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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 5: What do Mobster Meyer Lansky, Banker, John D. MacArthur and
Speaker 5: Jack Murph the Surf Murphy have in common? The biggest
Speaker 5: secret of the century, about the biggest crime of the century.
Speaker 5: That's what now, for the first time ever, the true
Speaker 5: story of the nineteen sixty four Museum robberies and the
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six Hendersonville, North Carolina triple murders, Based on
Speaker 5: an in person interview with Jack Murphy aka Murph in
Speaker 5: twenty fifteen. The author tells a revised version of the
Speaker 5: story that Murph swore was true. This dramatic narrative events,
Speaker 5: reconstructed from several sources, including never before released FBI files,
Speaker 5: takes the reader on a wild ride of adventure, missteps,
Speaker 5: and several surprise endings. You may think you know the truth,
Speaker 5: but you haven't read this story. The book that we're
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is Murph, based on a true story,
Speaker 5: the true story of the nineteen sixty four Museum robberies
Speaker 5: and Hendersonville triple murders, with my special guests Terrence Ryerson Neil,
Speaker 5: journalist and author. Welcome back to the program, and thank
Speaker 5: you very much for this interview. Terrence Ryerson Neil.
Speaker 6: Thank you for inviting me, Dan, I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Good to have you back, and
Speaker 5: very much. We covered then and Bill triple murders a
Speaker 5: couple of years ago my recollection Not So Long Ago.
Speaker 5: Tell us how this is based on a true story.
Speaker 6: It is based on a true story because I had
Speaker 6: decided while I was trying to figure out how to
Speaker 6: tell the story, because it can be very complex, and
Speaker 6: rather than just do a nonfiction kind of dry retelling
Speaker 6: of facts, I felt like it was very important to
Speaker 6: get into the character's heads. So, in essence, the story
Speaker 6: is true. But at certain points during the story where
Speaker 6: I didn't have an FBI file to recreate dialogue, or
Speaker 6: I wasn't the fly on the wall in the poker game,
Speaker 6: I took the liberty of creating what I felt was
Speaker 6: the appropriate dialogue for each of the characters who I
Speaker 6: had gotten to know very personally, and so in order
Speaker 6: to represent that, I created that story and the dialogue.
Speaker 6: And I just wanted to be honest with the readers
Speaker 6: that they would know that they are hearing or they
Speaker 6: are reading a true story. But some of the words
Speaker 6: that I use in telling the story may not have
Speaker 6: been exactly what they said.
Speaker 5: Now, you say, this is a project. This taken over
Speaker 5: eight years of your life, starting with a fictional book
Speaker 5: called The Kill, and then the true story of the
Speaker 5: Hendersonville Triple murders. As we add, as I had mentioned, now,
Speaker 5: one of the characters that you have in here that
Speaker 5: you write from his perspective, is this FBI Special Agent
Speaker 5: William Bean. Yes, so tell us about FBI Special Agent
Speaker 5: William Bean and his involvement in this case.
Speaker 6: Well, when I was trying to figure out how to
Speaker 6: tell this story, of course, every story has to have
Speaker 6: a protagonist and antagonist, and I wrestled with that quite
Speaker 6: a bit. The FBI files that I received from the
Speaker 6: FBI two years ago were based on primarily Agent special
Speaker 6: Agent Bean's notes. There were a couple of other agents
Speaker 6: who wrote some files also for this project, but a
Speaker 6: special Agent Bean was the leader of the Miami FBI
Speaker 6: office in nineteen sixty four when the three as they
Speaker 6: call them surfer boys or certain beach bums or whatever
Speaker 6: they were called, Murph Alan, Kuhne and Roger Clark left
Speaker 6: New York City after robbing the museum and fled to Miami,
Speaker 6: and he was called upon to pretty much organize the
Speaker 6: effort because they had essentially taken the jewels across state lines,
Speaker 6: which made it an FBI case. So Special Agent Bean
Speaker 6: actually is the one who, of all of the characters
Speaker 6: in these stories would have touched on all of the
Speaker 6: different law lives of each of the people involved in this,
Speaker 6: or if he didn't, he would have had knowledge of
Speaker 6: or have known about them. So I kind of use
Speaker 6: him as my neive narrator for the story because because
Speaker 6: of that perspective that he has.
Speaker 5: Now you open with FBI Special Agent Bean, December twelfth,
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy and this isn't He's at the Grady Memorial
Speaker 5: Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. Yes, tell us what he's there
Speaker 5: for and who's there to speak with?
Speaker 6: Sure? Well, the reason he's there is because there was
Speaker 6: a man who was the offence for a lot of
Speaker 6: the criminals in Miami, and his name was Herman Gordon.
Speaker 6: He went by the nickname of High Hy And to
Speaker 6: be honest with you, I want to also make it
Speaker 6: clear that when people read this opening chapter, I want
Speaker 6: them to know that I did not make up these
Speaker 6: particular words. These are the very things that Herma Gordon
Speaker 6: was screaming when he was there in the hospital. I
Speaker 6: took them straight from newspaper accounts, so I didn't make
Speaker 6: any of this up. Agent Bean was on a mission
Speaker 6: to try to find out what happened to the gyms
Speaker 6: that had not been recovered from the Museum of the
Speaker 6: Natural History in nineteen sixty four when it was robbed
Speaker 6: in October twenty ninth. And they had recovered the star
Speaker 6: Sapphire of India, and they had recovered the DeLong Rupie
Speaker 6: in a pretty elaborate ransom scheme in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 6: but the remaining gems had never been discovered, and it
Speaker 6: had always been bothering him that they had not been
Speaker 6: able to find those other gems, and he had been
Speaker 6: led to believe that mister Gordon would know where they were.
