Are there actually any Brilliant Master Thieves, as so frequently represented in Hollywood?
Distinguishing characteristics include:
-Elaborate plans involving floorplans, climbing up air ducts, all-black equipment with suction cups, etc
-Recruiting teams of professional criminals with their own specialties (ie, the explosives guy, the climbing guy)
-Not obviously violent or evil. In fact, quite charming. But a thief
If you are brilliant, you don’t try to climb in air ducts.
If you are a master theif, you don’t have a reputation as a master theif, 'cause no one knows you are theif.
Theives can be charming. Charming is pretty common. Theives can be nice, and very socially adept as well. But, those theives are more likely to become politicians.
Tris
Bill Mason would seem to fill the bill.
Thing is, if you’re brilliant and likeable and utterly without conscience, there are a lot easier ways to make money than by burglery. Sales, for instance.
Of course there have been famous, charismatic con artists who managed to live for years, always a step or two ahead of the law. A couple of early surfing celebrities,
Miki Dora, and Jack “Murph The Surf” Murphy more or less fit this pattern in a general way, though I see from the Wiki article on Murphy that he actually murdered someone.
Weren’t there a series of very well-executed bank robberies (millions of bucks gained)
with no leads? IIRC it was a small team, and not one individual, and very professional.
Wikipedia was no help-the ones listed were all caught within a year.
The master criminal of any stripe is the only person who knows who he is.
He is so smart that he eventually feels the need for someone else to know how much smarter he is that anyone else.
If one other person knows, it is one too many. It will lead to his downfall!
I heard on one of those news magazine shows about a pair of jewel thieves that sounded a lot like the movies, only I can’t remember more than that. They did get caught, eventually.
I can think of three:
Colonel Blood, a charismatic Irish scoundrel, stole the English crown jewels in 1671. He was caught but King Charles II admired his audacity and pardoned him . More info at:
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/England-History/ColonelBlood.htm
Then there was Edward Pierce, a rogue who charmed his way into London society and in 1855 stole a gold shipment being sent by train bythe British government to pay the troops fighting in the Crimea. Michael Crichton wrote a nove, The Great Train Robbery, about the robbery and then made a movie based on it:
The Great Train Robbery (1978) - IMDb
I recommend both the book and the film highly.
My favorite is the story of Doris Payne, an international jewel thief from Cleveland:
If they’re that good, nobody knows them as a thief.
Biggs as a “brilliant master thief”? Surely not. As the Crime Library’s article on him and the robbery makes clear, his role in the affair wasn’t particularly central. Rather than a planner, he was basically a heavy who happened to know a willing train driver who could be recruited into the plot.
His fame largely derives from his years “on the run” as a tabloid celebrity after he escaped from prison. Even then, his success in evading justice had more to do with Brazilian extradition laws than any inate criminal brilliance.
I read something a while back about some criminals who tunnelled into a bank (I think in London) and made off with the proverbial fortune in gold. There was something odd about how they had apparently eaten some chicken off of a solid gold platter or something like that. Of course, can’t find a thing about it.
No London and no gold, but this may be it:
When he was caught in 1980, Bernard Welch lived in a luxurious home with an indoor swimming pool, in one of the wealthiest of the DC suburbs. Police found over $4 million in stolen valuables in his house:
In France, Spaggiari would fit the bill. With a well organized plan, creative use of an alarm clock, tunnel digging, humorous elements (the naked pictures of the local notables left on the vault’s wall) and eventually the succesfull escape from the judge’s office (once again following a creative and humorous plan), mostly every cliche of a movie is there.
Although this isn’t exactly the same type as described in the OP I seem to remember some individual who has sold property in some caribbean or central american country and had quite a few people actually move to what turned out to be practically a wasteland. Early somewhere between early 18th and early 19th century I think. I think a lot of people died, but I could be mistaken. Anybody know what I’m talking about?