, so that's the way we entered.
Once we made our entrance, it was equally easy to pick a stairwell lock, so we took the stairs on the way up to the top floor. It was no trouble for a couple guys in their mid 20s to climb several flights in a matter of minutes.
We always went to the highest floor: The higher the floor, the bigger the score. Ideally, I wanted the top floor, the penthouse, and I wanted corner units. Those are the most expensive.
When we settled on a floor, one of us would go in a hallway and scope out a nearby door to get a feel for noise and light in the building and individual units. The other guy would stay in the stairwell; two guys alone in a hallway would have brought unwanted attention. It was easier with two guys sometimes; we watched each other's back.
We were checking out the top floor of this condo unnoticed for a good 10 minutes when we agreed via hand signals on a corner unit that felt good.
In the halls, we kept one ear attuned for elevator sounds just in case a resident suddenly appeared on our side of the hall. In that situation, what we wanted to be doing was leaving. When I entered a building, I expected to be challenged by somebody, a resident, a security guard, even the mailman.
Condo residents tend to know everybody who lives in their building — faces, if not names. I never wanted to allow anyone too much time to study my face in the event a fast getaway was necessary. Thank goodness for developers and condo associations that cut corners with dark hallways in even the priciest buildings.
In larger buildings, there might be curved hallways. This one had a long hallway with an elevator in the middle, one stairwell on one side of the elevator about halfway down and a stairwell halfway down on the other side.
Angelo was in the stairwell on the side we were on, listening. He had the door cracked a little bit, so I knew one stairwell was covered.
I walked up and down the empty corridor — quickly and quietly — to get a feel for which units held activity. I could usually hear people who were home. Doors act as sound magnifiers; most are hollow. If I put my ear to a door, I could hear whether people were home. In Florida, for example, the air conditioner should be on even during the winter months. If it is 95 degrees outside and the air conditioner isn't on, people may not even be living in there.
I listened for any telltale sign. If the TV or radio was on, I kept moving. I wanted to be sure people weren't home. And besides listening, I would smell underneath a door for household odors such as cooking or smoking.
There are proper rules to being a good jewel thief. First, you get the address of the building next door. You have to know the layout and geography of where you are to quickly get out and to your car. I always got the address of the building next door because if I was challenged, I could say "I'm looking for Harry Jones in apartment 12."
"Wait a minute, there is no Harry Jones in apartment 12."
I had to be a great actor.
"What do you mean? Isn't this 2012 Main Street?"
"No, this is 2014."
If I was satisfied that the person who challenged me was content with what I said, I kept working the building because it might have been difficult getting in. I would say, "Thank you." Then I'd get in the elevator, go down two floors and continue working.
In the midst of a break-in, I never allowed myself to think about being caught or the repercussions. I knew it was an occupational hazard, but I put it out of my mind. I focused on speed, in and out. I pumped myself up like an athlete or performer.
What I did worry about was the sound of doors opening or closing, or catching a waft of perfume with my nose. Any of that could make my heart skip a beat. It put me on alert; the intensity grew. My hands remained steady but I felt tiny beads of sweat forming on my forehead. I split my brain in half on jobs, half preparing to bolt for the elevator door or stairwell; the other half concentrating on picking the lock at hand.
On this particular job, I was in the hallway, preparing to break into a corner condominium on the sixth floor. Somebody came out of the elevator. I saw him turn in my direction. I heard him before he was aware of me and I started walking toward him. Ordinarily, I would have gone straight to the stairwell, but this was a fast-walking gentleman, 45, 50 years old, tops.
The man challenged me immediately, and he didn't believe a word I said. You could see it in his eyes and in his body language. He got heated. He interrogated me. That rarely happened. Being well dressed — and I was always appropriate for the situation — I looked like I belonged, and I didn't have those kinds of problems. He challenged me, and he wouldn't let it go, and he became loud. We got made in this building.
He said, "Where are you going?"
"Apartment 12, over there," I said.
"Who do you want to see?"
"Mrs. Jones."
"There is no Mrs. Jones here."
I suspect, in retrospect, that building had been recently burglarized; I had no way of knowing for sure. That is when I hit, "Isn't this 2012?"
"No, it is 2014," he said. "You don't look like you belong here."
He kept going like that, so I again pitched the building next door. As an attempt to gain control of the conversation as he attempted to intimidate me, I had two ways to go, be very meek and humble, or, if he was not the kind of person who respected that and would not back off, I had to try to intimidate him. Not with violence or anything — I never carried a gun — but, raising my voice to show annoyance, I said, "You're wrong. I just made a mistake, I am in the wrong building."