Speaker 6: And so the opening scene is Herman Gordon in the
Speaker 6: hospital in Atlanta. Agent Bean is there and he's watching.
Speaker 6: I don't want to give the story away, but he's
Speaker 6: watching as Herman Gordon protests that people are trying to
Speaker 6: get information from him and they're trying to give him
Speaker 6: truth serum. And that's how it opens. And it actually
Speaker 6: happened and Herman Goon and Agent Bean is hoping that
Speaker 6: he can find out what happened to the raining gyms
Speaker 6: before mister Gordon perhaps dies or passes away. And so
Speaker 6: that's how the story opens, is with that.
Speaker 5: So continue with the what information he does get from
Speaker 5: Gordon in this confession.
Speaker 6: Well, the interesting thing about Herman Gordon is that he
Speaker 6: was not really a criminal. He was what he was,
Speaker 6: but he was a person who enjoyed the finer things
Speaker 6: in life. He loved diamonds, he loved all the gems
Speaker 6: and things that criminals would bring to him, and he'd
Speaker 6: often collect them keep them for himself. But he was
Speaker 6: also a fence. He was probably the number one, if
Speaker 6: not the He was in the top ten of all
Speaker 6: defences in the United States, perhaps the world, passing goods
Speaker 6: the criminals had stolen through different hands and collecting money
Speaker 6: and commissions and all this sort of thing. And so
Speaker 6: he had gotten word that a person who said he
Speaker 6: had organized the crime in nineteen sixty four with the
Speaker 6: robbery of the museum wanted to wanted to talk and
Speaker 6: he was going to name names and tell everybody who
Speaker 6: was involved. And Hermon Gordon, who had who had now
Speaker 6: been arrested and was serving a sentence in the same
Speaker 6: place where this other person, his name was Richard Dunkan Pearson,
Speaker 6: where Agent Bean was coming to meet with. Mister Pearson
Speaker 6: had heard about this, and so mister Gordon said he
Speaker 6: wanted to talk to and so Agent Bean sat down
Speaker 6: with Herman Gordon, and he heard a tale that completely
Speaker 6: just blew him away about what really happened and why
Speaker 6: the story happened. Now, I might add that I got
Speaker 6: this information, the original story about how this crime actually occurred,
Speaker 6: in my twenty fifteen interview with Murph the Search, But
Speaker 6: I decided not to have Mrph tell this story because
Speaker 6: he only knew parts of it, and he was actually
Speaker 6: not the major player that everyone thought he was, And
Speaker 6: as time went by, as he claimed to be he was,
Speaker 6: he was not as important, as he let on. And
Speaker 6: so that's how this begins, is Herman Gordon giving Agent
Speaker 6: Being this fantastic tale about how the crime actually occurred
Speaker 6: and why.
Speaker 5: Now after he hears this incredible story, which he thinks
Speaker 5: is almost unbelievable, how does he regard the story?
Speaker 6: Well, Agent Bean actually believes mister Gordon. He doesn't have
Speaker 6: any reason. Gordon doesn't have any reason to be lying,
Speaker 6: and Agent Being actually does believe him, So that's not
Speaker 6: a problem for him. But it's when Being realizes that
Speaker 6: when Gordon is no longer available to interview any longer,
Speaker 6: other people at the FBI, particularly his boss who was
Speaker 6: Mark Felt, and then eventually Jayaker Hoover, realized that a
Speaker 6: tape confession of Herman Gordon telling this fantastic story simply
Speaker 6: isn't enough. There's got to be corroboration from other people.
Speaker 6: So Being gets very, very frustrated. He believes that he
Speaker 6: finally is on the trail of finding these gyms that
Speaker 6: he's been looking for for six years, and now all
Speaker 6: of a sudden, after somebody's told him where they might
Speaker 6: be and who might have them, the FBI is telling
Speaker 6: him it's not good enough. You're going to have to
Speaker 6: go get more information and find somebody who can corroborate
Speaker 6: this story that Herman Gordon's told you. Otherwise, you know,
Speaker 6: we can't let the public know about this.
Speaker 5: Part of his obsession. Bean's obsession is over one of
Speaker 5: these diamonds, the Eagle Diamond and a sixteen carret twelve
Speaker 5: sided sunshine yellow gemstone.
Speaker 6: Why the obsession, Well, the Eagle Diamond is one of
Speaker 6: the most well still is. It is one of the
Speaker 6: most fascinating gems that has ever been discovered, particularly because
Speaker 6: it was where it was discovered, which is in Wisconsin. Diamonds,
Speaker 6: as you know, are quite rare and they only occur
Speaker 6: in very specific places in the world, particularly in an
Speaker 6: area where something called a kimber light forms, and millions
Speaker 6: and millions of years ago, a kimber lights had formed
Speaker 6: on the western coast of Canada, and during the Glacial Age,
Speaker 6: when the ice was pushing everything south, it pushed a
Speaker 6: bunch of kimber lights down into the city of Wisconsin.
Speaker 6: And then in the eighteen hundreds, when a man was
Speaker 6: digging a well, he pulled out this particular stone, which
Speaker 6: he thought was topaz, and he took it to a
Speaker 6: jeweler who paid him like a dollar. It was very minimal.
