North Shore, South Shore — never the twain shall meet — or at least until the Great Mail Robbery of 1962 tossed that adage out the window.
The caper that netted a heist gang $1.5 million could have been ripped from a Hollywood script writer’s typewriter.
The thieves knew what they were doing. Executing a complicated plan that police said involved several thieves and four cars, they set up detour signs to isolate the mail truck on a highway near Plymouth and brandished submachine guns. The truck’s driver said two thieves wore police uniforms.
The truck was on the way to the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston after picking up cash-filled bags from central Cape Cod banks. The robbers tied up the driver and the guard and shoved them into the back of the truck.
One of the robbers hopped behind the wheel and drove to several locations, dropping off some of the stolen loot at each stop before freeing the two hostages.
Newspapers quickly pegged the robbery as the biggest cash theft in the nation’s history. It took less than a day for the rapidly-expanding investigation to sweep into Lynn.
Revere Firefighter Pat Cerrone told police that when he walked out of All Star Bowling one night two months before the Plymouth heist, his 1959 Oldsmobile had disappeared from the Lynnway parking lot.
Investigators found the partly-burned car in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood a day after the heist. Inside the trunk were seven highway detour signs.
The Plymouth investigation was barely a week old when investigators probed similarities between the robbery and a March, 1962 West Lynn bank robbery.
Essex Trust robbers held 24 people captive before leading police on a chase in which shots were fired, wounding Lynn Officer Harry Steadman, commandeering a laundry truck, and running a police roadblock.
Lynn police dismissed similarities to the Plymouth robbery, but the Lynn robbers were also armed with machine guns and investigators were intrigued by reports that thieves dressed as women during both robberies.
The Plymouth bounced back to the North Shore again when a known robber wanted for questioning by the Marblehead police got hauled into an interrogation room because of his strong resemblance to one of the Plymouth thieves.
After the month anniversary of the Plymouth heist came and went, desperate investigators sent out a mass mailing featuring pictures of Pat Cerrone’s Olds and a $50,000 reward offer for any help cracking the case.
Investigators ultimately zeroed in on six suspects. One of them, Thomas R. Richards, was represented by legendary attorney and former Lynn resident F. Lee Bailey who told reporters investigators might try to nail his client for the Essex Trust stickup in hopes he might dime out his Plymouth cronies.
Indicted in 1967 in connection with the Plymouth heist, Richards did not show up for his trial. Two alleged fellow thieves were tried and acquitted.
The money was never recovered.