But he didn't buy it.
"You don't belong here!" he exploded. "I'm calling the cops!"
No matter what I said to overcome his objections, it was all over. We knew we had to go.
My partner pushed the stairwell door open for me and off we ran. We ran our asses off down those six flights. The game was over; I truly believed he was making the call.
By the time we hit the car, we were totally out of breath, not running now, doing a fast walk, sweating our asses off, but there was no time to stop, no time to discuss strategy. We were like jungle beasts, acting on instinct, sprinting for daylight.
The car was locked; we didn't want our car to get robbed, so we always left it locked, even though that cost us a few seconds. Angelo had his key in hand though and was ready. (When I worked alone, I never carried keys with me, hiding them instead on a tire for a faster getaway. I never carried a wallet on a job, either, just a $100 bill for emergencies. I wanted to be as loose as possible. I didn't want anybody to know who I was if I did get busted. I bought time that way.)
All I could think about was the one and only way off the island and that we were in a neon yellow sports car that was already a cop magnet. With the adrenaline giving way to fear, it was hard to calm down and obey the speed limit within reason. Did I already mention we were sweating our asses off? I can still feel it soaking through my clothes and making the car's hot leather seats slick.
Because nobody saw our car — we knew for a fact it wasn't visible from the sixth floor of the waterfront condo, and the guy we ran into was probably still talking to the cops as we hurriedly pulled out — I thought we'd be OK if we could somehow act like nothing was out of the ordinary. Time became our friend. Every minute that passed, we were farther away, safer, so the time really dragged.
And what were we so worried about? Nobody actually saw us break and enter. And we never entered anyone's apartment. On the other hand, we didn't throw away our lock picks. We had picks in the car, and we didn't belong there, and we were guys with New York accents, and you can just bet we'd get tossed on suspicion, just on general redneck cop principles.
It took about a half an hour and being ensconced in heavy I-95 highway traffic before we felt safe, that we were not going to be caught.
I Know I Can Do That Some kids grow up in a neighborhood where somebody's father was a prominent doctor or a dentist, maybe a butcher or a real estate agent. These people led lives that, through either rich rewards or ethical conduct, inspired a generation to follow in their footsteps.
Where I grew up, the guy who captured my imagination was a well-known and well-respected jewel thief.
Ray was at least twice my age. He was a nice guy and everybody knew what he did for a living; as long as he practiced his art outside our neighborhood, nobody cared. That was separate from who he was as the guy next door or the guy who bought cigars at the corner grocery.
I wanted to learn how to do what he did; I don't know why. I bugged him endlessly.
"What are you, crazy?" he'd say. "Your father would kill me. Number one, you are 15 years old. You don't need to know this stuff."
But I was hypnotically drawn by his lifestyle — the fancy cars, the women, the stuff he accumulated. And he was a cool guy who had attitude, who made his own hours and clearly liked what he did. He was overt. He was on the front line, as we would call it. The loan sharks could loan money and never leave their living rooms; Ray was living life in the real world, seeing colorful places and people that I only knew from black-and-white pictures in books and on TV.
One day, I walked into his home and saw him in his underwear in the living room practicing with his lock picks. It fascinated me. I was relentless for nearly a year before he finally budged. I think he secretly enjoyed the admiration and curiosity he received from me and I finally broke through.
He took a 2-by-4, no more than a foot and a half long — just wide enough for a dead-bolt lock or a cylinder lock to fit on — and practiced on it for hours. It was like picking a real lock.
After months of watching and studying him, my breakthrough came when I said, "I know I can do that."
"OK, kid," he said, "come here."
He showed me what to do, explaining, "It's all feel." You can't see inside where the pins are, and he showed me how to rest the pick over my index finger so I could actually feel the pick inside that lock as each pin went up, one after the other. He told me to count how many pins were inside and get a feel for that.
The first time I tried, he installed a Dexter brand lock on that piece of wood. I opened the lock in about three minutes. He was impressed, and that is all I had to do. I was hooked on the work, and he could no longer say no to mentoring me. It was like getting to be the shortstop for the New York Yankees, like walking on water.
Me and the Wise Guys People are often surprised to hear that, despite my life of crime, I actually attended college for four years — in Alva, Okla., of all places — and have a bachelor's degree in sociology and psychology from Northwestern State Teachers College (now part of Northwestern Oklahoma State University).