Speaker 6: I don't recall the exact amount. And then later on
Speaker 6: he found out that he had been taken, that the
Speaker 6: jeweler actually knew what he had but he didn't want
Speaker 6: to tell him. So it's a very rare, unusual diamond.
Speaker 6: And Gordon everybody knew after the gym was stolen that
Speaker 6: this diamond would be the hardest one to find because
Speaker 6: most likely it would be cut because of the fact
Speaker 6: that it was still in a raw state, so it
Speaker 6: could be cut and refined and actually put into different
Speaker 6: settings and nobody would ever be able to trace it.
Speaker 6: And that's one of the reasons he was particularly interested
Speaker 6: in Herman Gordon because Herman Gordon has spent quite a
Speaker 6: few years of his life learning everything he could about diamonds,
Speaker 6: including how to polish them and cut them and set
Speaker 6: them in stones. So Gordon not only had an obsession
Speaker 6: with diamonds, but Bean really, of all the gems that
Speaker 6: could be found out of that collection that was stolen
Speaker 6: and sixty four being just really had an obsession with
Speaker 6: finding this particular stone, or at least finding out what
Speaker 6: happened to it.
Speaker 5: With Bean found out from him that there was big
Speaker 5: names associated in this story. Mayor Landski, John D. MacArthur
Speaker 5: tell us what be thinks of these names and its
Speaker 5: connection to this story and this robbery.
Speaker 6: Well, everybody thinks this is a pretty fantastic story that
Speaker 6: they don't quite understand at first how these people could
Speaker 6: be involved. But when they discover that, well, I don't
Speaker 6: know if you want me to actually give away perhaps
Speaker 6: one of the reasons why this robbery took place, but
Speaker 6: it was it was actually the idea, well it wasn't.
Speaker 6: Actually it was actually the idea of myo landscape to
Speaker 6: do this as a favor to help out John D. MacArthur,
Speaker 6: who was in a buying I don't know if how
Speaker 6: much your readers know about John D. MacArthur, except maybe
Speaker 6: the fact that his foundation sponsors a lot of shows
Speaker 6: on PBS. But he was a pretty cheap, nasty old man,
Speaker 6: and he was actually the second richest man in the
Speaker 6: United States when he died in nineteen seventy eight. He
Speaker 6: made his money a very unscrupulous way with mail order insurance.
Speaker 6: A lot of people sent in dollar bills for John D. MacArthur,
Speaker 6: and he became very wealthy with that He was a
Speaker 6: skin flint and his brother, Charles MacArthur was an author,
Speaker 6: a playwright. He wrote a play called The Front Page,
Speaker 6: and he was an journalist in Chicago. He married Helen
Speaker 6: Hayes in the nineteen fifties. They had a daughter who died,
Speaker 6: and then they adopted a young man who became James MacArthur,
Speaker 6: who was actually on Hawaii five. Oh. So the implication
Speaker 6: was that Helen Hayes was a patron for this museum
Speaker 6: in New York City, the Museum of Natural History, and
Speaker 6: it was not doing very well. The museum was not
Speaker 6: doing very well. It was in all the newspapers in fact,
Speaker 6: that they needed money, they needed patrons. And then the
Speaker 6: World's Fair was there in nineteen sixty four and they
Speaker 6: were changing over from DC Current to AC Current and
Speaker 6: the alarm we're disconnected. Well, Helen Hayes needed some money
Speaker 6: to give to the museum because she was a patron
Speaker 6: of this museum, and she asked her brother in law,
Speaker 6: John Dy MacArthur if he would donate some money, and
Speaker 6: he really did not want to do the donation, so
Speaker 6: he said, I can get publicity cheaper than what she
Speaker 6: wants from me. So if you guys, anybody helped me
Speaker 6: out and figure out why in the world I have
Speaker 6: to give her money and how I can get that
Speaker 6: museums some publicity so that they can get donors. And
Speaker 6: Mayernansky just comes up with this plan. Let's let's steal
Speaker 6: steal some steal something and then we'll play a little
Speaker 6: game and ransom it back and it'll be in all
Speaker 6: the newspaper and John, you can you can pretend like
Speaker 6: you're this big hero and come in and ransom something
Speaker 6: for twenty thousand dollars and you'll be off the hook
Speaker 6: and they'll have donors and wants the publicity. And you know,
Speaker 6: John D. MacArthur at that point is not really involved.
Speaker 6: He just kind of asked for some help. And then
Speaker 6: meyer Lansky asked Herman Gordon and Richard Duncan Pearson to
Speaker 6: get involved and figure out if that museum can actually
Speaker 6: be robbed and if so, can they do it? And
Speaker 6: he said he'll put the bill and help out with expenses.
Speaker 6: And so they Richard Duncan Pearson and Herman Gordon go
Speaker 6: and case the place and find out that Helen Hayes
Speaker 6: was right. The museum alarms have been disconnected. The place
Speaker 6: is just a mess needs to be it's just right
Speaker 6: for robbing, and sounds like a good idea, and so
Speaker 6: that's how it all gets started. It's just a kind
Speaker 6: of a fluke An idea that it was not three
Speaker 6: beach boys who just happened to be in New York
Speaker 6: City in October nineteen sixty four. They there was much
Speaker 6: more to it. There was much more reason behind it
Speaker 6: than these guys just showing up there one night.
Speaker 5: Now Bean finds out the why and the team that's assembled.
Speaker 5: Eventually hears about this team and the skills that are
Speaker 5: assembled with this team, and also the intricate planning by
Speaker 5: Dicky Pearson.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about that well. I think people would have
Speaker 6: to understand that in nineteen sixty four, particularly along the coast,
Speaker 6: the lower southern coast, southeastern coast of Florida, it was
Speaker 6: sort of like the Wild West was in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 6: It was all the rich people were going there. They
Speaker 6: were building magnificent homes and spending the winters there, and
Speaker 6: you could find celebrities and wealthy people and they were
Speaker 6: just flaunting their jewels and going to parties and socials,
Speaker 6: and it was a right climate for jewel thiefs, and
Speaker 6: I have to tell you it was just amazing when
Speaker 6: you go back and read some of the newspaper articles
Speaker 6: of what was occurring there everywhere, from aviagable or being
Speaker 6: robbed at gunpoint while she's in one of the resort hotels,
Speaker 6: to people putting diamonds in their cars to in their
Speaker 6: trunks when they go to dinner after whether going into
Speaker 6: the restaurant or something or coming back out, or some
Speaker 6: voater going down one of the waterways in Miami and
Speaker 6: suddenly a bag flies over the bridge and it turns
Speaker 6: out to hold a bunch of jewels and guns. It
Speaker 6: was just a wild, wild place, and so there was
Speaker 6: there were a lot of jewel thieves in southeast Florida
Speaker 6: along what was called the Gold Coast, and they were
Speaker 6: robbing people constantly, which is why Herman Gordon was there
Speaker 6: as a fantasy. Was the one who was taking a
Speaker 6: lot of this stuff and selling it or keeping some
Speaker 6: for himself, breaking it up. And so one of the
Speaker 6: things that happened is that Richard Duncan Pearson actually was
Speaker 6: he needed money, he wanted he was. He was a
Speaker 6: spoiled rich brat. His great aunt actually was Isidora Duncan,
Speaker 6: the famous dancer who, if you'll recall, was killed when
Speaker 6: her scarf wound around the axle of a car in
Speaker 6: France and it Geork Trevac and broke her neck and
Speaker 6: killed her at a fairly young age. He was also
Speaker 6: from a family of actors, and his father was a
Speaker 6: wealthy stockbroker, and they had retired early and gone down
Speaker 6: to Florida. And well, Pearson he was. He was a
Speaker 6: trust fund kid, as they would refer to him today,
Speaker 6: but he was constantly getting into trouble. He had no
Speaker 6: mind for managing money, and he was constantly broke. He
Speaker 6: was a philandering guy who just was constantly having affairs
Speaker 6: despite being married. And he got involved with a guy
Speaker 6: named Alan Cohn. Alan Cohn actually was one of these
Speaker 6: jewel thieves in Miami who was going up and down
Speaker 6: the waterways and when people weren't home, pulling his boat
Speaker 6: up behind their dock and going in and robbing them
Speaker 6: and making a pretty good money. He was living in
Speaker 6: a very expensive high rise Condomini, a complex on Brickell
Speaker 6: Avenue in Miami. Pearson found out about Kuhn, and it
Speaker 6: turned out that Dicky Pearson actually had a pretty good
Speaker 6: mind for planning and being devious. So it kind of
Speaker 6: worked out pretty well that Kuhn, who had a boat
Speaker 6: and was very sneaky and small and could do that,
Speaker 6: worked pretty well with Dicky, who seemed to have a
Speaker 6: really good mind for logistics. His only problem was that
Speaker 6: he was he really liked drugs, and he really liked women,
Speaker 6: and he really liked money, and he also liked alcohol
Speaker 6: a lot, and he just never knew when to stop.
Speaker 6: So as successful as he could have been at many things,
Speaker 6: he was always doing something that tripped himself up. Nevertheless,
Speaker 6: he was called upon to put together a team to
Speaker 6: go in and rob the museum in New York City,
Speaker 6: and so he was actually the mastermind. It was not
Speaker 6: Murph Jack Murphy. It was it was Dicky Pearson, who
Speaker 6: is the one who planned everything for this robbery.
Speaker 5: Now there is the plan that is set out for
Speaker 5: this robbery, but Dicky Pearson is not loyal to anyone
Speaker 5: except himself. What does he have as an alternative plan?
Speaker 5: What is the what is his orders and what does
Speaker 5: he think about doing well?
Speaker 6: The entire thing was built around one idea, and that
Speaker 6: was steal one gym something really important big that would
Speaker 6: make a lot of news. Steal one gym, hide it someplace,
Speaker 6: do the ransom thing, get publicity, and MacArthur would ransom
Speaker 6: it and that would be that it would all be
Speaker 6: taken care of. So he was told, we're stealing one thing,
Speaker 6: the Star Sapphire of India from the Museum of Natural History,
Speaker 6: and that's all you're supposed to do. Just steal that
Speaker 6: one thing. Can you do that? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: we can do that. But Dicky decides his greed again
Speaker 6: I guess the best of him. He decides that no,
Speaker 6: we're going to tell them that we're going to steal
Speaker 6: one thing. But he tells his boys who are with
Speaker 6: him that are probably going to do this while you're there.
Speaker 6: And as long as you're stealing the star Sapphire, let's
Speaker 6: pick up a few other things. Let's make it worth
Speaker 6: our while. So fill your bags up, boys when you
Speaker 6: get there, and nobody will be the wiser, but we'll
Speaker 6: be a lot richer for it.