What was a nice Jewish jewel thief from Queens doing in Oklahoma?
I came from an upper-middle class Jewish family, so college was always the goal. Jewish mom, go to college, right? And while I enjoyed high school, I didn't do well grade-wise, so there were limitations to where I could apply. Yet I wanted to please my mom.
But college had to wait. I had a higher calling than even a Jewish mother: Uncle Sam.
When I got out of New Town High School in 1962, the Vietnam War was on. My friend Al and I noticed they weren't sending reserves overseas and we figured we could enlist for six months, do our time and not have to actually fight. Little did we understand that we would be on reserve for four years and could be sent to the jungle any time, anyway.
Just before my 18th birthday, I found myself in the army, in New Jersey, at Fort Dix. When I finished basic training — which I loved — I went to cook and baker's school. I liked that, too. Then they assigned me to the 77th Armored Division at Fort Devins in Massachusetts. Six months later, right on schedule, I went home. (Four years of Reserve duty later, I received an honorable discharge.)
Afterward, I enrolled in Northwestern State and I had a ball there.
Fall and winters, I hit the books and kept my nose clean, working toward a degree to make my mother happy.
But while I hit the books in the middle of nowhere, like every other kid I always went home to work during winter vacations and summer breaks. Every summer, I had jobs waiting for me, all kinds of jobs, whether it was burglaries, bartending, helping a loan shark or doing favors, there was a lot of high-paying temptation.
On The Lam When I first left South Florida, there were no cases pending against me. The existing cases were paid off or I won them. When I won, the prosecutors refiled and, not expecting to be so lucky a second time, I drove to Atlanta, where I boarded a plane for San Francisco.
I had phony IDs, but I got a little overzealous and grew a mustache. Then I started running around in raincoats.
I was living with a lawyer friend who knew all about me. I played handball at a health club almost every day with the owner, who was also a bookmaker.
He looked at me one day and said, "You look like a goddamn pedophile. You are going to get arrested just by the way you look. Shave that mustache off. Take that raincoat off. You didn't murder anybody.
"The FBI is looking for you," he said, "but now I will tell you a little secret. Almost all the guys that belong to my gym, the guys that you have been playing ball with, are FBI agents. And they apparently aren't looking all that hard for you."
I laughed.
But being on the lam becomes annoying because it gave me a little taste of what prison would be like.
When I was a fugitive, I felt like everybody knew. Nobody really knew, but that's what it felt like. I became extremely law-abiding during that period when I drove. I didn't want to get tossed or stopped. Other than an occasional burglary, I was very law-abiding in San Francisco. I didn't spit on the sidewalk; I didn't drive fast; I didn't drive drunk; I was polite to everybody. I even stole a little less. It was a big pain in the ass. I got used to it, but I didn't like it. It made me act a little mainstream, and I had to pay attention to authority. I couldn't stand it.
One day, my attorney friend and host in San Francisco bought a local TV station with a buddy of his.
That Christmas, we were at the lawyer's office, celebrating the season. We were drinking quite heavily — his lovely secretaries, myself, he and his partners — when a call came from someone at the TV station. They wanted to borrow the attorney's Rolls Royce for a restaurant commercial, and they also needed people to sit at a sidewalk cafe inside a TV studio. Feeling a good buzz, we all decided to go over, eat some dinner and have some fun.
Being on the lam, I told the cameraman, "Don't shoot me from the front."
Well, we were all loaded and they shot the commercial. About two days later, a friend called. He said, "It's not a good idea for people that are wanted by the FBI to make TV commercials. What the fuck are you doing? I think it's time for you to go."
Busted When I was finally busted for the last time in Clearwater in 1977, it was only because I had come to visit my parents, who were both sick.
The authorities managed to make 11 cases against me. I refused to rat out any of my fences or other buyers of my stolen jewelry. If I had, I might have served a smaller fraction of the 15 years to which I was sentenced.
After nine years in maximum security prisons — five and a half in the Florida State pen, three and a half with federal hosts — I finally made it out in 1988 to a federal halfway house in Tampa.
The guys who were on the bus to the halfway house with me were armed robbers, drug dealers and other violent guys who were away a long time. We all went through orientation together, a program presented by a wiry little guy who looked and sounded like Wally Cox — Mr. Peepers — from an old TV show.
He stood before us, introduced himself, and told us the facility's golden rules to live by. These included:
… "Don't kill anybody."
… "Get a job."
… "Be nice."