Speaker 5: Now, you talk about getting the intel about the alarms
Speaker 5: and these alarms not working whatsoever. They case out the
Speaker 5: place and they can see that there's an access point.
Speaker 5: They have the team and the members that can do
Speaker 5: the job. Like you say, a kun is a small
Speaker 5: guy and known for this kind of crime anyway, So
Speaker 5: what happens with the plan and how does a museum
Speaker 5: in London come into this plan?
Speaker 6: Like I was saying that there was supposed to be
Speaker 6: one one stone taken and just one stone, but after
Speaker 6: Pearson decides secretly that he wants to steal all these
Speaker 6: other things, Herman Gordon says to Mayor Lansky, Well, you know,
Speaker 6: as long as we're doing this, there's some and we've
Speaker 6: got this team assemble, there's some stuff in London that
Speaker 6: I have had my eye on for quite a long time,
Speaker 6: at a natural history museum in South Kensington. And Mayer
Speaker 6: Lansky says, well, if you think that it'll be helpful
Speaker 6: at least, and Herman Gordon says, oh, yes, this would
Speaker 6: be good practice for them. They the museums are very similar.
Speaker 6: They go over there there, we can practice on that museum.
Speaker 6: The alarms are working there, so if they can get
Speaker 6: past those alarms, then they can obviously do the New
Speaker 6: York City robbery. And it'll help me out too, and
Speaker 6: we'll get these industrial diamonds that I would really need
Speaker 6: to have. I really would like to have. But there's
Speaker 6: only there's one other thing that Herman Gorton hasn't told
Speaker 6: by Landscape, which is he wants to actually hit a
Speaker 6: lot of other places in London the next day after
Speaker 6: they planned the robbery for the museum there. So the
Speaker 6: museum in London is a diversion for a major heist
Speaker 6: of multiple gym houses in Pattan Gardens, which is the
Speaker 6: diamond center of London. And I know that people are
Speaker 6: going to say, oh, this didn't happen, This couldn't possibly
Speaker 6: be real. I guarantee you that all of these things
Speaker 6: that I'm telling you actually did happen. The museum in
Speaker 6: London was robbed. They sent a message to New York City.
Speaker 6: Scotland Yard did they send a message to New York
Speaker 6: City after the robbery in October. The robbery in London
Speaker 6: occurred at that museum in July. Know that they had
Speaker 6: no idea who did it. It was amazing because they
Speaker 6: had these fancy alarms. The thieves got in and out
Speaker 6: in such a quick amount of time. But the strange
Speaker 6: thing was that they didn't really take anything that was
Speaker 6: that valuable, just a bunch of industrial diamonds and nobody
Speaker 6: could figure out why they did that. But then the
Speaker 6: next day there was these multiple robberies, all unsolved in
Speaker 6: July nineteen sixty four. Then the robbery in New York
Speaker 6: occurs in October of nineteen sixty four, and Scotland Yard
Speaker 6: immediately reads the articles about this robbery in the newspapers
Speaker 6: and they send a message to the FBI and say, listen,
Speaker 6: the way this robbery is described, the one that coded
Speaker 6: there in New York, the one that you guys are
Speaker 6: right now working on trying to solve. It sounds an
Speaker 6: awful lot like the robbery that occurred here in London
Speaker 6: in July. Could you work with us and tell us
Speaker 6: who you find and maybe we could work together. Well, anyway,
Speaker 6: they ignore London, nobody answers, nobody ever gets back with them.
Speaker 6: So this incredible robbery takes place in London multiple places,
Speaker 6: and it was it was done by the same game
Speaker 6: as a practice for the one in New York City.
Speaker 6: And the only problem is the one in London went
Speaker 6: really really well, and the one in New York is.
Speaker 6: As most people who have read about this story know, well,
Speaker 6: they got away with it, but they got caught pretty
Speaker 6: quickly because of carelessness and just you know, getting Maybe
Speaker 6: they got really cocky about their abilities to do things,
Speaker 6: and so the New York robbery was not quite as
Speaker 6: success as what happened in London. But nobody ever knew
Speaker 6: that these guys were actually involved in what I've heard
Speaker 6: in London too, So that's what happens.
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Speaker 5: we talked about that Scotland Yard contacts New York authorities
Speaker 5: and tells them about the similarities between the London heist,
Speaker 5: Museum heist and the New York heist. But you say
Speaker 5: it doesn't take long before some of these criminals get
Speaker 5: arrested for other things.
Speaker 6: That's correct. Yeah, although nobody is aware of what happened
Speaker 6: in London. Murph and Poon head to Miami immediately after
Speaker 6: the robbery in nineteen sixty four and they give the
Speaker 6: jewels to Richard Duncan Pearson, who they actually have a
Speaker 6: party and they show off the jewels that night, and
Speaker 6: the jewels never seen again. But it's not long before
Speaker 6: the New York City Police Department is contacting the FBI
Speaker 6: in Miami and saying, we have these characters here in
Speaker 6: a hotel for over for like nearly a month, and
Speaker 6: we think they're the ones who were involved in this robbery.
Speaker 6: And we hear that they're in Miami now and would
Speaker 6: you help this? And it wasn't long. They were arrested
Speaker 6: within days. They were arrested within days, but there were
Speaker 6: no gems, so they were actually arrested, but they were
Speaker 6: not held right away for a while.
Speaker 5: Another complication is this, when they were casing out the
Speaker 5: London Museum, an inspector Bliss from Scotland Yard was noticing.
Speaker 5: Wasn't he was paying attention?
Speaker 6: Well, it was pretty obvious that these guys had their
Speaker 6: eyes on something. But now Richard Duncan Pearson was there
Speaker 6: in London under an alias. He used several aliases. He
Speaker 6: traveled but the guard who was a security guard, he
Speaker 6: actually worked for Scotland Yard. He saw these two people
Speaker 6: homing Gordon and Pearson keeping an eye on these diamonds.
Speaker 6: But they left and that happened in March first, that
Speaker 6: was the first time they actually went and cased that museum.
Speaker 6: And then in July when they come back, there actually
Speaker 6: is an encounter between the inspector and Pearson again at
Speaker 6: the hotel, but the inspector still doesn't quite make the connection.
Speaker 6: There's a robbery about to occur and so but luckily
Speaker 6: he does remember these guys and he does have he
Speaker 6: does document what occurs in nineteen sixty four. So he
Speaker 6: has done a pretty good job of documenting Richard Duncan
Speaker 6: Pearson being in London at that time in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 5: Now, how does agent Bean get to find out more
Speaker 5: about these industrial diamonds and the entire plot and plan
Speaker 5: for these museum robberies and the connection to meyer Landskip
Speaker 5: tell us how he proceeds with this and the involvement
Speaker 5: of another interesting character, Harvey Saint Gean.
Speaker 6: Oh, Well, you know, as I said, Miami was full
Speaker 6: of criminals in nineteen sixty four. There's probably quite a
Speaker 6: few there now even it was pretty crazy. And a
Speaker 6: lot of the mom figures organized crime were in Miami too,
Speaker 6: primarily because they had been in Cuba for much of
Speaker 6: the fifties, and of course Castro kicked everybody out in
Speaker 6: nineteen early nineteen sixty complicated everything, but they were still
Speaker 6: living there. So there was an attorney who represented most
Speaker 6: of the criminals in Miami. His name was Harvey Saint Jean. Now,
Speaker 6: so when the guys were caught in Miami, the robbers
Speaker 6: for the museum in New York City, when the guys
Speaker 6: were caught, Harvey Saint Jean represented both of them when
Speaker 6: they were brought back to New York City and during
Speaker 6: their trial in New York City. And he also represented
Speaker 6: Herman Gordon, and he represented pretty much everybody who had
Speaker 6: a criminal record. And the discovery of how London occurred
Speaker 6: was first confessed to Agent Bean by Herman Gordon in
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy and then being had to get this corroboration.
Speaker 6: They knew that two people were still in jail, Murph
Speaker 6: the Surf and Alan Kuhn, and because Gordon had implicated
Speaker 6: Kuhn in the London case, they decided that they would
Speaker 6: interview both of them, and so Being goes to Kuhn
Speaker 6: and asks him if he would like to get out
Speaker 6: of jail. Would he be willing to corroborate Gordon's story
Speaker 6: by telling Being what happened, how it happened, who was involved,
Speaker 6: everything that he knows. But would he do it without
Speaker 6: his lawyer, Harvey Saint Jean because Being suspects that Saint
Speaker 6: Gean is much more embedded in these crimes and he
Speaker 6: has ever let on, And so that's what happens. Being
Speaker 6: goes and talks to Alan Dale Kuhn, who corroborates pretty
Speaker 6: much the story that Herman Gordon has told him. And
Speaker 6: he does this primarily because he needs that corroboration to
Speaker 6: know before he goes in to talk to Pearson, who
Speaker 6: is sitting there waiting for him with Harvey Saint Jean.
Speaker 6: So he needs that coroboration, He needs the true story.
Speaker 6: He needs to know that everything is accurate before he
Speaker 6: goes in and listens to Richard Duncan Pearson, who was
Speaker 6: the original person who started all this about confessing everything,
Speaker 6: to know whether he's really going to be telling him
Speaker 6: the truth, especially with Harvey Saint gen President.
Speaker 5: That's what happens, So tell us about how Bean uses
Speaker 5: Saint Gene and drives a wedge, drives a wedge between
Speaker 5: Saint Jean and Pearson.
Speaker 6: Well, when Agent Bean finally is able to get in
Speaker 6: to speak with Richard Duncan Pearson, he realizes that Mark
Speaker 6: Feld m Hoover or absolutely correct. He did need that
Speaker 6: coroborate corroboration of this Herman Gordon's story. He is so
Speaker 6: glad that he was able to get the truth out
Speaker 6: of Alan Kuhn, and he's armed with a lot of
Speaker 6: information and when he gets into the interview with Richard
Speaker 6: Duncan Pearson, Pearson essentially shows his true colors, which he
Speaker 6: has always pretty much shown that he's a spoiled kid.
Speaker 6: He's not going to tell being anything about his true
Speaker 6: involvement in these crimes. He just wants out of jail.