… "Love your mother."
… "Eat apple pie."
… "Don't rape anybody."
He snapped them off a second apiece.
"Now here's the rule you must pay attention to," he said very solemnly. "It's the most important rule we have: Don't eat poppy seeds."
Everybody stopped what they were doing.
"What did you say?"
"Don't eat poppy seeds," Blair repeated. "They're on Kaiser rolls, they're on bread, they're on bagels." He ticked off about 20 food items and spent at least 15 minutes more talking about poppy seeds.
None of these big goons — me included — could figure out what was behind his obsession with freakin' poppy seeds.
"Listen," he finally said, his real mettle as a federal bureaucrat at last shining through, "the reason I don't want you to eat poppy seeds is that they show up as an opiate in your urine. Here's the catch for me: If you commit a crime, if you kill somebody, commit armed robbery or do a drug deal, the police do the paperwork. If, however, you take a urine test and the poppy seeds show as an opiate, I have to fill out the paperwork. And I don't like to do paperwork. So the most important thing to remember at this halfway house is this: Don't eat poppy seeds."
99 Bottles of
Booze on the Wall I faced up to my alcoholism after a domestic dispute with my then-girlfriend and our dog. It was an ugly weekend incident: I spent the weekend in jail. The dog suffered more, however: First the county caged him, as it did me, but him they put to sleep.
I knew I couldn't go on this way, so I went to a local rabbi for help. I was desperate, groping for answers.
Finding myself at the doors of a Jewish synagogue was pretty unnatural for me, despite my Hebrew school training and bar mitzvah. Judaism not only wasn't a big part of my adult life, but I didn't even believe in God. Or, I should say, I believed in God whenever it was convenient.
My whole world changed the day I went to see Rabbi Baseman and we stood in front of the ark and held hands while he read from the Torah and prayed for me. That is when my life as an adult truly started, even though I didn't see it clearly at the time.
Rabbi Baseman picked up the phone right then and there and called Barry, the man who became my sponsor in a 12-step program. It was a weekday afternoon, maybe 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and Barry said, send him right over.
At the time I met him, Barry had already been with the program for 12 years. He is a creative, intellectual guy, a very philosophical gentleman. We talked, and he understood.
If I had to jump off a tall building to be a new person and live, I would have done it. I wanted change. I was fed up with my whole shtick, totally disgusted with myself. I would have run through fire, whatever it took, to stop drinking and be part of mainstream society in some manner and be productive.
I am no longer just George, the ex-jewel thief or the ex-felon and just getting by. I feel like I belong in society and I am productive. I no longer don't commit crimes to stay out of prison; I don't commit crimes because it is ethically and morally wrong.
My life, as they say in the movies, is in turnaround. Today I'm a correspondent for Fox TV's America's Most Wanted, where I appear in crime prevention reports called "Street Smart" and "It Takes a Thief," introduced by the world's most famous criminal manhunter, John Walsh.
Epilogue But George, you're thinking, did you sell everything? Didn't you squirrel some of that jewelry away for retirement?
Yes, I did.
A jewel thief needs a war chest because even the best of us will get arrested one day.
I was fascinated by jewelry, the look of it, the feel of it. To this day, if I pass a jewelry store of any substance — Bailey, Banks and Biddle, or Tiffany's — I look at the jewelry in the window, figure out the retail, then figure out my cut if I stole it all. I still do that — a healthy form of mental masturbation.
Anyway, from every score I did, I kept the best piece or the piece I liked the most for myself. Then I'd send it home to my parents' house — may they rest in peace. We buried it in the back yard and cemented it over for retirement.
Occasionally, if I had a problem, I had somebody make a call home to tell my father to rent a pneumatic drill, one of those big jackhammers, to bust up the back porch to get the jewelry and send it to a friend of mine. I had a case in Illinois, for example, that cost me a fortune. A friend of mine laid out $100,000 for me in the Illinois case so I had the jewelry sent to pay him back.
It is all gone — long gone — now. That was my 401K plan. And you want to know something? I have had police with whom I have done community service work take me aside and say, "George, you got a piece left for me? I'm looking for a ring …"
"It's all gone, Harry," I'll say. "It's all gone."
George Feder is now a crime prevention consultant and security adviser who appears at seminars and on television and radio. He can be reached at georgenfeder@ hotmail.com or P.O. Box 418, Indian Rocks Beach, FL 33785.
Bob Andelman is a freelance writer living in St. Petersburg.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2001.