Speaker 6: And so being is able to pull in some information
Speaker 6: that Kuhn and Gordon have given him in order to
Speaker 6: determine that Saint Jean is actually not acting in the
Speaker 6: best interests of Richard Duncan Pearson, who's the client that
Speaker 6: he's sitting there representing, And in fact, he is able
Speaker 6: to finally determine that Saint Jean was in fact helping
Speaker 6: to set up Richard Duncan Pearson all along so that
Speaker 6: he would be convicted of several other robberies, although not
Speaker 6: implicated in the museum robberies, and one of those robberies
Speaker 6: in particular is when after the Museum robberies occur, Richard
Speaker 6: Duncan Pearson is arrested in Making Georgia and Robert and
Speaker 6: Jewel Store, and he has ransom money that was paid
Speaker 6: by John D. MacArthur for the DeLong ruby in his satchel,
Speaker 6: and he claims he knows he doesn't know a thing
Speaker 6: about how that money got there because he did not
Speaker 6: have He claims he did not have that ransom money. Well,
Speaker 6: in fact, as we as we find out, the being
Speaker 6: is able to pull Harvey's involvement in these crimes into
Speaker 6: the open, so that Richard Duncan Peerson finally becomes aware
Speaker 6: of the fact that Harvey's is actually as bad for
Speaker 6: him as he is for all these other clients, and
Speaker 6: that he has been two timing him in many other ways,
Speaker 6: including helping the stash that ransom money in the satchel
Speaker 6: that's found by the police, and so Saint Gene is
Speaker 6: actually set up Richard Duncan Pearson to be arrested in
Speaker 6: Making Georgia by having Richard Duncan Pearson's wife put the
Speaker 6: money into the satchel before he goes off to do
Speaker 6: the robbery. So it's and I'm sorry, I don't think
Speaker 6: that as a speaker, I'm the greatest. I think I
Speaker 6: did a much better job of writing this particular interview
Speaker 6: with Pearson in a very dramatic way so that all
Speaker 6: of these little pieces fall into place. But I think
Speaker 6: it's actually one of the one of the best things
Speaker 6: I've ever written, to tell you the truth, this interview
Speaker 6: with Pearson and the way that being is able to
Speaker 6: drive this wedge between these two guys, and essentially Richard
Speaker 6: Duncan Pearson fires Harvey Saint Jean honest up and sets
Speaker 6: go away. And that's actually the only time that Pearson
Speaker 6: shows any backbone. And finally he is able to at
Speaker 6: least come clean on a few things with Agent Bean,
Speaker 6: who in the end does not give him what he wants,
Speaker 6: which is I get a car at jail card, but
Speaker 6: he does teach him I think a fairly decent lesson
Speaker 6: about how you do things and you can't trust anybody.
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Speaker 5: Now you talk about Pearson knowing that Saint Jean had
Speaker 5: betrayed him big time. But there's still more for Being
Speaker 5: to understand and find out. And again it's the where
Speaker 5: did this ring go? Where did this eagle diamond go?
Speaker 5: So tell us about how Bean finally puts everything together,
Speaker 5: where that eagle diamond went and why?
Speaker 6: Well in the story, that is what Being is after
Speaker 6: more than anything. He wants to find out what happened
Speaker 6: to all of the gems and try to recover them
Speaker 6: if he can, and more than anything, he wants to
Speaker 6: know what happened to the Egle diamond. And Richard Duncan, Pearson,
Speaker 6: Herman Gordon, other people had all pointed the finger at
Speaker 6: one jewelsy who was in Miami at the time, and
Speaker 6: his name was Harry Henry Sittiner. Sittiner was an incredibly
Speaker 6: rich character who deserves his own set of books because
Speaker 6: he's had a wild life. But it's discovered that Saint
Speaker 6: Jean had the diamond, had some of the gems, and
Speaker 6: it went it went to Harry Sittner, and Harry Sittner
Speaker 6: was actually going to give it to Herman Gordon, and
Speaker 6: Gordon did not tell being what happened to the diamond,
Speaker 6: but Herman had left a booklet that also pointed towards Sidner.
Speaker 6: And finally, by looking through this booklet and realizing that
Speaker 6: Sittner was also this guy named Sinamore. Because they had
Speaker 6: various a leases, they're able to determine that the diamond
Speaker 6: had gone to had been split and put into several rings,
Speaker 6: and then it was stolen and one of the pieces
Speaker 6: was stolen, one of the rings was stolen and it
Speaker 6: went to Harry in a little place called Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Speaker 6: He had given the ring to a woman that he
Speaker 6: was dating. He had been coming to the mountains here
Speaker 6: for decades and he had given this ring to the woman.
Speaker 6: He had also used some of the jewels to set
Speaker 6: up a major counterfeiting ring in the mountains. When he
Speaker 6: was arrested here in the town, he was found with
Speaker 6: tens of thousands of dollars worth of gyms in a
Speaker 6: hotel room. And when the gyms were all collected, nobody
Speaker 6: knew where anything came from. So but there was one
Speaker 6: man in particular, and his name was Lawton Gay, and
Speaker 6: he had been given instructions to try to find this ring,
Speaker 6: and he came to town. And well that's that brings
Speaker 6: us into the murders, now the triple murders. As to
Speaker 6: why they happened, everyone always suspected that organized crime was involved,
Speaker 6: and in a way it was because the ring had
Speaker 6: actually been intended to go to meyer Land, but instead
Speaker 6: Harry had taken it and given it to his girlfriend.
Speaker 6: When it was discovered that this girlfriend had the ring, well,
Speaker 6: she was able to pass it off to her mother,
Speaker 6: who was dying of cancer, and when the ring was discovered,
Speaker 6: it was discovered on the finger of this woman's mother,
Speaker 6: and she was murdered along with two other guys by
Speaker 6: lat Gate who was trying to find the ring. It's
Speaker 6: just an unbelievable story of people being in the wrong
Speaker 6: place at the wrong time and having the wrong things
Speaker 6: and they lose their life because of it.
Speaker 5: You talk about that this woman looked very much like
Speaker 5: her mother, and because these gangsters were murderous gangsters were
Speaker 5: after her, she was advised and took that advice to
Speaker 5: sacrifice her mother because she looked so much alike and
Speaker 5: put the ring on her finger. Incredible details of those
Speaker 5: murders in Hendersonville.
Speaker 6: Well, it is a terrible thing that this girl did.
Speaker 6: Although her mother was dying, she was very ill, and
Speaker 6: the girl realized that if she didn't do this, she
Speaker 6: would be dead. So she got I guess whether you
Speaker 6: want to believe she did the right thing or not.
Speaker 6: Her girlfriend told her this was the only way that
Speaker 6: she could save her life is to put the ring
Speaker 6: on her mother's finger, put her driver's license in her
Speaker 6: mother's purse. Let let us Lawton Gay think that he's
Speaker 6: actually gotten Christina not Louise who is the mother, And
Speaker 6: that's exactly what happens, and haul's the mother. Christina actually
Speaker 6: gives her her mother a huge dose of morphine, which
Speaker 6: is sitting right there on the bed, and so her
Speaker 6: mother's near death anyway, when Lawton Gay hauls her out
Speaker 6: and takes her to an open field on a hillside
Speaker 6: over a lake, can't get the ring off her finger
Speaker 6: her and so after murdering her with a shotgun because
Speaker 6: can't get the ring off, he cuts the finger off
Speaker 6: and gets the ring that way. And the sad part
Speaker 6: about this whole story is that everyone thought it was
Speaker 6: because this woman was hanging around with two gay guys
Speaker 6: and they were into voodoo. They nobody ever realized that
Speaker 6: this was all about a ring and a diamond that
Speaker 6: had been cut and stolen from a museum in New
Speaker 6: York City. But that's exactly what happened. And for thirty years,
Speaker 6: forty years, a man in town carried around the woman's
Speaker 6: finger as a reminder to people who did know the
Speaker 6: story to keep your mouth shut and don't tell anybody
Speaker 6: the truth. That's he died last year.
Speaker 5: This case with Bean. Once he had all this information
Speaker 5: about extortion, conspiracy, triple murder, and other crimes. What was
Speaker 5: the word from j Edgar Hoover and Mark Felt from
Speaker 5: the FBI.
Speaker 6: Well, you have to understand that there was also there's
Speaker 6: a lot of dynamics that occur in this story, particularly
Speaker 6: in regards to organized crime, and organized crime had always
Speaker 6: been in the pocket of government, particularly in the sixties,
Speaker 6: and particularly with JFK who had worked with meyer Lansky
Speaker 6: on the Bay of Pigs and some of the characters
Speaker 6: in the story who I know about. That's a completely
Speaker 6: different line of discussion I don't want to get into.
Speaker 6: But the long and the short of this is that
Speaker 6: the organized crime people were in charge, and they had
Speaker 6: gotten a free ride for helping out the government with
Speaker 6: the Beya Pigs, and this particular story would have implicated
Speaker 6: meyer Lanski and a crime, and he had been given
Speaker 6: assurances that he would never ever be hauled in to
Speaker 6: jail because he was in his golden years and he
Speaker 6: had done what he was post to and he had
Speaker 6: gotten the promises. And so Jay Coouper Hoover just says, well,
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, but this crime is going into the vault
Speaker 6: and nobody's going to talk about it. And you guys,
Speaker 6: you want to keep your jobs, you're not going to
Speaker 6: talk about it either, And so it was, it was
Speaker 6: hushed up, and so the legend of Merph the Serf
Speaker 6: was born. That's what happened.
Speaker 5: You talk about Saint Tropez, France, January third, nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 5: Can you tell us about that meeting?
Speaker 6: Well, this was the only element of Bean's life that
Speaker 6: I fictionalized. He was he was not from France, but
Speaker 6: I had him going back to his home in south
Speaker 6: of France because I needed him to find someone who
Speaker 6: had left and he was quite surprised to run into
Speaker 6: this person. I'm not going to actually give away the
Speaker 6: entire point of the story, but I am going to
Speaker 6: say that Bean is finally satisfied, happy because he has
Speaker 6: discovered finally what has happened to the Ego Diamond, and
Speaker 6: that is how the story ends. And that's and so
Speaker 6: I don't want to actually give that part of ways
Speaker 6: that actually what happens, but Being does find out what
Speaker 6: happened to the Ego Diamond and be satisfied now that
Speaker 6: he has done his job.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. I want to thank you very much, Terrence Ryerson
Speaker 5: Neil for coming on talking about Murph based on a
Speaker 5: true story, the true story of the nineteen sixty four
Speaker 5: Museum robberies and Hendersonville triple murders. For those that might
Speaker 5: want to find out more about this book, can you
Speaker 5: tell us where they might find out more info?
Speaker 6: Sure? Yeah, it's on Amazon. There is a hardcover edition,
Speaker 6: there is a paperback edition, and the e book will
Speaker 6: be available on June fifteenth, and currently those are the
Speaker 6: that's the only place that it is available. I might also,
Speaker 6: if you don't mind, tell you that I do know
Speaker 6: that there is a documentary coming out in the summer
Speaker 6: about Murph, so you might want to catch that as
Speaker 6: being done by Imagine Entertainment.
Speaker 5: So that's how congratulations, Thank you so much Terrence Ryerson Neil.
Speaker 5: Murph based on a true story, the true story of
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixty four Museum robberies and Hendersonville triple murders.
Speaker 5: It's been fascinating. Thank you so much, Terrence Ryerson Neil.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Dan. Good night,